Call and response: the Riverside anthology of the African American literary tradition

I. "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt's land" African American history and culture, 1619-1808

The description of the conditions of slavery and oppression

Racial and Religion Oppression

Call for Deliverance: The oral tradution

Origins: African survivals in slave folk culture

Proverbs

African prototypes

Slave proverbs

Slave proverbs and their African paralleles

The folk cry

The shout

'Ligion so sweet

Work songs and other secular music

African prototype

An African sponner's song

Early slave work songs

An old boat song

Antiphonal patterns of work songs

Spirituals

African prototypes of lengthy epic narratives

from "Sunjata"

Spirituals as lengthy epic narratives

"Go down, Moses"

Praise poems

African prototypes

Praise poems of epic heroes

Griot's praise song from Banna Kanute's Sunjata

Mandingo people's song from Mamadou Kouyate's Sundiata

Hunter's praise song from Seydou Camara's Kambili

Praise poems of Allah

Griot's Praise poem of Allah from Seydou Camara's Kambili

Marabout's prophecy from Banna Kanute's Sunjata

Spirituals as paraise poems

"God is a God" from "Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel"

"Joshua fit de Battle of Jericho"

Sermons and prayers

African prototypes

Sermons in epic narratives

Griot's sermon from Seydou Canara's Kambili

Short prayers in epic narratives

Sologan's prayer from Mamadou Kauyate's Sundiata

Short hymns in epic narratives

"Niama" from Mamadou Kouyate's Sundiata

Spirituals as sermons and prayers

From "Humble Yo'self de bell done ring"

"Keep me from sinking down"

Lyrical poetry

African prototypes

Griot's chant from Shekarisi Rurede's The Mwindo epic

Warrior Kanji's Lament from Seydou Camara's Kambili

Spirituals as lyrical poetry

"Were you there when they cruicified my Lord?"

"Motherless child"

Improvisations: Theme and variation, call and response, performance styles, rhythms and melodic structures

African antiphonal patterns

An old Bornu song

Antiphonal patterns in the spirituals

"Lay dis body down"

African melodic structures

Duple and triple rhythms

Melodic structures in the spirituals

An Example of Duple rhythms and the pentatonic scale

"Jesus on de water-side," from Slave songs of the United States

An Example of a syncopated melody with hand clapping and foot tapping

"Nobody knows de trouble I've had" from Slave Songs of the United States

A Spiritual composed by Ricahard Allen

Folktales

African folktales

Animal trickster tales

"The elephant and the tortoise"

"Why the hare runs away"

Slave folktales

Animal trickster tales

"Rabbit teaches bear a song"

"T'appin" (Terrapin)

"Tar baby"

Tales of flying Africans

Two tales

Conjure tales

Two tales from Eatonville, Florida

Voodoo, Ghost, and Haunt tales

"Voodoo and whtches"

"The Headless hant

Response: Black literary declarations of independence

Poetry, slave narratives, letters, essays, and oratory

Voices of slave poets

Jupiter Hammon (1711-1806?)

"An evening thought: salvation by Christ with Penetical [sic] cries"

"An address to Miss Phillis Wheatly" [sic]

"A winter piece"

Lucy Terry (1730-1821)

"Bars Fight"

Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784)

"On being brought from Africa to America"

"To the University of Cambridge, in New-England"

"Philis's [sic] reply to the answer in our last by the gentleman in the Navy"

"To the right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Sectretary of State for North-America, [ect.]"

"To S.M. a young African painter, on seeing his works"

"On the death of Rev. Mr. Mr. George Whitefield. 1770"

"On the death of General Wooster"

To Arbour Tanner in New Port

To Samson Occom

Voices of social protest in prose

The confesstional narrative

The life and confession of Johnson Green, Who is to be executed this day, August 17th, 1786, for the atrocious crime of burglary

The slave narrative

Britton Hammon (?-?)

From Narrative of the uncommon sufferings, and surprizing if the uncommon sufferings, and surprizing [sic]

Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A negro man, servant to General Winslow, of Marshfield, in New England; Who returned to Boston, after having been absent almost thirteen years

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)

From The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 10

Chapter 12

Letters and essays

Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806)

Letter to Thomas Jefferson

Prince Hall (1735c.-1807)

A charge, delivered to the African Lodge, June 24, 1797

Lemuel B. Haynes (1753-1818)

"Liberty further extended"

"The battle of Lexington"

Voices of orators

The sermon

Absalom Jones (1746-1818)

A Thanksgiving sermon preached January 1, 1808

John Marrant (1755-1790?)

