Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing
Item
Title
Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing
This edition
"Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing" . Ed. Deirdre Mullane. New York: Anchor Books, 1993. xxii+769 pp.
Table of contents
● Introduction
The First Africans in North America
● Ivan Van Sertima / from “They Came Before Columbus”
Olaudah Equiano
● Olaudah Equiano / from “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)
Early Slave Revolts
● Report of Governor Hunter on the New York Slave Conspiracy (1712)
Lucy Terry
● Lucy Terry / Bars Fight (1746)
Jupiter Hammon
● Jupiter Hammon / An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penetential Cries (1761)
African-Americans in the American Revolution
● Petition of the Africans, Living in Boston (1773)
● The Declaration of Independence (1776)
● Emancipation of Slaves for Military Service During the American Revolution (1783)
Phillis Wheatley
● Phillis Wheatley / On Being Brought from AFRICA to AMERICA (1773)
● Phillis Wheatley / On Imagination (1773)
● Phillis Wheatley / To the Right Honourable WILLIAM, Earl of DARTMOUTH, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America (1773)
● Phillis Wheatley / Letter to Samson Occom (1774)
Benjamin Banneker
● Benjamin Banneker / Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1791)
Slave Revolts
● Testimony on Gabriel’s Revolt (1800)
● Testimony on the Vesey Conspiracy (1822)
● Letter from a Slave Rebel (1793)
● Letter from a Slave Rebel in Georgia (1810)
The Founding of the African-American Press
● Editorial from the First Edition of “Freedom’s Journal” (1827)
The Colonization Debate
● The Argument For (1829)
● The Argument Against (1827)
David Walker
● David Walker / from “Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles . . . (1829)
Nat Turner
● Nat Turner / from “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1831)
George Moses Horton
● George Moses Horton / The Slave’s Complaint (1829)
The Amistad Case (1839)
● United States Appellants v. the Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad (1841)
The Convention Movement, 1830—1864
● An Address to the Colored People of the United States, from the Colored National Convention of 1848
Henry Highland Garnet
● An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America (1843)
Martin Delany
● Martin Delany / from “The Condition, Elevation, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852)
● Martin Delany / Declaration of the Principles of the National Emigration Convention (1854)
The Case of Dred Scott
● Dred Scott’s Petition for Freedom (1847)
● Reaction to the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Frederick Douglass
● Frederick Douglass / from “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” (1845)
● Frederick Douglass / Letter to Thomas Auld (1848)
● Frederick Douglass / What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Harriet Jacobs
● Harriet Jacobs / The Jealous Mistress: from “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (1861)
William Wells Brown
● William Wells Brown / from “Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States” (1853)
Harriet E. Wilson
● Harriet E. Wilson / from “Our Nig” (1859)
Sojourner Truth
● Sojourner Truth / Address to the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention (1851)
● Sojourner Truth / Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (1867)
Harriet Tubman
● Harriet Tubman / from “Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People” (1886)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Bury Me in a Free Land (1854)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / The Slave Mother (1854)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / A Double Standard
John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry
● Letter from John A. Copeland (1859)
● Letter to John Brown from Frances Harper (1860)
● On John Brown’s Raid (1859)
● Emancipation Proclamation
The New York Draft Riots
● An Eyewitness Account (1853)
Henry Highland Garnet
● Henry Highland Garnet / A Memorial Discourse Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives (1865)
African-Americans in the Civil War
● Men of Color, to Arms! (1863)
● Camp Diary (1863)
● The Struggle for Pay (1864)
● Farewell Address to the Troops (1866)
Folk Culture and Literature
