Anthologies of African American Writing

African-American Archive: The History of the Black Experience in Documents

African-American Archive

"The African-American Archive: The History of the Black Experience in Documents". Ed. Kai Wright. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publications, 2001. xxiv+805 pp.

Revised ed. as "The African American Experience":

[* asterisked items are not by African American authors]

Kai Wright / Introduction

I. "20 & Odd Negroes": A Violent Beginning
● Spanish Council of the Indies* / "They will display diligence"
● Richard Hakluyt* / "Negros might easily be had on the coast of Guinea" [1600]
● John Rolfe* / "20 and odd Negroes" [letter of Jan. 1620]
● Capt. Francis Pott* / "The one whose name is Elizabeth is to serve thirteene years" [27 May 1645]
● Northampton County Court Records* / The Freeman Anthony Johnson and his Family [1652]
● Virginia General Assembly* / Black children to serve "according to the condition of the mother" [1662]
● Virginia Assembly* / Baptism is no exemption [1667]
● Maryland General Assembly* / An Act Concerning Negroes and Other Slaves [1664]
● Proprietors of South Carolina* / 150 acres for "negroes as well as Christians" [1670]
● Morgan Godwyn* / The Negro's and Indian's Advocate [1680]
● The Royal African Company* / Correspondence from Fort James, Accra [excerpts from letters dated 27 Jan. 1681, 5 Aug. 1682, 9 Aug. 1682]
● Thomas Woolman* / "They must have all my slaves and goods" [Aug. 1683]
● Founders of the South Carolina Colony* / The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina
● Carolina rice beating songs [documented by Lydia Parrish*] / "Sheep jump, jump for joy" ["Sheep know his shepherd's voice"]
● Carolina rice beating songs [documented by Lydia Parrish*] / "Turn sinner turn" ["Turn sinner turn--sinner won't turn"]
● Samuel Sewall* / The Selling of Joseph [1700]
● Governor Robert Hunter* / New York City revolt of 1712 [23 June 1712]
● Dr. Francis Le Jau* / Rising tensions and clashing cultures [excerpts from letters dated 20 Feb. 1711/12, 30 Aug. 1712, 23 Feb. 1712/13, 22 Jan. 1713/14]
● John Atkins* / A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West Indies [1735]
● Black fugitives of the English plantations [led by Capt. Francisco Menendez and living in Fort Mose] / "The Most Fierce Enemies of the English" [10 June 1738]
● The Trustees of the Georgia Colony* / Prohibiting the Importation and the Use of Black Slaves or Negroes [post-1732]
● Eighteen Freeholders of New Inverness* [in Georgia] / The Darien Antislavery Petition [Jan. 1739]
● John Wesley* / "He made you to live with himself above the sky. And so you will." [excerpts from letters dated 31 July 1736 and 23 April 1737]
● George Whitefield* / "She could not help praising and blessing God" [excerpt from his journal dated 8 May 1740]
● South Carolina Assembly* / Report of the Committee of Conference on the Case of the Negroes' Desertion to St. Augustine [1739]
● South Carolina Gazette* / "The said Caesar was executed at the usual place and afterwards hung in chains" [excerpts from news stories dated 29 Jan. 1739 and 12 April 1739]
● South Carolina Assembly / "St. Augustine . . . that Den of Thieves and Ruffians!" [1741]
● The Stono Rebellion [as described by a South Carolina colonist*] / "They calling out Liberty, marched on with Colours displayed" [extract from in a letter dated 2 Oct. 1739, published in the Gentleman's Magazine (London)]
● William Stephens* / "At least a hundred and fifty were got together in defiance" [extract from his journal, June 1740]
● South Carolina Assembly* / Prohibiting education to slaves [post-1739]
● Judge Daniel Horsmanden* / The Trial of Cuffe and Quack [1741]
● Lucy Terry Prince / Bars Fight [wr. 1746]
● Jupiter Hammon / An Evening Thought [1760]
● Thomas Bluett* / Some Memoirs of the Life of Job
● Briton Hammon / [A Narrative of the] Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance [of Briton Hammon] [1760]
● Olaudah Equiano / The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano [excerpt from chap. 2]

