Anthologies of African American Writing

Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America

"Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America." Ed. Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen. New York: One World, 1995. xxxiv+909 pp.

● Anon. / Introduction
Prologue
● Sterling Brown / Strong Men (Opening Stanzas)

PART 1: FOREFATHERS
The Griot’s Voice
● George Edward Tait / I Am a Black Man
● Nouk Bassomb / IKOP MBOG: An Account of an African Child’s Initiation
● Howard Thurman / On Viewing the Coast of Africa
● Frederick Douglass / Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
● Booker T. Washington / Up from Slavery
● Randall Kenan / Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
● W.E.B. Du Bois / The Souls of Black Folk
● Marcus Garvey / Message of Marcus Garvey to Membership of Universal Negro Improvement Association from Atlanta Prison
● Ralph Ellison / Juneteenth

PART 2: A SON IN THE FAMILY
Of Fathers and Sons
● Quincy Troupe / Poem for My Father
● Richard Wright / Black Boy
● Langston Hughes / Father
● James Baldwin / Notes of a Native Son
● Malcolm X / Nightmare
● Henry Louis Gates Jr. / Colored People
● Wesley Brown / Tragic Magic
● Louis Edwards / Ten Seconds
● Earl Ofari Hutchinson / A Talk with My Father
● Nick Chiles / A Private War
● Haki R. Madhubuti / Father’s Pledge

Boyz ‘n the Hood
● William Demby / Beetlecreek
● Claude Brown / Manchild in the Promised Land
● William Melvin Kelley / Dancers on the Shore
● Henry Dumas / Strike and Fade
● Amiri Barak / The Screamers
● Jess Mowry / Way Past Cool
● Jabari Asim / Two Fools
● Kevin Powell / Ghetto Bastard
● Yusef Salaam / Brer Rabbit Escapes Again
● Michael Eric Dyson / Reflecting Black
● Roland Gilbert/Cheo Tyehimba-Taylor / The Ghetto Solution

PART 3: Relationships
When a Man Loves a Woman
● Robert Fleming / Black Women
● Charles Johnson / Middle Passage
● Charles W. Chesnutt / The Wife of His Youth
● Arthur Flowers / Another Good Loving Blues
● James Alan McPherson / Elbow Room
● Trey Ellis / Home Repairs
● Chester Himes / The Lonely Crusade
● Calvin C. Hernton / Sex and Racism in America
● Richard Perry / No Other Tale to Tell
● Walter Mosley / White Butterfly
● Clarence Major / All-Night Visitors

What’s Love Got to Do with It
● Gerald Early / First Poem for Linnet
● Edward Jones / A New Man
● Ron Stodghill II / My Sparrow
● Alexs D. Pate / Losing Absalom
● Kalamu Ya Salaam / What Is Life?
● Damu Hakim / A Father’s Lament
● Nathan McCall / Makes Me Wanna Holler
● Ralph Wiley / On the A-Train to Venus with Isis

My Brother’s Keeper
● Rudolph Fisher / The Walls of Jericho
● Sylvester Monroe / Brothers
● Playthell Benjamin / Lush Life
● Kenneth Meeks / Pledging Alpha
● E. Lynn Harris / Invisible Life
● Melvin Dixon / Vanishing Rooms
● Essex Hemphill / In an Afternoon Light
● W.J. Brandy Moore / African-American Males and Survival Against AIDS
● Ernest J. Gaines / from "A Lesson Before Dying"

PART 4: TROUBLE MAN
The Permanence of Racism
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Lynching of Jube Benson
● Jean Toomer / Blood-Burning Moon
● Albert French / Billy
● Gordon Parks / Shannon
● William Strickland / The Future of Black Men
● Brent Staples / Parallel Time
● Ernest Allen Jr. / Race and Gender Stereotyping in the Thomas Confirmation Hearings
● Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad / Days of Grace
● Derrick Bell / Faces at the Bottom of the Well

Fighting on Two Fronts
● David Levering Lewis / When Harlem Was in Vogue
● John Oliver Killens / And Then We Heard the Thunder
● Robert L. Allen / The Port Chicago Mutiny
● Martin Luther King Jr. / Beyond Vietnam
● Wallace Terry / Bloods
● Clyde Taylor / Black Consciousness in the Vietnam Years