● Slave Song
● Promises of Freedom
● Slave Marriage Ceremony Supplement
● Plantation Proverbs
● Aphorisms
● All God’s Chillen Had Wings
● John Henry
● The Signifying Monkey
● Stackalee
● Shine and the Titanic
● Easy Rider
● Joe Turner
● St. Louis Blues
● Joe Turner Blues
● Beale Street Blues
Spirituals
● Go Down, Moses
● Who’ll Be a Witness for My Lord
● Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jerico
● I Got a Home in Dat Rock
● Roll Jordan, Roll
● My Way’s Cloudy
● Steal Away to Jesus
● I Know Moon-Rise
● Deep River
● Down in the Valley
● Swing Low Sweet Chariot
● Ride In, Kind Saviour
● My Army Cross Over
● Many Thousand Gone
● We’ll Soon Be Free
● I Thank God I’m Free at Las’
The Civil War Amendments
● The Thirteenth Amendment (1865)
● The Fourteenth Amendment (1868)
● The Fifteenth Amendment (1870)
Reconstruction
● Freedman’s Bureau (1865)
● South Carolina Black Code ( 1864—1865)
● Frederick Douglass’s Speech to the Thirty-second Annual Convention of the America Anti-Slavery Society (1865)
● Blanche K. Bruce’s Speech to the United States Senate (1876)
● Henry M. Turner’s Speech to the Georgia Legislature (1868)
● Petition from Kentucky Citizens on Ku Klux Klan Violence (1871)
The Exodusters
● News Accounts from the Black Press (1879—1886)
Charles W. Chestnut
● Charles W. Chestnut / Po’ Sandy
● Charles W. Chestnut / The Wife of His Youth
Paul Laurence Dunbar
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Sympathy
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Negro Love Song
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Poet
Booker T. Washington
● Booker T. Washington / from “Up from Slavery” (1901)
● Booker T. Washington / The Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)
W.E.B. Du Bois
● W.E.B. Du Bois / from “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903)
● W.E.B. Du Bois / The Talented Tenth (1903)
Ida Wells-Barnett
● Ida Wells-Barnett / from “A Red Record” (1895)
Mary Church Terrell
● Mary Church Terrell / What Role Is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race? (1902)
Anna Julia Cooper
● Anna Julia Cooper / from “A Voice in the South” (1892)
● Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
● The Niagara Movement (1905)
The Founding of the NAACP
● Principles of the NAACP (1911)
● The Crisis (1910)
● Agitation (1910)
Jack Johnson
● Jack Johnson / The Prize Fighter (1914)
James Weldon Johnson
● James Weldon Johnson / Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (1900)
● James Weldon Johnson / from “The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man” (1912)
● James Weldon Johnson / O Black and Unknown Bards (1917)
The Great Migration, 1910—1920
● Letters and Articles from “The Chicago Defender”
Red Summer of 1919
● A Directive to French Troops (1918)
● Returning Soldiers (1919)
● Three Hundred Years (1919)
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die! (1919)
Marcus Garvey
● Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920)
Alain Locke
● Alain Locke / The New Negro (1925)
Claude McKay
● Claude McKay / The Harlem Dancer
● Claude McKay / Spring in New Hampshire
● Claude McKay / The Lynching
● Claude McKay / Tiger
● Claude McKay / The White City
● Claude McKay / The Tropics in New York
Langston Hughes
● Langston Hughes / I, Too (1925)
● Langston Hughes / The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1926)
● Langston Hughes / The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
● Langston Hughes / Harlem (1951)
Jean Toomer
● Jean Toomer / from “Cane”
Countee Cullen
● Countee Cullen / Yet Do I Marvel (1925)
● Countee Cullen / Heritage (1925)
● Countee Cullen / From the Dark Tower (1927)
Zora Neale Hurston
● Zora Neale Huston / Sweat
The Scottsboro Cases
● Appeal of the Scottsboro Boys (1932)
Joe Louis
● Joe Louis / Joe Louis Uncovers Dynamite (1935)
Sterling Brown
● Sterling Brown / Strong Men (1932)
Robert Hayden
● Robert Hayden / Frederick Douglass
● Robert Hayden / Middle Passage
Richard Wright
● Richard Wright / The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch (1937)
A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement
● Program of the March on Washington Movement (1942)
● Executive Order 8802 (1941)
Truman Integrates the Military
● Executive Order 9981 (1948)
Paul Robeson
● Paul Robeson / Statement to the House Un-American Activities Committee (1956)