II. The Birth of African America: From Religion to Revolution
● Samuel Adams* / "A Mullato man, named Crispus Attucks .
. . killed instantly" [excerpt from letter of 12 March 1770 in the Boston Gazette]
● John Adams* / "Such a rabble of Negroes, & C." [from Adams' defense of the British troops charged in the violence, 1770]
● Slaves of the town of Thompson, Massachusetts / A "peaceable and lawful" petition for freedom [20 April 1773]
● John Wesley* / Thoughts upon Slavery [1774] [excerpt]
● Thomas Rankin* / "This land will become a field of blood" [excerpts from his journal dated 8 Nov. 1774 and 20 July 1775]
● John Marrant / "The Executioner was savingly converted to God" [1785]
● Revival songs / "Roll, Jordan, Roll" ["My brother sittin' on the tree of life"]
● Revival songs / "Blow Your Trumpet, Gabriel" ["The tallest tree in paradise"]
● Lord Dunmore* / The British offer freedom for service [7 Nov. 1775]
● Boston King / Journal of a Black Loyalist Soldier [later published in the Methodist Magazine]
● Colonel William Prescott* / Salem Poor at Bunker Hill [petition of 5 Dec. 1775 re Salem Poor's heroism]
● An unnamed source [cited by historian William Nell] / The Battle of Groton Heights [6 Sept. 1781]
● Lemuel Haynes / "A poem of the inhuman tragedy" at Lexington ["Some Seraph now my breast inspire"]
● Phillis Wheatley / Poems on Various Subjects [1773] [excerpts from preface "To the Public" and from poems "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Darthmouth," "On Being Brought from Africa to America," "On the Death of Rev. Dr. Sewell, 1769"]
● Phillis Wheatley / To His Excellency General Washington (26 Oct. 1775)
● George Washington* / His response to Wheatley [28 Feb. 1776]
● Jupiter Hammon / An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly [1778]
● Thomas Jefferson* / Rough draft of Declaration of Independence [1 July 1776]
● Thomas Jefferson* / Notes on the State of Virginia [1784]
● The United States Constitution* / "Three fifths of all other Persons" [1787]
● Constitutional Convention debate on slavery* / "Providence punishes national sins, by national calamities" [1787]
● Prince Hall and African Lodge No. 1 / Petition for repatriation to Africa [4 Jan. 1787]
● Prince Hall / "The slavish fear of man" [excerpt from his address to the African Lodge No. 1 (1797)]
● A Free Negro [West Indian former slave] / "In what single circumstance are we different from the rest of mankind?" [1780s]
● Jupiter Hammon / An Address to the Negroes of the State of New-York [1787]
● Benjamin Banneker / "I freely and cheerfully acknowledge, that I am of the African Race" [letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1791]
● Thomas Jefferson* / [Letter in reply to Banneker, dated 30 Aug. 1791]
● Benjamin Franklin* / A plan to aide "our hitherto too much neglected fellow creatures" [excerpt from his "An Address to the Public" (1789)]
● Benjamin Franklin* / "Equal liberty was originally the portion, and is still the birth-right, of all men" [1790]
● George Washington* / "It introduces more evils than it can cure" [excerpt from letter to Robert Morris, 1786]
● United States Congress* / Fugitive Act of 1793
● George Washington* / "It is my will and desire that all slaves whom I hold . . . receive their freedom" [1799]
● Richard Allen / "We believe heaven is free for all who worship in spirit and truth" [excerpt from his memoir published "years later" in the 19th century]
● Matthew Carey* / [charges against black nurses during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793]
● Richard Allen and Absalom Jones / "It is unpleasant for us to make these remarks, but justice to our color demands it" [their reply to Carey's charges, 1793]
● Andrew Bryan / The First Baptist Church of Savannah, GA. [excerpt from letter of 1800]
● Venture Smith / A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture [1798]
● Absalom Jones / Thanksgiving Sermon [for the end of the slave trade, 1808]
● African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymn [written by Michael Fortune] / "The Sweets of Liberty" ["To Thee, Almighty, gracious power"] [1808]

