A comprehensive anthology of documents from colonial times to the present that tells "the story of how black people made themselves and interpreted the world in which they lived."
Editors Marable (History/Columbia) and Leith (Anthropology/City Univ. of New York) have arranged this massive collection in five major chronological sections: The first begins with a slave narrative (1789); the last ends with documents issued by the Black Radical Congress (1998). In between is an impressive array of material - from speeches to songs (spirituals and freedom songs) to poems, newspaper articles, posters, and lists of demands from the Attica prison rioters (1971). Heard are representative soloists from the entire symphony of what the editors call "the black struggle for freedom." Among the expected are Sojourner Truth (both versions of her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech appear), Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington.