Gwendolyn Brooks
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Mother
● Gwendolyn Brooks / We Real Cool
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Ralph Ellison
● Ralph Ellison / from “Invisible Man” (1952)
James Baldwin
● James Baldwin / Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
● NAACP Brief (1953)
● Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
● Martin Luther King, Jr. / Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963)
● Martin Lutehr King, Jr. / I Have a Dream (1963)
Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
● We Shall Overcome
● O Freedom
● Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
● Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round
● Kwanzaa
Malcolm X
● Malcolm X / from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (1965)
Eldridge Cleaver
● Elridge Cleaver / from “Soul on Ice”
The Black Panther Party
● Black Panther Party Platform (1966)
Amiri Baraka
● Amiri Baraka / Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
● Amiri Baraka / State/meant
● Amiri Baraka / Ka ‘Ba
The Kerner Commission
● from The Kerner Commission Report (1968)
African-Americans in the Vietnam War
● Selections from “Bloods”
Maya Angelou
● Maya Angelou / from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
Alice Walker
● Alice Walker / from “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose” (1974)
Jesse Jackson
● Jesse Jackson / Address to the Democratic National Convention (1984)
● Rap Music
The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings
● Clarence Thomas’s Second Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee (1991)
The L.A. Riots
● Congresswoman Maxine Waters’s Testimony Before the Senate Banking Committee (1992)
● Selected Bibliography
● Acknowledgments
● Selected Index
The First Africans in North America
● Ivan Van Sertima / from “They Came Before Columbus”
Olaudah Equiano
● Olaudah Equiano / from “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)
Early Slave Revolts
● Report of Governor Hunter on the New York Slave Conspiracy (1712)
Lucy Terry
● Lucy Terry / Bars Fight (1746)
Jupiter Hammon
● Jupiter Hammon / An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penetential Cries (1761)
African-Americans in the American Revolution
● Petition of the Africans, Living in Boston (1773)
● The Declaration of Independence (1776)
● Emancipation of Slaves for Military Service During the American Revolution (1783)
Phillis Wheatley
● Phillis Wheatley / On Being Brought from AFRICA to AMERICA (1773)
● Phillis Wheatley / On Imagination (1773)
● Phillis Wheatley / To the Right Honourable WILLIAM, Earl of DARTMOUTH, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America (1773)
● Phillis Wheatley / Letter to Samson Occom (1774)
Benjamin Banneker
● Benjamin Banneker / Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1791)
Slave Revolts
● Testimony on Gabriel’s Revolt (1800)
● Testimony on the Vesey Conspiracy (1822)
● Letter from a Slave Rebel (1793)
● Letter from a Slave Rebel in Georgia (1810)
The Founding of the African-American Press
● Editorial from the First Edition of “Freedom’s Journal” (1827)
The Colonization Debate
● The Argument For (1829)
● The Argument Against (1827)
David Walker
● David Walker / from “Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles . . . (1829)
Nat Turner
● Nat Turner / from “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1831)
George Moses Horton
● George Moses Horton / The Slave’s Complaint (1829)
The Amistad Case (1839)
● United States Appellants v. the Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad (1841)
The Convention Movement, 1830—1864
● An Address to the Colored People of the United States, from the Colored National Convention of 1848
Henry Highland Garnet
● An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America (1843)
Martin Delany
● Martin Delany / from “The Condition, Elevation, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852)
● Martin Delany / Declaration of the Principles of the National Emigration Convention (1854)
The Case of Dred Scott
● Dred Scott’s Petition for Freedom (1847)
● Reaction to the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Frederick Douglass
● Frederick Douglass / from “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” (1845)
● Frederick Douglass / Letter to Thomas Auld (1848)