III. I Will Be Heard: Abolition and The Build Up to Civil War
● `No black or mulatto person shall be permitted to settle or reside in this state, unless he or she shall first produce a fair certificate... of his or her actual freedom' / Manumission Certificates
● `We will wade to our knees in blood sooner than fail in the attempt' / Gabriel's Conspiracy to Rebellion
● Back to Africa / Paul Cuffe
● `It is not asked for by us' / James Forten and Russell Perrott
● Establishing the Liberia colony / President James Monroe
● 36 degrees 30 minutes / Missouri Compromise
● `Your professed design was to trample on all laws, human and divine; to riot in blood, outrage, rapine, and conflagration' / Denmark Vesey's Revolt
● `I ask you, o my brethren!, are we men?' / David Walker's Appeal
● `I should arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons' / Nat Turner's Confession
● `Address to the Free People of Colour of the United States' / Richard Allen
● The Hope of Liberty / George Moses Horton
● `The Slave Auction' / Frances E.W. Harper
● `I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our hypocritical cant about the unalienable rights of man' / William Lloyd Garrison
● `I will be heard!' / William Lloyd Garrison
● Declaration of Sentiments / The American Anti-Slavery Society
● `Thoughts on African Colonization' / William Lloyd Garrison
● `We know nothing of that debasing inferiority with which our very colour stamped us in America' / Letters from Liberia
● `All we want is make us free' / The Amistad Africans
● `If the man may preach...why not the woman? / Jarena Lee
● `There are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance' / Maria Stewart
● `Like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair' / Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women
● `What is a mob?... Any evidence that we are wrong?' / Angela Grimke Weld
● `To instruct others is beneficial to the mind' / Ann Plato
● `I have come to tell you something about slavery---what I know of it, as I have felt it.' / Frederick Douglass
● `Brethren, arise! arise! Strike for your lives and liberties' / Henry Highland Garnet
● `The light broke in upon me by degrees' / Frederick Douglass
● `What is American slavery?' / Frederick Douglass
● The North Star / Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany
● `Ar'n't I a Woman?' / Sojourner Truth
● `Mrs. Bradford had a son about ten years old; she used to make him beat me and spit in my face' / Leonard Black
● A tale of escape and betrayal / Henry Bibb
● Abolition in the nation's poetry / Whittier, Lowell and Longfellow
● Fact meets fiction in the first black novel / William Wells Brown
● Another slavery compromise holds the union / Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
● Uncle Tom's Cabin / Harriet Beecher Stowe
● An ideological rift over the U.S. Constitution and Slavery / Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison
● `What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' / Frederick Douglass

IV. A House Divided: Emancipation and The Civil War Era
● The Kansas-Nebraska Act / Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln: The Kansas Act — Abraham Lincoln on the Act
● ‘Crimes Against Kansas' / Charles Sumner
● Dred Scott v. Sanford / The United States Supreme Court
● A House Divided / Abraham Lincoln
● `Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful...this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward' / John Brown's Raid: Last words of John Copeland, a black raider — Black raider Dangerfield Newby's motivation — John Brown's last words
● `His Truth is Marching On' / Julia Ward Howe: ``Say, brothers, will you meet us'' — Union Marching song — The Battle Hymn of the Republic
● Our Nig / Harriet Wilson
● Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl / Harriet Jacobs
● A Georgia Plantation: ``What became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation?'' / Mortimer Thompson — Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation / Fanny Kemble
● Slavery's expansion `the only substantial dispute' / Abraham Lincoln
● A war for Emancipation / Frederick Douglass
● `We are ready to stand and defend our government' / Northern Blacks: April 1861 declaration by free blacks of New Bedford, Massachusetts — ``Fighting Rebels With Only One Hand,'' / from September 1861 issue of Frederick Douglass' Monthly (successor to The North Star)
● Debating `the duty of the black man' / ``R.H.V.’'’s argument against black participation — Alfred Green’s rebuttal
● `The uterus protruding, as large, yes larger than my fist; it has been so 10 years' / Life in the Contraband Camps: The health of freed slaves — Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp
● `Let my people go!' / African-American spirituals: “Go Down Moses” — “Down in the Valley”
● Confiscation and Militia Act / U.S. Congress
● `My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union' / Abraham Lincoln
● `All persons held as slaves within said designated states...are, and henceforward shall be, free' / The Emancipation Proclamation — New York Times editorial on the Proclamation
● `His body was left suspended for several hours' / The New York Draft Riot of 1863
● `Mortal men could not stand such a fire' / Massachusetts 54th Regiment
● `Niggers has riz in public estimation and are at a high premium': Blacks conscripted for manual labor — Defending his regiment's reputation — [Abraham Christian] Fleetwood leaves the forces angered by inequality
● `We have done a soldier's duty. Why can't we have a soldier's pay?' / Corporal James Henry Gooding
● `The longor you keep my Child from me the longor you will have to burn in hell and the qwicer youll get their' / Private Spotswood Rice: letter to his daughters — letter to his daughter’s owner
● The end of slavery / The 13th Amendment