A sermon preached on the 24th day of June 1789

Richard Allen (1760-1831)

"An address to those who keep slaves and approve the practice."

II. "Tell ole pharaoh, let my people go" African American history and culture, 1808-1865

The explanations of the desire for freedom

Repression and racial response

Southern folk call for resistance

Folk poetry: Slave songs of rebellion, the underground railroad, and emancipation

Spirituals

"You got a right"

"There's a better day a coming"

"Oh Mary, don't your weep"

" Steel away"

"Swing low, sweet chariot"

"Hail Mary"

"Many thousand gone" "Wade in nuh watuh childun"

"Follow the drinking gou'd"

Sweet Canaan

"There's a meeting here tonight"

"Master's in the field"

"Michael row the boat ashore"

"Before I'd be a slave" ("Oh, freedom")

Secular songs

"JUba"

"Raise a ruckus tonight"

"We raise de wheat"

"One time upon dis ribber"

"Shuck dat corn before you eat"

"Roun' de corn, Sally"

Folktales

John and old master tales

"Massa and the bear"

"John steals a pig and a sheep"

Northern literary response: Rights for blacks, rights for women

Mafor abolitionist voices

David Walker (1785-1830)

From David Waler's appeal, in four articles

Preamble

Article I. Our wretchedness in consequence of slavery

Sojourner Truthe (1979-99?-1883)

Speech at Akron convention, Arkon, Ohio, May 28029, 1851;

From Reminiscences by Frances D. Gage of Sojourner

Truth

Speech at New York City Convention

Address to the First annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, New York City, May 9, 1867

Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882)

An address to the slaves of the United States of America

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)

Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American slave written by himself

"The rights of women"

"What to the slave is the fourth of July?" an address delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852

Alexander Crummell (1819-1898)

"Hope for Africa"

"The black woman of the South: Her neglects and her needs"

Frances Watkins Harper (1824-1911)

"The slave auction" "The slave mother"

"Bury me in a free land"

"Songs for the people"

"A double standard"

"Learning to read" From Sketches of Southern life.

"Aunt Chloe's politics"

"Libery for slaves"

"The two offers"

"Women's political future"

From Iola LeRoy

Northern Experience

Diverging paths

Abilitionist orator-poets

George Moses Horton (1797-1883)

"The slave's complaint"

"On liberty and slavery"

"On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the poet's freedom"

James Whitfield (1823-1871)

"America" From America and other poems

"Prayer of the oppressed"

James Madison Bell (1826-1902)

"The day and the war"

"Emancipation in the District of Columbia, April 16, 1862"

Abolitionist orators

Theodore S. Wright (1791-1847)

" The progress of the antislavery cause"

Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879)

From Religion and the pure principles of morality, the sure foundation on which we must build

Lecture, delivered at the Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832

An address delivered at the Masonic Hall in Boston on February 27, 1833

Farewell address

Sarah Parker Remond (1826-1894)

"The negros in the United States of America"

Voices of social protest in prose

The confessional narrative

Nat Turner (1800-1831)

The confessions of Nat Turner

The fugitive slave narrative

Harriet A. Jacobs (1813-1897)

From Incidents in the life of a slave girl, written by herself

Preface by the author

Chapter I. Childhood

Chapter II. The new master and mistress

Chapter VI. The jealous mistress

Chapter VII. The lover

Chapter X. A perilous passage in a slave girl's life

Chapter XVII. The Flight

Chapter XXI. The loophole of retreat

Chapter XXIX. Preparations for Escape

Chapter XXX. Northward bound

Essays, pamphlets, letters, and journals

Robert Purvis (1810-1898)

Appeal of fourty thousand citizens threatened with disfranchisement to the people of Pennsylvania

Martin R. Delany (1812-1885) From The condition, elevation, emigration, and destiny of the colored people of the United States, politically considered

Chapter II. Comparative condition of the colored people of the United States

Chapter III. American colonization

Chapter IV. Our elevation in the United States

Chapter V. Means of elevation

Chapter XVII. Emigraiton of the colored people of the United States

XVIII. "Republic of Liberia"

Charlotte L. Forten Grimké (1837-1914)

From The Journal of Charlotte Forten

"Interesting letter from Miss Charlotte L. Forten"

Elizabeth Keckley (?-1907)

From Behind the scenes

The women's narrative

Jarena Lee (1783-?)

From Religious experience and journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, giving an account of her call to preach the Gospel

The novel or neo-slave narrative

William Wells Brown (1815-1884)

From A tale of the Southern States

Chapter II. The negro sale

Chapter X. The quadroon's home

Chapter XI. To-day a mistress, to-morrow a slave

Chapter XXV. The flight

Harriet E. Adams Wilson (1828?-1863?) From Our Nig: Or, sketches from the life of a free black

Chapter IV. A friend for Nig

Chapter X. Perplexities-Another death

Chatper XII. The winding up of the matter

III. "No more shall they in bondage toil" African American history and culture, 1865-1915

The description of the manner of escape from slavery and the considerations of whether the new freedom is the ideal freedom

Reconstruction and post-Reconstriction

Call for the ideal freedom: the folk tradition

Folk poetry

Spirituals

"Free at las"

"Singin' wid a sword in ma han'"

My Lord, what a mornin'

"Deep river"

"Go tell it on de mountain"

"When the Saints go marching in"

"Git on board, little chillen"

"Mighty rocky road"

Work, badman, and prison songs

"Casey Jones"

"John Henry"

"Railroad Bill"

"Stogolee"

"John Harty"

"Po Laz'us"

Rural blues

"The Joe Turner blues"

"Gwine down dat lonesome road"

"Baby seals blues"

"St. Louis blues"

Ragtime

"I meet dat coon tonight"

The folk sermon

Rev. John Jasper

"De sun do move"

Anonymous

"Dry bones"

Folktales

Memories of slavery

"Swapping dreams"

"Lia's revelation"

"Big sixteen"

Preacher tales

"The three preachers"

"The wrong man in the coffin"

"The preacher and his farmer brother"

Response: the written tradition

Voices of the folk tradition

Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932)

"The goophered grapevine"

"The wife of his youth"

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

"An ante-bellum sermon"

When Malindy sings"

"A negro love song"

"The party"

"Frederick Douglass"

"Sympathy"

"We wear the mask"

"The poet"

"A spiritual"

Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)

"Sister Josepha"

Fenton Johnson (1888-1958)

"A negro peddler's song."

"Aunt Jane Allen"

The Banjo player"

"Tired"

"The scarlet woman"

"Oratorical voices of reconstruction, race, and women's rights

Balnche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898)

Speech to the U.S. Senate on Mississippi election's delivered March 3, 1876

Robert Brown Elliott (1842-1884)

From "The civil rights bill"

Lucy Craft Laney (1854-1933)

"The burden of the educated colored woman"

Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)

"The higher educaiton of women" From A voice from the South

Remarks before the 1893 World's Congress of Representative Women on the status of the black woman in the United States

Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944)

"The intellectual progress of the colored women of the United States since the emancipation proclamation"

Voices of reform

Autobiography

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

From Up from slavery

Chapter I. A slave among slaves

Chapter III. The struggle for an education

Chapter VII. Early days at Tuskegee

Chapter XIV. The Atlanta exposition address

Women's narrative

Julia A.J. Foote (1823-1900)

From A brand plucked from the fire

Chapter I. Birth and parentage

Chapter II. Religious impressions-learning the alphabet

Chapter III. The primes-going to school

Chapter IV. My teacher hung for crime

Chapter XVIII. Heavenly visitations again

Chapter XIX. Public effort-excommunication

Chapter XX. Women in the Gospel

Chapter XXI. The Lord leadeth-labor in Philadelphia

Frances Jackson Coppin (1837-1913)

From Reminiscences of school life

The Novel, or neo-slave narrative

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930)

From Contending forces

Preface

Chapter VI. Ma Smith's lodging-house-concluded

Chapter VIII. The sewing-circle

Voices of activism

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)

From

Southern horrors: lynch law in all its phases

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)

From The souls of black folk

Chapter I. Of our spiritual strivings

Chapter III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and others

Chapter XIV. Of the sorrow songs

"A litany of Atlanta"

"The song of the smoke"

The Niagara movement: address to the country

"The negro in literature and art"

"The immediate program of the American negro."

IV. "Bound no'th blues" African American history and culture, 1915-1945

"Play the blues for me"

Renaissance and reformation

Folk call for political and social change

Folk poetry

Classic blues lyrics

"Harlem blue" W.C. Handy

From "That thing called love" Mamie Smith

From "Tain't nobody's business if I do" Bessie Smith

From

"Sissy blues" Gertrude "Ma" Rainey

From "Wild women don't have the blues" Ida Cox

From "God bless the child" Billie Holliday

From "Fast life blues" Bumble Bee slim

From "Coal woman blues" Black Boy Shine

Rural blues lyrics of the thirties and forties

"Dry spell blues" Eddie "Son" House

From "Hard time blues" Charlie Spand

From "Honey, I'm all out and down" Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter

"Hollerin' the blues" (Big Bill Broonzy)

"Crossroad blues" Robert Johnson

Gospel songs

"Take my hand, precious Lord" Thomas A. Dorsey

"When I touch his garment" Langston Hughes and Jobe Huntley

"If I can just make it in" Kenneth Morris

Jazz

Development of Jazz techniques in performance

Rhythm, melody, and harmony

Improvisation

"(What did I do to be so) black and blue" Andy Razaf and Thomas "Fats" Waller

Swing or big band jazz

From "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" Duke Ellington

Boogie Woogie

"Pine top's boogie woogie" Clarence "Pine Top" Smith

"Dream Googie" Langston Hughes

Bad man and prison songs

"Garvey"

"Champ Joe Louis" Bill Gaither

"This mornin', this evenin', so soon"

"Slim Greer" Sterling Brown

Folk sermons

From God's trombones James Weldon Johnson

"The creation"

"Go down death-A funeral sermon"

From "Preachin the blues"-A mock sermon Bessie Smith

Folktale Collected by Zora Neale Hurston

Call for political and socail change

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)

Speech on disarmament conference delivered at Libery Hall, New York, Novermber 6, 1921

Walter White (1893-1955)

"I investigate lynchings."

Call for critical debate

The Alain Locke-W.E.B. Du Bois debate on the theory of black art

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)

"Criteria of negro art"

Alain Locke (1886-1954)

"The new negro"

Response: Voices of the harlem renaissance

Poets

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

Preface From The book of American negro poetry "O black and unkown bards"

"The white witch"

"Fragment"

Anne Sponcer (1882-1975)

"Before the feast at Shushan"

"White things"

"Lady, lady" "Letter to my sister"

"[God never planted a garden]"

Claude McKay (1889-1948)

"The tropics in New York"

"If we must die"

"Baptism"

"Tiger"

"America"

"Harlem shadows

"The Harlem Dancer"

"The white house"

St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd"

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

"The negro speaks of rivers"

"Dream variations"

"Sunday morning prophecy" "The weary blues"

"Jazzonia"

"Life is fine"

"Daybreak in Alabama"

"Bound no'th blues"

"Mother to son"

"Madam's past history"

"Ballad of the Landlord"

"Dream boogie"

"Harlem"

"I, too"

"Feet live their own life"

"The negro artist and the racial mountain" From The Nation"

Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981)

"Heritage"

"To a dark girl"

"Nocturne"

"To usward"

" Street lamps in early spring"

"Hatred"

"Fantasy"

"Secret"

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

"Heritage"

"Scottsboro, too, is worth its song"

"Colored blues singer"

"The litany of the dark people"

"Yet do I marvel"

"A song of praise"

"Not Sacco and VAnzetti"

Helene Johnson (1907- )

"My race"

"Sonnet to a negro in Harlem"

"Bottled"

"Trees at night"

"The road"

"Magalu"

"Summer matures"

"Fulfillment"

Fiction writers

Nella Larsen (1891-1964)

From Quicksand

From Passing

Chapter One

Chapter two

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

"Spunk"

"Sweat"

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

From Cane

"Katrintha"

"Song of the son"

"Fern"

"Portrait in Georgia"

"Seventh street"

"Box seat"

From "Kabnis"

"Rudolph Fisher (1897-1934)

"Miss Cynthie"

Eric Walrond (1898-1966)

Response: Voices of the Reformation

Poets

Sterling Brown (1901-1989)

"When de Saints go ma'chin' home"

"Southern road"

"Ma Rainey"

"Old Lem"

"Strong men"

Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987)

"Jazz band"

"Robert Whitmore"

"Arthur Ridgewood, M.D."