● Frederick Douglass / What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Harriet Jacobs
● Harriet Jacobs / The Jealous Mistress: from “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (1861)
William Wells Brown
● William Wells Brown / from “Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States” (1853)
Harriet E. Wilson
● Harriet E. Wilson / from “Our Nig” (1859)
Sojourner Truth
● Sojourner Truth / Address to the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention (1851)
● Sojourner Truth / Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (1867)
Harriet Tubman
● Harriet Tubman / from “Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People” (1886)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Bury Me in a Free Land (1854)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / The Slave Mother (1854)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / A Double Standard
John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry
● Letter from John A. Copeland (1859)
● Letter to John Brown from Frances Harper (1860)
● On John Brown’s Raid (1859)
● Emancipation Proclamation
The New York Draft Riots
● An Eyewitness Account (1853)
Henry Highland Garnet
● Henry Highland Garnet / A Memorial Discourse Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives (1865)
African-Americans in the Civil War
● Men of Color, to Arms! (1863)
● Camp Diary (1863)
● The Struggle for Pay (1864)
● Farewell Address to the Troops (1866)
Folk Culture and Literature
● Slave Song
● Promises of Freedom
● Slave Marriage Ceremony Supplement
● Plantation Proverbs
● Aphorisms
● All God’s Chillen Had Wings
● John Henry
● The Signifying Monkey
● Stackalee
● Shine and the Titanic
● Easy Rider
● Joe Turner
● St. Louis Blues
● Joe Turner Blues
● Beale Street Blues
Spirituals
● Go Down, Moses
● Who’ll Be a Witness for My Lord
● Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jerico
● I Got a Home in Dat Rock
● Roll Jordan, Roll
● My Way’s Cloudy
● Steal Away to Jesus
● I Know Moon-Rise
● Deep River
● Down in the Valley
● Swing Low Sweet Chariot
● Ride In, Kind Saviour
● My Army Cross Over
● Many Thousand Gone
● We’ll Soon Be Free
● I Thank God I’m Free at Las’
The Civil War Amendments
● The Thirteenth Amendment (1865)
● The Fourteenth Amendment (1868)
● The Fifteenth Amendment (1870)
Reconstruction
● Freedman’s Bureau (1865)
● South Carolina Black Code ( 1864—1865)
● Frederick Douglass’s Speech to the Thirty-second Annual Convention of the America Anti-Slavery Society (1865)
● Blanche K. Bruce’s Speech to the United States Senate (1876)
● Henry M. Turner’s Speech to the Georgia Legislature (1868)
● Petition from Kentucky Citizens on Ku Klux Klan Violence (1871)
The Exodusters
● News Accounts from the Black Press (1879—1886)
Charles W. Chestnut
● Charles W. Chestnut / Po’ Sandy
● Charles W. Chestnut / The Wife of His Youth
Paul Laurence Dunbar
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Sympathy
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Negro Love Song
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Poet
Booker T. Washington
● Booker T. Washington / from “Up from Slavery” (1901)
● Booker T. Washington / The Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)
W.E.B. Du Bois
● W.E.B. Du Bois / from “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903)
● W.E.B. Du Bois / The Talented Tenth (1903)
Ida Wells-Barnett
● Ida Wells-Barnett / from “A Red Record” (1895)
Mary Church Terrell
● Mary Church Terrell / What Role Is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race? (1902)
Anna Julia Cooper
● Anna Julia Cooper / from “A Voice in the South” (1892)
● Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
● The Niagara Movement (1905)
The Founding of the NAACP
● Principles of the NAACP (1911)
● The Crisis (1910)
● Agitation (1910)
Jack Johnson
● Jack Johnson / The Prize Fighter (1914)
James Weldon Johnson
● James Weldon Johnson / Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (1900)
● James Weldon Johnson / from “The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man” (1912)
● James Weldon Johnson / O Black and Unknown Bards (1917)
The Great Migration, 1910—1920
● Letters and Articles from “The Chicago Defender”
Red Summer of 1919
● A Directive to French Troops (1918)
● Returning Soldiers (1919)
● Three Hundred Years (1919)