V. Forty Acres and a Mule: Reconstruction and Its Aftermath
● `If he knows enough to be hanged, he knows enough to vote' / Frederick Douglass
● `I will indeed be your Moses' / Andrew Johnson
● The Last Speech / Abraham Lincoln
● `In the matter of government... no notice should be taken of the color of men' / The National Convention of Colored Men
● `We were and still are oppressed; we are not demoralized criminals' / New Orleans Tribune: Our Dormant Partners — Opposition to military rule
● Forty acres and a mule / Gen. William T. Sherman and the Freedmen's Bureau
● `They would like to have land-4 or 5 acres to a family' / Establishing the Freedmen's Bureau: Freeman Harry McMillan's testimony before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission — Congressional act establishing the Freedmen's Bureau
● Resettlement at Port Royal, South Carolina / Freedmen's Bureau records
● `We are left in a more unpleasant condition than our former' / Freed blacks of Edisto Island, South Carolina: The Edisto Island committee's statement to Howard — A Georgia labor contract
● `You enfranchise your enemies, and disenfranchise your friends' / A Confrontation at the White House
● `Any person who shall so intermarry...shall be confined in the state penitentiary for life' / Black Codes: Penal code — Vagrancy Law — Civil rights law — Apprentice Law
● The Civil Rights Battle of 1866 / U.S. Congress: Johnson's Freedmen's Bureau bill veto message — Civil Rights Act of 1866
● The 14th Amendment / U.S. Congress
● `It is useless to attempt to disguise the hostility that exist...towards northern men' / New Orleans Riot of 1866
● `We always told you...that it would be a great deal worse for your when they come' / Freedmen's Bureau records
● `Rebel states shall be divided into military districts' / The Reconstruction Act
● `Keep bright the council fires' / Union League of Alabama
● The 15th Amendment / U.S. Congress
● The Ku Klux Klan / Petitions from African Americans to Congress
● The New Black Laws / Benjamin W. Arnett
● Behind the Scenes / Elizabeth Keckley
● Iola Leroy / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
● The Hazeley family / Amelia Etta Johnson
● Violets / Alice Ruth Moore (Alice Dunbar-Nelson)
● Oak and Ivy / Paul Lawrence Dunbar: ``Welcome Address'' — ``The Old Tunes'' — ``To Miss Mary Britton''
● `We wear the Mask' / Paul Lawrence Dunbar: ``We Wear the Mask'' — ``Sympathy''
● The Lynch Mob's `Thread-Bare Lie' / Ida B. Wells
● `A Negroe's life is a very cheap thing in Georgia' / Ida B. Wells
● A Black Woman of the South / Anna Julia Cooper
● Lifting as We Climb / Mary Church Terrell
● The `Atlanta Compromise' / Booker T. Washington
● Separate but equal / U.S. Supreme Court: Justice Brown's majority opinion — Justice Harlan's dissent
● Up From Slavery / Booker T. Washington
● `Tuskegee Song' / Paul Lawrence Dunbar: Dunbar's revised ``Tuskegee Song'' — Dunbar's letter to Washington
● `Lift every voice and sing' / James Weldon Johnson

VI. Talented Tenth: The Harlem Renaissance and The New Negro
● The souls of Black folk / W.E.B. DuBois
● `The Talented tenth' / W.E.B. DuBois
● `We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority' / The Niagra Movement
● `Silence Means Approval' / The National Association for the Advancement Of Colored People
● `Agitation is a necessary evil' / NAACP's The Crisis
● `The Trotter Encounter with Wilson. Talks to President as any American Should.' / William Monroe Trotter and Woodrow Wilson
● The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man / James Weldon Johnson
● `St. Louis Blues' / W.C. Handy
● `We protest the proposition that the pictured slander and disparagement of a minority race shall make licensed amusement' / Protesting ``Birth of a Nation'': Boston petition to mayor — Cleveland Advocate on Ohio movements to ban the film
● Stumping for the peanut / George Washington Carver
● `Stay on the soil' / The 1917 Tuskegee Conference and northern migration
● The most dangerous Negroes in the United States / Asa Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen
● The 24th colored infantry's Houston Uprising / The Baltimore Afro-American
● `We are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not...battle against the forces of hell in our own land' / The Crisis
● Thirty Years of Lynching / The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
● The Red Summer of 1919 / Chicago Tribune
● `Africa for the Africans’ / Marcus Garvey: Garvey in the Negro World — UNIAs ``Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World''
● `If We Must Die' / Claude McKay: ``If We Must Die'' — ``The Lynching'' [omitted from 2009 edition]
● `T'aint Nobody's Business' / Bessie Smith: `T'ain't Nobody's Business if I Do' — Smith's mythical death by racism
● `Take the ``A'' Train' / Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn: ``It Don't Mean A Thing'' — ``Take the `A' Train''
● `A form that is freer and larger' / James Weldon Johnson
● `The Negro Speaks of Rivers' / Langston Hughes: ``The Negro Speaks of Rivers'' — ``The Weary Blues'' — ``Harlem'' (also known as ``A Dream Deferred'')
● `Yet Do I Marvel' / Countee Cullen: ``Yet Do I Marvel'' — ``To a Brown Boy''
● `How it Feels to Be Colored Me' / Zora Neale Hurston: ``Spunk'' — ``How it Feels to Be Colored Me''
● `Smoke, Lilies and Jade' / Richard Bruce Nugent
● The New Negro / Alain Leroy Locke
● `What I Want From Life' / Paul Robeson
● Criticism of Nigger Heaven / W.E.B. DuBois
● `The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain' / Langston Hughes
● `The Creation' / James Weldon Johnson
● `Strange Fruit' / Billie Holiday: ``Strange Fruit'' — ``God Bless the Child''
● Fighting for segregation or integration? / W.E.B. DuBois

VII. A Dream No Longer Deferred: The Civil Rights Movement
● 'A call to Negro America' / Asa Philip Randolph
● Executive order 8802 / Franklin D. Roosevelt
● 'Nonviolence vs Jim Crow' / Bayard Rustin
● Jesse B. Simple / Langston Hughes [omitted from 2009 edition]
● Native Son / Richard Wright
● Invisible Man / Ralph Ellison
● 'I'm a believer in fairy tales now' / Jackie Robinson: Wendell Smith's report on the first game — Jackie Robinson's column following his first major league game
● 'Equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country's defense' / Harry Truman: To secure These Rights — Executive order 9981
● 'We real cool' / Gwendolyn Bennett: "The sonnet-ballad” from Annie Allen — "We real cool" from The Bean Eaters
● Go tell it on the mountain / James Baldwin
● 'Separate cannot be equal' / Brown v. Board of Education: Justice Marshall's oral argument — Chief Justice Warren's opinion
● 'There comes a time' / Martin Luther King, Jr.: King's December 5, 1955 speech launching the prolonged boycott — "The violence of desperate men" from Stride towards freedom
● 'Maybelline' / Chuck Berry
● A Raisin in the Sun / Lorraine Hansberry
● 'I stand upon the Fifth Amendment' / Paul Robeson: Robeson's testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities — Robeson's undelivered statement appearing before the committee, which he was not allowed to read
● 'Give us the Ballot' / Martin Luther King, Jr.
● `Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear' / The Student Sit-Ins of 1960-61: UPI story on the first Greensboro, N.C., sit-in — New York Times story on Nashville, Tenn., stores integrating
[omitted (replaced) in 2009 edition] — Founding resolution of SNCC
● `We have been cooling off for 350 years. If we cool off any more, we'll be in a deep freeze' / The Freedom Rides
● Lobbying Kennedy / NAACP
● How the `Blue-Eyed Devil' race was created / Malcolm X
● `I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one' / Miles Davis
● Letter from a Birmingham Jail / Martin Luther King, Jr.
● `Only a pawn in their game' / Bob Dylan [omitted from 2009 edition]
● `We shall overcome' / Freedom Songs: `We Shall Overcome' — `Oh, Freedom'
● `The time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise' / John F. Kennedy
● `I have a Dream' / Martin Luther King, Jr.
● `In Answer to Senator Thurmond' / Bayard Rustin
● `The chickens come home to roost' / Malcolm X
● The Civil Rights Act of 1964 / U.S. Congress