Locked In and Locked Out
● Albert Race Sample / Raceboss: Big Emma’s Boy
● Lloyd L. Brown / Iron City
● Robert Chrisman / Black Prisoners, White Law
● John Edgar Wideman / Brothers and Keepers
● Nathan McCall / Makes Me Wanna Holler
● Jarvis Masters / Scars
● Arthur Hamilton Jr. And William Banks / Father Behind Bars
● Dhoruba Bin Wahad / Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors of the U.S. War Against Black Revolutionaries

Color and Class
● Walter White / A Man Called White
● Langston Hughes / Who’s Passing for Who?
● Willard Motley / The Almost White Boy
● Stanley Crouch / Man in the Mirror
● Ronald E. Hall / Blacks Who Pass
● Hosea Hudson / Black Worker in the Deep South
● William Attaway / Blood on the Forge
● Sam Greenlee / The Spook Who Sat By the Door
● Brent Wade / Company Man
● Shelby Steele / The Content of Our Character
● Ellis Cose / The Rage of a Privileged Class
● Stephen L. Carter / Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby

PART 5: BLACK MAGIC
And Bid Him Sing
● Countee Cullen / Yet Do I Marvel
● Wallace Thurman / Infants of the Spring
● Julius Lester / Falling Pieces of the Broken Sky
● Ishmael Reed / Writin’ Is Fightin'

We Wear the Mask
● Cecil Brown / The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger
● Mel Watkins / On the Real Side
● Paul Robeson / Here I Stand
● Sidney Poitier / This Life
● Spike Lee with Ralph Wiley / By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X

In the Game
● Jackie Robinson / I Never Had It Made
● Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) / Playboy Interview (October 1964)
● Harry Edwards / The Struggle That Must Be
● Jim Brown / Out of Bounds
● Charlie Sifford / Just Let Me Play: The Story of Charlie Sifford—The First Black PGA Golfer
● Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Peter Knobler / Giant Steps
● Earvin “Magic” Johnson / My Life
● Satchel Paige / Rules for Staying Young

Be-Bop, Doo-Wop, Hip-Hop
● Duke Ellington / Music is My Mistress
● Sidney Bechet / Treat It Gentle
● Nelson George / The Death of Rhythm & Blues
● Alston Anderson / Dance of the Infidels
● Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe / Miles: The Autobiography of Miles Davis
● Nathaniel Mackey / Djbot Baghostus’s Run
● Greg Tate / Silence, Exile, and Cunning: Miles Davis in Memoriam
● Quincy Jones / Playboy Interview (July 1990)
● Ice T / The Ice Opinion

PART 6: SANKOFA: PAST AS PROLOGUE
Deep Roots
● Dudley Randall / A Different Image
● Yosef Ben-Jochannan / The African Contribution to Technology and Science
● John Henrik Clarke / The Africans in the New World: Their Contribution to Science, Invention, and Technology
● J.A. Rogers / From “Superman” to Man
● John Hope Franklin / A Life of Learning
● Alex Haley / There Are Days When I Wish It Hadn’t Happened (March 1979)
● Nathan Hare / The Challenge of a Black Scholar

No Justice, No Peace
● Charles V. Hamilton / Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
● Martin Luther King Jr. / Where Do We Go from Here?
● Malcolm X / Speech to African Summit Conference—Cairo, Egypt
● James Forman / The Making of Black Revolutionaries
● Bobby Seale / Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton
● Samuel F. Yette / The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America
● John A. Williams / The Man Who Cried I Am
● William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs / Black Rage
● Richard Majors / Cool Pose: The Proud Signature of Black Survival
● Jesse Jackson / Keep Hope Alive
● Manning Marable / Toward Black American Empowerment
● Louis Farrakhan / A Torchlight for America
● Randall Robinson / Operation Island Storm?
● Kweisi Mfume / The State of Black America (September 1994)

Black Gold
● Earl G. Graves / The Men of Black Enterprise
● John H. Johnson with Lerone Bennett Jr. / Succeeding Against the Odds
● Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill / Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice
● George C. Fraser / Success Runs in Our Race

Return to the Source
● Reginald McKnight / I Get On the Bus
● Maulana Karenga / The African American Holiday of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture
● Molefi Kete Asante / Afrocentricity
● Eric V. Copage / Kwanzaa: An African-American Celebration of Culture and Cooking
● James E. Jackson / The Journey of Martin Luther King Jr.
● Cornel West / Race Matters

Epilogue
● Sterling Brown / Strong Men (Closing Stanzas)

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not in Kinnamon 1997]

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