Anthologies of African American Writing

Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry (2nd ed.)

Afro-American Writing

“Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry" . Ed. Richard A. Long and Eugenia W. Collier. 2 vols. 2nd ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1985. xlv+736 pp.

● Preface
● Acknowledgments
● A Select Chronology of Afro-American Prose and Poetry, 1760-1984
● Introduction

PART I: To the Civil War
● Introduction
● Phillis Wheatley / On Imagination
● Phillis Wheatley / To the University of Cambridge, in New England
● Phillis Wheatley / On Being Brought from Africa to America
● Jupiter Hammon / An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley
● David Walker / Preamble [from “Appeal”]
● Henry Highland Garnet / An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
● George Horton / To Eliza
● George Horton / The Art of a Poet
● George Horton / Slavery
● William Wells Brown / Escape of Clotel [from “Clotel or the President's Daughter”]
● Frederick Douglass / The Right to Criticize American Institutions
● Frederick Douglass / A General Survey of the Slave Plantation [from “My Bondage and My Freedom”]
● Frederick Douglass / Nemesis
● Frederick Douglass / Woman Suffrage Movement
● Frederick Douglass / from “Lecture on Haiti”
● Samuel Ward / Family History [from “Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro”]
● Frances Harper / The Slave Auction
● Frances Harper / The Slave Mother
● Frances Harper / Bury Me in a Free Land
● Spirituals / Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child
● Spirituals / Go Down Moses
● Spirituals / Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho
● Spirituals / Steal Away to Jesus
● Spirituals / Roll, Jordan, Roll
● Spirituals / Crucifixion

PART II: The Civil War to World War I
● Introduction
● Alexander Crummell / The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect
● T. Thomas Fortune / The Negro and the Nation [from “Black and White”]
● Booker T. Washington / A Slave among Slaves [from “Up from Slavery”]
● Booker T. Washington / Speech at the Atlanta Exposition
● William E. B. Du Bois / The Song of the Smoke
● William E. B. Du Bois / A Litany of Atlanta
● William E. B. Du Bois / Of the Sorrow Songs [from “The Souls of Black Folks”]
● William E. B. Du Bois / Crime and Lynching
● William E. B. Du Bois / The Souls of White Folk [from “Darkwater”]
● William E. B. Du Bois / The Comet [from “Darkwater”]
● William Monroe Trotter / Why Be Silent?
● Charles W. Chesnutt / The Goophered Grapvine
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / An Antebellum Sermon
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Poet
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Lynching of Jube Benson
● Kelly Miller / An Open Letter to Thomas Dixon, Jr.
● William Stanley Braithwaite / The Watchers
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Rhapsody
● William Stanley Braithwaite / The Negro in American Literature
● Fenton Johnson / The Scarlet Woman
● Fenton Johnson / Aunt Jane Allen
● Fenton Johnson / The Old Repair Man
● Folklore: Tale, Song and Sermon / T'appin
● Folklore: Tale, Song and Sermon / John Henry
● Folklore: Tale, Song and Sermon / Bad Man Ballad
● Folklore: Tale, Song and Sermon / The Remnant: A Sermon
● Folklore: Tale, Song and Sermon / Backwater Blues

PART III: World War I to World War II
● Introduction
● James Weldon Johnson / Harlem: The Culture Capital
● Alain Locke / Apropos of Africa
● Alain Locke / The Negro Spirituals
● Marcus Garvey / The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association
● Marcus Garvey / An Appeal to the Conscience of the Black Race to See Itself
● Marcus Garvey / Message from Atlanta Prison
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die
● Claude McKay / Flame-Heart
● Claude McKay / Boyhood in Jamaica
● Jean Toomer / Song of the Son
● Jean Toomer / Harvest Song
● Jean Toomer / Avey
● Langston Hughes / Young Gal's Blues
● Langston Hughes / Song to a Negro Wash-woman
● Langston Hughes / Dream Variation
● Langston Hughes / The Doors of Life [from “Not Without Laughter”]
● Langston Hughes / Simple Discusses Colleges and Color
● Langston Hughes / Simple and the Rosenwald Fund
● Arna Bontemps / Nocturne at Bethesda
● Arna Bontemps / from “Black Thunder”
● Zora Neale Hurston / Sweat
● Sterling Brown / Long Gone
● Sterling Brown / Slim in Hell
● Sterling Brown / Southern Road
● Sterling Brown / Strong Men
● Sterling Brown / Sister Lou
● Sterling Brown / Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads, and Work Songs
● Margaret Walker Alexander / Southern Song
● Margaret Walker Alexander / Memory
● Margaret Walker Alexander / Childhood
● Margaret Walker Alexander / We Have Been Believers