VIII. Say It Loud: Black Power and Beyond
● 'The Ballot or the Bullet' / Malcolm X
● Letter from Mecca / El-Haji Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)
● The Greatest of All Time / Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) with Alex Haley
● 'And I said "I want you to know something," I said, "If I live I will become a registered voter"' / Fannie Lou Hammer
● Bloody Sunday / The movement in Selma: President Johnson's speech to Congress — King's speech on the steps of the Alabama capital
● Voting Rights Act of 1965 / U. S. Congress
● A Eulogy for Malcolm X / Ossie Davis
● '"Get Whitey," scream blood-hungry mobs' / Watts riots of 1965: Watts residents speak to Los Angeles Times — Times offers shocked first person account from "a Negro"
● A 'Domestic Marshall Plan' / Whitney Young
● 'The deterioration of the negro family' / The Moynihan Report: The Moynihan Report — President Johnson's Howard University speech
● Black Power / Stokely Carmichael
● Kwanzaa / Maulana Karenga
● 'We believe this racist government has robbed us' / The Black Panther Party: Black Panther Party Platform and Program — Black Panther National Anthem
● Executive Mandate number one / Bobby Seale
● Vietnam: 'A time comes when silence is betrayal' / Martin Luther King, Jr.
● 'I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong' / Muhammad Ali
● Soul on Ice / Eldridge Cleaver
● 'How many white folks you kill today?' / H. Rap Brown
● 'The Dutchman' / Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
● The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual / Harold Cruse
● 'Nikki-Rosa' / Nikki Giovanni: "My poem" — "Nikki Rosa" — "Kidnap Poem"
● 'Say it loud (I'm black and I'm proud) / James Brown
● Divide and conquer / Federal Bureau of Investigation: Memo directing offices to target black nationalists — Memo suggesting tactic to divide SNCC and Black Panthers
● 'Two societies, one black, one white' / Kerner Commission Report
● 'We don't have no leader. We lost our leader' / The Washington Post on Martin Luther King's assassination and the 1968 Riots
● 'Niggers are scared of revolution' / The Last Poets
● A Caged Bird Singing / Maya Angelou: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" — "And Still I Rise"
● 'ABC' / Jackson Five
● 'I am somebody' / Jesse Jackson
● The Tuskegee Syphilis Study / Associated Press
● 'Perhaps that 18th century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th century paper shredder' / Barbara Jordan
● 'What is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker' / Barbara Jordan
● Roots / Alex Haley
● Race as a factor, but no 'quotas' / Regents of University of California vs. Bakke
● Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman / Michelle Wallace

IX. Learning to Talk of Race: The Modern Era
● 'Rapper's Delight' / Sugar Hill Gang
● 'I know what it means to be called a nigger. I know what it means to be called a faggot' / Melvin Boozer
● 'The Imperialism of Patriarchy' / bell hooks
● The Color Purple / Alice Walker
● 'Womanist' defined / Alice Walker
● 'God Bless You Jesse Jackson' / The rescue of Lt. Robert Goodman
● 'The controversy over Jackson's remarks might have been much easier for many blacks to accept had the messenger been white' / Milton Coleman and the 'Hymietown' story
● 'Our time has come!' / Jesse Jackson
● `Man in the Mirror' / Michael Jackson [omitted in 2009 edition; replaced by Jackson’s “Thriller”]
● `Sucker MCs' / Run-DMC
● 'It is racist to suggest that the series is merely Father Knows Best in blackface' / Alvin Poussaint on the Cosby Show
● Beloved / Toni Morrison
● 'Len Bias is Dead...Traces of Cocaine Found in System' / Washington Post
● The War on Drugs / Mandatory Minimum Sentences: United Press International report on Los Angeles police efforts to stop gangs and "rock houses" — 1988 mandatory minimum sentencing law
● 'Fuck tha police' / Niggaz with Attitude (N.W.A.)
● 'Don't believe the hype' / Public Enemy
● 'Keep hope alive!' / Jesse Jackson
● Blacks three times as likely as whites to contract AIDS / U. S. Centers for Disease Control
● Coming Out / Linda Villarosa
● ‘The decoy of race’ / Stanley Crouch [omitted from 2009 edition]
● 'I will not provide the rope for my own lynching' / Clarence Thomas on Anita Hill: Clarence Thomas's statement in response to the charges — Anita Hill's opening statement
● 'I felt each one of those not guiltys' / Assault on Rodney King and 1992 riots: Transcript of police conversation — The Riots
● 'Learning to talk of race' / Cornell West
● 'The Inaugural Poem' / Maya Angelou
● Waiting to Exhale / Terry McMillan
● ‘Our music is a music of choice’ / Wynton Marsalis [omitted from 2009 edition]
● 'Please think of the real O.J.’ / O.J. Simpson
● The Million Man March / Louis Farrakhan
● 'Thirteen ways of looking at a black man' / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
● 'Government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just a noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice' / Justice Clarence Thomas
● 'What the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry' / President Bill Clinton
● `The virtual whitewash with respect to network television and the continued segregation of opportunity... have again brought the NAACP to the forefront of this issue' / Kweisi Mfume [omitted from 2009 edition]
● `I rise to object!' / Congressional Black Caucus
[2009 edition adds 4 new items at end]
Suggested Reading
Credits
Index

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