12 Million Black Voices

by Richard Wright

Overview

Originally published in 1941, 12 Million Black Voices pairs Richard Wright’s beautiful prose with stunning photographs from the Farm Security Administration’s files from the Great Depression. The images, curated by Edwin Rosskam, include photographs shot by legendary American artists like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein, adding a visual dimension to Wright’s incisive commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in America.

From dusty rural villages to northern ghettos, 12 Million Black Voices is an unflinching portrayal of the lives that many black Americans lived in the 1930s. Depicting remarkable spiritual fortitude and resilience in the face of crushing poverty and hostile government policies, 12 Million Black Voices is a testament to the strength of black communities, giving voices and faces to a population that is too often invisible in the annals of American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626545656
Publisher:	Echo Point Books & Media
Publication date:	02/18/2019
Edition description:	Reprint ed.
Pages:	154
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Richard Wright is among this country's most widely recognized and critically acclaimed authors. His books Native Son and Black Boy represent pivotal developments in American literature, politics, and culture.

Date of Birth:

September 4, 1908

Date of Death:

November 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Near Natchez, Mississippi

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Smith-Robertson Junior High in Jackson, Mississippi (1925)

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreward

Part One

Our Strange Birth

Part Two

Inheritors of Slavery

Part Three

Death on the City Pavements

Part Four

Men in the Making

About the Photographs

Editorial Reviews

“Among all the works of Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry, of passion, of lyricism, and of love” —David Bradley

“Short text and picture folk history of the Black American, in which the author of Native Son writes a burning commentary on three centuries of slavery, persecution, and want...Edwin Rosskam, the photographic editor, reinforces the text with superb photographs” —The New Yorker

“A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised… flawless prose that takes on at times the quality of a folksong” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

This long-out-of-print photographic documentary was first published in 1941. The excellent black-and-white picturesby such renowned photographers as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn et al. and culled from the Farm Security Administration files compiled during the Depressioncapture the wretchedness of Southern rural shantytown and urban ghetto, but also reveal a people's unstinting, stately determination to survive with mind, body and dignity intact. Wright's (Native Son) text is a denunciation of American bigotry directed at the national conscience. He discusses each phase of black American social evolution: the horrors of the slave trade; the degradation of plantation life; the lynchings and violence after Reconstruction; and the great migration of blacks to Northern cities following World War I. Wright anchors his economic analyses to profiles of individual lives, providing a sense of the obstacles black families faced simply to stay together. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly