Black Voices

"If you don't know my name, you don't know your own.”—James Baldwin Featuring fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Black Voices captures the diverse and powerful words of a literary explosion, the ramifications of which can be seen and heard in the works of today's African-American artists. A comprehensive and impressive primer, this anthology presents some of the greatest and most enduring work born out of the African-American experience in the United States. Contributors Include: Sterling A. Brown Charles W. Chesnutt John Henrik Clarke Countee Cullen Frederick Douglass Paul Laurence Dunbar James Weldon Johnson Naomi Long Madgett Paule Marshall Clarence Major Claude McKay Ann Petry Dudley Randall J. Saunders Redding Jean Toomer Darwin T. Turner As well as: Lerone Bennett, Jr. Frank London Brown Arthur P. Davis Frank Marshall Davis Owen Dodson Mari Evans Rudolph Fisher Dan Georgakas Robert Hayden Frank Horne Blyden Jackson Lance Jeffers Fenton Johnson George E. Kent Alain Locke Diane Oliver Stanley Sanders Richard G. Stern Sterling Stuckey Melvin B. Tolson

About the Editor   Abraham Chapman was professor of English and Chairman of the American Literature survey courses at Wisconsin State University–Stevens Point. His writings include critical studies on American literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and book reviews for various leading periodicals. He was the author of The Negro in American Literature. In 1968, Professor Chapman received the Biennial College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award for his study The Harlem Renaissance in Literary History, published in CLA Journal.

Introduction I. Fiction Charles W. Chestnutt Baxter's Procrustes Jean Toomer Karintha Blood-Burning Moon Rudolph Fisher Common Meter Arna Bontemps A Summer Tragedy Langston Hughes Tales of Simple: Foreword: Who Is Simple? Feet Live Their Own Life Temptation Bop Census Coffee Break Cracker Prayer Promulgations Richard Wright The Man Who Lived Underground Ann Petry In Darkness and Confusion Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (Prologue Frank London Brown McDougal Paule Marshall To Da-duh, In Memoriam Diane Oliver Neighbors II. Autobiography Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Chapters 1, 6, 7, and 10) James Weldon Johnson Along This Way (Selected Episodes) Richard Wright The Ethics of Living Jim Crow J. Saunders Redding No Day of Triumph (Chapter 1: Sections 1, 5, and 7) James Baldwin Autobiographical Notes Arna Bontemps Why I Returned Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Chapter 1) Stnaley Sanders "I'll Never Escape the Ghetto" III. Poetry Paul Laurence Dunbar We Wear the Mask A Death Song Sympathy A Negro Love Song W. E. B. Du Bois The Song of the Smoke A Litany at Atlanta James Weldon Johnson The Creation Fenton Johnson The Daily Grind The World Is a Mighty Ogre A Negro Peddler's Song The Old Repair Man Rulers The Scarlet Woman Tired Aunt Jane Allen Claude McKay Baptism If We Must Die Outcast The Negro's Tragedy America The White City The White House Jean Toomer Harvest Song Song of the Son Cotton Song Brown River, Smile Countee Cullen Yet Do I Marvel A Song of Praise A Brown Girl Dead From the Dark Tower Incident Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song Three Epitaphs: For My Grandmother For Paul Laurence Dunbar For a Lady I Know Melvin B. Tolson An Ex-Judge at the Bar Dark Symphony Psi Frank Horne Kid Stuff Nigger: A Chant for Children Sterling A. Brown Sister Lou Memphis Blues Slim in Hell Remembering Nat Turner Southern Road Southern Cop The Young Ones The Ballad of Joe Meek Strong Men Arna Bontemps A Note of Humility Gethsemane Southern Mansion My Heart Has Known Its Winter Nocturne at Bethesda A Black Man Talks of Reaping The Day-Breakers Langston Hughes Afro-American Fragment As I Grew Older Dream Variations Daybreak in Alabama Dream Boogie Children's Rhymes Theme for English B Harlem Same in Blues Ballad of the Landlord Frank Marshall Davis Four Glimpses of Night I Sing No New Songs Robert Whitmore Flowers of Darkness Richard Wright Between the World and Me Robert Hayden Tour 5 On the Coast of Maine Figure In Light Half Nightmare and Half Vision Market Homage to the Empress of the Blues Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday Middle Passage Frederick Douglass Owen Dodson Guitar Black Mother Praying Drunken Lover The Reunion Jonathan's Song Yardbird's Skull Sailors on Leave Margaret Walker For My People Gwendolyn Brooks The Artist's and Models' Ball The Mother The Preacher: Ruminates Behind the Sermon The Children of the Poor We Real Cool The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock Dudley Randall The Southern Road Legacy: My South Booker T. and W. E. B. The Idiot Lerone Bennett, Jr. Blues and Bitterness Lance Jeffers The Night Rains Hot Tar On Listening to the Spirituals Grief Streams Down My Chest The Unknown Naomi Long Madgett Native Her Story Race Question Mari Evans Coventry Status Symbol The Emancipation of George-Hector (a colored turtle) My Man Let Me Pull Your Coat Black Jam for Dr. Negro Leroi Jones Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note The Invention of Comics Look for You Yesterday, Here You Come Today The Death of Nick Charles The Bridge IV. Literary Criticism W. E. B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk (Chapters 1 and 14) Alain Locke The New Negro The Negro in American Culture Richard Wright How "Bigger" Was Born Sterling A. Brown A Century of Negro Portraiture in American Literature James Baldwin Many Thousands Gone Three Papers from the First Conference of Negro Writers (March, 1959) 1. Arthur P. Davis: Integration and Race Literature 2. J. Saunders Redding: The Negro Writer and His Relationship to His Roots 3. Langston Hughes: Writers: Black and White Blyden Jackson The Negro's Image of the Universe as Reflected in His Fiction John Henrik Clarke The Origin and Growth of Afro-American Literature Richard G. Stern That Same Pain, That Same Pleasure: An Interview with Ralph Ellison Dan Georgakas James Baldwin...in Conversation Sterling Stuckey Frank London Brown Darwin T. Turner The Negro Dramatist's Image of the Universe, 1920-1960 George E. Kent Ethnic Impact in American Literature Clarence Major Black Criterion Bibliography