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die! (1919)
Marcus Garvey
● Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920)
Alain Locke
● Alain Locke / The New Negro (1925)
Claude McKay
● Claude McKay / The Harlem Dancer
● Claude McKay / Spring in New Hampshire
● Claude McKay / The Lynching
● Claude McKay / Tiger
● Claude McKay / The White City
● Claude McKay / The Tropics in New York
Langston Hughes
● Langston Hughes / I, Too (1925)
● Langston Hughes / The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1926)
● Langston Hughes / The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
● Langston Hughes / Harlem (1951)
Jean Toomer
● Jean Toomer / from “Cane”
Countee Cullen
● Countee Cullen / Yet Do I Marvel (1925)
● Countee Cullen / Heritage (1925)
● Countee Cullen / From the Dark Tower (1927)
Zora Neale Hurston
● Zora Neale Huston / Sweat
The Scottsboro Cases
● Appeal of the Scottsboro Boys (1932)
Joe Louis
● Joe Louis / Joe Louis Uncovers Dynamite (1935)
Sterling Brown
● Sterling Brown / Strong Men (1932)
Robert Hayden
● Robert Hayden / Frederick Douglass
● Robert Hayden / Middle Passage
Richard Wright
● Richard Wright / The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch (1937)
A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement
● Program of the March on Washington Movement (1942)
● Executive Order 8802 (1941)
Truman Integrates the Military
● Executive Order 9981 (1948)
Paul Robeson
● Paul Robeson / Statement to the House Un-American Activities Committee (1956)
Gwendolyn Brooks
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Mother
● Gwendolyn Brooks / We Real Cool
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Ralph Ellison
● Ralph Ellison / from “Invisible Man” (1952)
James Baldwin
● James Baldwin / Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
● NAACP Brief (1953)
● Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
● Martin Luther King, Jr. / Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963)
● Martin Lutehr King, Jr. / I Have a Dream (1963)
Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
● We Shall Overcome
● O Freedom
● Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
● Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round
● Kwanzaa
Malcolm X
● Malcolm X / from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (1965)
Eldridge Cleaver
● Elridge Cleaver / from “Soul on Ice”
The Black Panther Party
● Black Panther Party Platform (1966)
Amiri Baraka
● Amiri Baraka / Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
● Amiri Baraka / State/meant
● Amiri Baraka / Ka ‘Ba
The Kerner Commission
● from The Kerner Commission Report (1968)
African-Americans in the Vietnam War
● Selections from “Bloods”
Maya Angelou
● Maya Angelou / from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
Alice Walker
● Alice Walker / from “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose” (1974)
Jesse Jackson
● Jesse Jackson / Address to the Democratic National Convention (1984)
● Rap Music
The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings
● Clarence Thomas’s Second Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee (1991)
The L.A. Riots
● Congresswoman Maxine Waters’s Testimony Before the Senate Banking Committee (1992)
● Selected Bibliography
● Acknowledgments
● Selected Index
Reviews and notices of anthology
• n/a
Commentary on anthology
• "The history of African Americans is explored in their writings, narratives, letters, editorials, speeches, lyrics, & folktales, from U.S. colonial times to today. Here is the most comprehensive collection of African-American writing to date and includes poetry, prose, speeches, songs, documents, and letters from the pre-Colonial era through today's best and most well-known writers. An anthology that anyone interested in the full scope of African-American history should not be without. The history of African-American life and thought presented in this anthology represents a far-reaching written and oral tradition, which is thought-provoking, inspiring, and impressive in its breadth. It includes poetry and prose by today's best and most well-known writers" (WorldCat).
Cited in
Kinnamon 1997: 465
• Indexed in "The Columbia Granger's Index to African-American Poetry" (1999)
• Indexed in "The Columbia Granger's Index to African-American Poetry" (1999)
Item Number
A0278