PART IV: The Forties to 1970
● Introduction
● Melvin B. Tolson / Dark Symphony
● Melvin B. Tolson / Zeta [from “Harlem Gallery”]
● Saunders Redding / The Negro Writer and His Relationship to His Roots
● Robert Hayden / Middle Passage
● Robert Hayden / Tour 5
● Robert Hayden / Veracruz
● Robert Hayden / The Diver
● Gwendolyn Brooks / Piano After War
● Gwendolyn Brooks / Mentors
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Mother
● Gwendolyn Brooks / Real Cool
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
● Gwendolyn Brooks / Life for My Child is Simple
● Gwendolyn Brooks / Takes time [from “In the Mecca”]
● Gwendolyn Brooks / An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire [from “Riot”]
● Ralph Ellison / [from “Invisible man”]
● Ralph Ellison / Brave Words for a Startling Occasion
● John O. Killens / The Black Psyche
● James Baldwin / A Letter From the South [from “Nobody Knows My Name]
● James Baldwin / Beauford Delaney
● James Baldwin / The Rockpile
● Margaret Danner / Dance of the Abakweta
● Margaret Danner / Visit of the Professor of Aesthetics
● Margaret Danner / Gold Is the Shade Esperanto
● Margaret Danner / And Through the Caribbean Sea
● Martin Luther King, Jr. / Facing the Challenge of a New Age
● Hoyt W. Fuller / Dinner at Diop's
● Hoyt W. Fuller / Towards a Black Aesthetic
● Mari Evans / Status Symbol
● Mari Evans / Black Jam for Dr. Negro
● Mari Evans / Vive Noir!
● Mari Evans / The writers
● Mari Evans / Conceptuality
● Amiri Baraka / Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
● Amiri Baraka / A Poem for Black Hearts
● Amiri Baraka / State/Ment
● Paule Marshall / To Da-duh, In Memoriam
● Haki Madhubuti / But He Was Cool
● Haki Madhubuti / Nigerian Unity
● Haki Madhubuti / Bloodsmiles
● Haki Madhubuti / Mixed Sketches

PART V: The Seventies And Beyond
● Introduction
● Albert Murray /A Clutch of Social Science Fiction Fiction [from” The Omni-Americans]
● Addison Gayle / Introduction [from “The Way of the New World: The Black Novel n America]
● Maya Angelou / from “Gather Together in My Name
● Toni Morrison / from “The Bluest Eye”
● Ishmael Reed / from “Mumbo Jumbo”
● Toni Cade Bambara / Christmas Eve at Johnson's Drug N Goods [From “The Sea Birds Are Still Alive”]
● Alice Walker / To Hell With Dying [from “In Love and Trouble’]

A Gathering of Poets
● Introduction
● Michael S. Harpe / Dear John, Dear Coltrane
● Michael S. Harpe / We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper
● Michael S. Harpe / Photographs: A Vision of Massacre
● Michael S. Harpe / Caves
● Larry Neal / Ghost Poem # 4
● Larry Neal / Rhythm is a Groove # 2
● Larry Neal / Shine's City
● Audre Lorde / Dahomey
● Audre Lorde / A Woman Speaks
● Audre Lorde / Rooming Houses Are Old Women
● Etheridge Knight / He Sees Through Stone
● Etheridge Knight / The Idea of Ancestry
● Etheridge Knight / The Violent Space
● Etheridge Knight / For Langston Hughes
● June Jordan / What Happens
● June Jordan / Poem From the Empire State

● Index Authors

• White, John. "Journal of American Studies" 21.1 (1987): 153-54.

• The revised edition includes 55 authors: "It is regrettable, though, that problems of literary property prevented the inclusion of Cullen and Wright. An intitial 'Select Chronology of Afro-American Prose and Poetry, 1760-1984" is a useful addition. The lack of editorial apparatus may reduce the book's utility for academicians, but the uncluttered text must be quite appealing to general readers" (Kinnamon 1997: 465).

Kinnamon 1997: 464, 465.

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