"Giles Johnson, Ph. D."

Fiction writers

Richard Wright (1908-1960)

"Long black song"

Ann Petry (1908- )

"Like a winding sheet"

"Miss Muriel"

Chester Himes (1909-1984)

"Marihuana and a pistol."

V. "Win the war blues" African American history and culture, 1945-1960

"Play the blues for me"

Post-Renaissance and post-Reformation

Folk call for victory at home and abroad

Folk poetry

Urban blues lyrics

"Win the war blues" Sonny Boy Williamson

"Hitler blues" The Florida Kid

"Eisenhower blues" J.B. Lenoir

"Louisiana blues" Muddy Water

"Back to Korea blues" Sunnyland slim

"Future blues"

Willie Brown

Gospels and spirituals

"We shall overcome©"

"Gimme dat ol'-time religion" arranged by J. Rosamond Johnson

"Move on up a little higher" Mahalia Jackson and Theodore Fryre

"I know it was the Lord" Clara Ward

Rhythm and blues lyrics

From "The twist" (Hand Ballard; performed by Chubby Checker

"Good golly Miss Molly" John S. Marascalco and Robert A. Blackwell; performed by Little Richard

Bop and cool jazz

"Parker's Mood" Charlie '"Yardbird" Parker

From "Donna Lee" Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, performed by Miles Davis

"Flatted fifths" Langston Hughes

Bad women folk ballads poems by Margaret Walker

"Molly means"

"Kissie Lee"

Folk sermon

"The prodical son" C.L. Franklin

Call for critical debate

Hugh M. Gloster (1911- )

"Race and the negro writer"

Nick Aaron Ford (1904-1982)

"A Bluepint for negro authors"

Ann Petry (1908- )

"The novel as social criticism"

Response: voices of African American tradition and moderism

Poets

Melvin B. Tolson (1898-1966)

"Dark Symphony"

"Lambda" From Harlem gallery

Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

"Homage to the empress of the blues"

"Middle passage"

"Runagate runagate"

"Frederick Douglass" "Elegies for Paradise Valley"

"A letter from Phillis Wheatley"

Dudley Randall (1914- )

"Booker T. and W.E.B."

"Legacy: My south"

"Ancestors"

Owen Dobson (1914-1983)

"Sorrow is the only faithful one"

"Yardbird's skull (for Charlei Parker)"

"Guitar"

Margaret Esse Danner (1915-1988)

"Far from Africa: Four poems"

" The rhetoric of Langston Hughes"

"The slave and the iron lace"

"Passive resistance"

Margaret Walker (1915- )

"For my people"

"Lineage"

"The ballad of the free"

"Prophets for a new day"

" The crystal palace"

"A patchwork quilt"

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- )

"the mother"

"the children of the poor"

"The last quatrain of the ballad of Emmett Till"

"The Chicago devender sends a man to Little Rock"

"We real cool."

"The wall"

"The Chicago Picasso"

"Medgar Evers"

"Malcom X"

"The serrmon on the warpland"

"To an old black woman, homeless and indistinct"

Maomi Long Madgett (1923- )

"Midway"

"The old women"

"New Day"

"Monday morning blues"

"A litaney for Afro-Americans

Playwrights

Alice Childress (1920-1994)

Wedding band

Lorraine Hansberry

A raisin in the sun

Fiction writers

Dorthy West (1907- )

"The richer, the poorer"

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)

"Prologue" From Invisible man

"Juneteenth"

John Oliver Killens (1916-1987)

"The stick up"

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

"Sonny's blues"

"Everybody's protest novel"

Paule Marshall (1929- )

"Barbados"

From Praisesong for the window

VI. "Cross road blues" African American history and culture, 1960 to the present

"No other music'll ease my misery"

