Anthologies of African American Writing

Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation

"The Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation" . Ed. Julie Buckner Armstrong and Amy Schmidt. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2009. xxvii+363 pp.

Sect. 1. Rise of Jim Crow -- Selections from Iola Leroy, Chapters 26 ("Open Questions") and 27 ("Diverging Paths") / Frances E.W. Harper -- Atlanta Exposition Address (Selection from Up from Slavery, Chapter 14) / Booker T. Washington -- Selections from The Marrow of Tradition, Chapters 3 ("The Editor at Work") and 35 ("Mine Enemy, O Mine Enemy!") / Charles W. Chesnutt -- Selection from The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 1 ("Of Our Spiritual Strivings") / W.E.B. Du Bois -- Sympathy / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Haunted Oak / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Aftermath / Mary Burrill -- Black Finger / Angelina Weld Grimke -- Tenebris / Angelina Weld Grimke -- If We Must Die / Claude McKay -- America / Claude McKay -- Selection from Killers of the Dream, Chapter 1 ("When I Was a Child") / Lillian Smith -- I, Too / Erskine Caldwell -- Song for a Dark Girl / Erskine Caldwell -- Harlem / Erskine Caldwell -- End of Christy Tucker / Erskine Caldwell -- Selection from Black Boy, Chapter 13 / Richard Wright -- Selection from Invisible Man, Chapter 1 ("The Battle Royal") / Ralph Ellison -- Sect. 2. Fall of Jim Crow -- Where Is the Voice Coming From? / Eudora Welty -- El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz / Robert Hayden -- Ballad of Birmingham / Dudley Randall -- At the Lincoln Monument in Washington, August 28, 1963 / Margaret Walker -- For Andy Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney / Margaret Walker -- Micah / Margaret Walker -- Oxford Is a Legend / Margaret Walker -- Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock" / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Notes of a Native Son / James Baldwin -- Everything That Rises Must Converge / Flannery O'Connor -- Selection from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Chapter 11 ("Saved") / Malcolm X -- Letter from a Birmingham Jail / Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Great White Hope, Selections from Act 1 / Howard Sackler -- Dutchman / Amiri Baraka -- Poem for Black Hearts / Amiri Baraka -- It's Nation Time / Amiri Baraka -- Suffer the Children / Audre Lorde -- Rites of Passage / Audre Lorde -- Soul on Ice, Selection from Chapter 1 ("On Becoming") / Eldridge Cleaver -- Apology (to the panthers) / Lucille Clifton -- Eldridge / Lucille Clifton -- Malcolm / Lucille Clifton -- Jackie Robinson / Lucille Clifton -- In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. / June Jordan -- I Celebrate the Sons of Malcolm / June Jordan -- 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer / June Jordan -- Martin's Blues / Michael S. Harper -- American History / Michael S. Harper -- Malcolm spoke / who listened? / Haki Madhubuti -- Adulthood / Nikki Giovanni -- Black Power / Nikki Giovanni -- Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. / Nikki Giovanni -- Sect. 3. Reflections and Continuing Struggles -- Selections from "Wild Geese to the Past" / Constance Curry -- Black Notebooks, Selections from "The Club" / Toi Derricotte -- Emmett Till / Wanda Coleman -- Martin and My Father / David Hernandez -- Tuskegee Airfield / Marilyn Nelson -- Selection from Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Chapter 44 / Bebe Moore Campbell -- Selection from The Alchemy of Race and Rights, "The Death of the Profane" / Patricia J. Williams -- Enactment / Rita Dove -- Rosa / Rita Dove -- Equal Opportunity / Walter Mosley -- Negro Progress / Anthony Grooms -- Soul Make a Path through Shouting / Cyrus Cassells -- Confederate Pride Day at Bama / Honoree Fanonne Jeffers -- Giving Thanks for Water / Honoree Fanonne Jeffers -- Chronology of Publication Dates and Historical Events."This anthology of drama, essays, fiction, and poetry presents a thoughtful, classroom-tested selection of the best literature for learning about the long civil rights movement. Unique in its focus on creative writing, the volume also ranges beyond a familiar 1954-68 chronology to include works from the 1890s to the present. The civil rights movement was a complex, ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. In ways that historical documents cannot, these collected writings show how Americans negotiated this process--politically, philosophically, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively" (WorldCat).

A0417