Social revolution, new renaissance, and second reconstruction

Folk call for social revolution and political strategy

Folk poetry

Urban blues lyrics

"The thrill is gone"

B.B. King

"I pity the fool" Bobby "Blue" Bland

"Back door man" Howlin' Wolf

"Am I blue?" Ray Charles

"Big boss man" Jimmy Reed

Rhythm and blues lyrics

"Respect" Otis Reddings; as interpreted by Aretha Franklin

From

"Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud" James Brown

From "Keep on pushing" Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions

"What's going on" Marvin Gaye, A. Cleveland, and R. Benson

Spirituals and gospels adapted for the liberation movement

"Ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round"

"Keep your eyes on the prize"

"This little light of mine"

"We shall not be moved"

Avant-garde jazz

Rap lyrics

From

"The revolution will not be televised" Gil Scott-Heron

From "Rapper's delight" The Sugar Hill Gang

From "The message" Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

From "Paid in full" Eric B. and Rakim

"Don't believe the hype" Public Enemy

"Fight the power" Public Enemy

From "Ladies first" Queen Latifah and Monie Love

"Just a friendly game of baseball" Main Source

From "Freedom of speech" Ice T

A rap From "Philadelphia fire" John Wideman

Toasts

"Signifyin' monkey" version by Oscar Brown, Jr.

Folk sermon

"Ezekiel and the vision of dry bones" version by Carl J. Anderson; collected and transcribed by Gerald Davis

Contemporary folktales collected by Daryl C. Dance

"In the beginning"

"How blacks got to America"

"He remembered"

"Don't call my name"

"The only two I can trust"

"I'm gon' get in the drawer"

"Outsmarting Whitey"

"Call for political and social strategy

Malcolm X (1925-1965)

Speech to African Summit Conference-Cairo, Egypt

Martin Luter King, Jr. (1929-1968)

"I have a dream"

Stokely Carmichael (1941- )

"Black power"

Jesse Jackson (1941- )

Address: Democratic National Convention, San Francisco, July 17, 1984

Angela Davis (1944- )

From "Reflections on the black woman's role in the community of slaves"

Call for critical debate

Larry Neal (1937-1981)

"The balck arts movement"

Joyce Ann Joyce (1949- )

"The black canon: Reconstructing black American literary criticism"

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1950- )

" 'What's love got to do it?': Critical theory, intgrity, and the black idiom"

Response: Voices of the new black renaissance

Voices of the black arts movement

The new black poets

Etheridge Knight (1931-1991)

"The idea of ancestry"

"The violent space (or when your sister sleeps around form money)"

"Hard rock returns to prison from the hospital for the criminal insane"

"He sees through stone"

"A poem for myself (or blues for a Mississippi black boy)"

"Ilu, the talking drum)"

"The bones of my fater"

Sonia Sanchez (1934- )

"the final solution/"

"right on: white america"

"Summer words of a sistuh addict"

"Masks."

"now poem, for us."

"Blues"

"Woman"

"under a soprano sky"

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) (1934- )

"Preface to a twenty volume suicide note"

"Black art"

"SOS"

"Black people: this is our destiny"

"A poem for black hearts"

"Ka 'Ba"

"leory"

"An agony. As now."

"A poem some people will have to understand"

"Three movements and a coda"

"Numbers, letters"

"Dope"

"Wise 1"

Dutchman

Jayne Cortez (1936- )

"In the morning" "Orisha"

"So many feathers"

"Grinding vibrato"

"Rape"

Lucille Clifton (1936- )

"miss rosie"

"for deLawd"

"my mama moved among the days"

"good times"

"the lost baby poem"

"homage to my hips" "what the mirror siad"

"the making of poems"

Haki R. Fadhubuti (Don L. Lee) (1942- )

"Don't cry, scream"

"Two poems" From "Sketches from a black-nappy-headed poet"

"We walk the way of the New World"

"Assassination"

"But he was cool or: he even stopped for green lights"

"My brothers"

"White on black crime"

Carolyn Rodgers (1943- )

"Me, in Kulu Se [and] Karma"

"Poem for some black women"

"5 winos"

"U name this one"

"It is deep"

Nikki Giovanni (1943- )

"For Soundra"

"Revolutionary music"

"Nikki-Rosa"

"The women gather"

"Ego tripping (there may be a reason why)"

The new breed

Albert Murray (1916- )

"Train Whistle Guitar"

Mari Evans

"I am a black woman"

"into blackness softly"

"Speak the truth to the people"

"Black jam for dr. negro"

"conceptuality"

Maya Angelou (1928- )

"Still I rise"

"Woman me"

"My Arkansas"

"On diverse deviations"

From I know why the caged bird sings

Kristin Hunter (1931- )

"Forget-me-not"

Tom Dent (1932- )

"For Walter Washington"

"For Lawrence Sly"

"Magnolia Street"

Ernest J. Gaines (1933- )

"Three men"

Henry Dumas (1934-1968)

From Art of bones

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

"Coal"

"Power"

"Never take fire from a woman."

"Solstice"

"The woman thing"

"Stations"

"Legacy-hers"

June Jordan (1936- )

"All the world moved"

"The new Pietà: For the mothers and children of Detroit"

"In memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr."

"You came with shells"

"Poem about my rights"

William Melvin Kelley (1937- )

"Homesick blues"

"Come back blues"

"Song: I want a witness"

"To James Brown"

"Effendi"

"In Hayden's collage"

"Last affair: Bessie's blues song"

Ishmael Reed (1938- )

"I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra"

"Sermonette"

"Beware: do not read this poem"

"Why I often allude to Osiris"

"Lincoln-Swille" From Flight to Canada

Al Young (1939- )

"A dance for militant dilettantes"

"For Arl in her sixth month"

"There is a sadness"

"The old O.O. blues: introduction"

James Alan McPherson (1943- )

"A solo song: for doc"

Quincy Troupe (1943- )

"Reflections on growing older"

"It all boils down"

"Snake-back solo"

"For Malcolm who walks in the eyes of our children"

Women's voices of self-definition

Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Wofford) (1931)

The bluest eye

"Recitatif"

Toni Cade Banbara (1939-1995)

"My man Bovanne"

Alice Walker

"Everyday use"

"In search of our mothers' gardens"

"The empress band trim: Ruby reminisces"

"The peacock poems: 2"

Clenora Hudson-Weems (1945- )

"Africana womanism: An historical, global perspective for women of African descent"

Barbara Smith (1946- )

"Toward a black feminist criticism"

Ntozake Shange (1948- )

"somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff' From for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf

Gayl Jones (1949- )

"Ravenna"

Gloria Naylor (1950- )

From Mama Day

bell hooks (1952- )

"Black women: Shaping feninist theory"

Terry McMillan (1951- )

"Franklin" From Disappearing acts

From How Stella got her groove back

Voices of the new wave

Askia Muhammad Touré (1938- )

"Osirian Rhapsody: A myth"

"Dawnsong!"

John Edgar Wideman (1941- )

"newborn thrown in trash and dies"

August Wilson (1945)

Joe Turner's come and gone

Yusef Komunyakaa (1947- )

"Camouflaging the Chimera"

"Hanoi Hannah"

"Missing in aciton"

"Facing it"

Charles Johnson (1948- )

"The sorcerer's apprintice."

Jamaica Kincaid (1949- )

"Columbus in chains" From Annie John

Melvin Dixon (1950-1992)

From Vanishing rooms

Anna Deavere Smith (1950- )

From Fires in the mirror

Rita Dove (1952- )

"Roast possum"

"Dusting"

"Taking in wash"

"Under the viaduct, 1932"

"The great palaces of Versailles"

Reginald McKnight (1956- )

"I get on the bus"

From I get on the bus

Charles I. Nero (1956- )

"Toward a black gay aesthetic"

Kamaria Muntu (1959- )

"Of women and spirit"

"Lymphoma"

Randall Kenan (1963- )

"The foundations of the Earth"

Credits and acknowledgments

Index of authors and titles

Subject index

Appendix A

Contents of audio compact disc

1. "Sunyetta" [excerpt] (traditional) 3:49-performed by Abdoulie Samba, vocal and halam; from the Folkways album The Griots (FE4178)

2. "Go down, moses" (traditional) 3:00- perfomed by Bill McAdoo, vocal; from the Folkways