One of America's most prominent historians and a noted feminist bring together the most important political writings and testimonials from African-Americans over three centuries.

This anthology of black writers traces the evolution of African-American perspectives throughout American history, from the early years of slavery to the end of the 20th century. The essays, manifestos, interviews, and documents assembled here, contextualized with critical commentaries from Marable and Mullings, introduce the reader to the character and important controversies of each period of black history.

The selections represent a broad spectrum of ideology. Conservative, radical, nationalistic, and integrationist approaches can be found in almost every period, yet there have been striking shifts in the evolution of social thought and activism. The editors judiciously illustrate how both continuity and change affected the African-American community in terms of its internal divisions, class structure, migration, social problems, leadership, and protest movements. They also show how gender, spirituality, literature, music, and connections to Africa and the Caribbean played a prominent role in black life and history.

Part 1 Preface to the First Edition
Part 2 Preface to the Second Edition
Part 3 Introduction: Resistance, Reform, and Renewal in the Black Experience
Part 4 Section 1. Foundations: Slavery and Abolitionism, 1768-1861
Part 5 1. "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
Part 6 2. "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano"
Part 7 3. "Thus Doth Ethiopia Stretch Forth Her Hand from Slavery, to Freedom and Equality"
Part 8 4. The Founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Part 9 5. David Walker's "Appeal," 1829-1830
Part 10 6. The Statement of Nat Turner, 1831
Part 11 7. Slaves are Prohibited to Read and Write by Law
Part 12 8. "What If I Am a Woman?"
Part 13 9. A Slave Denied the Rights to MarryLetter of Milo Thompson, Slave, 1834
Part 14 10. The Selling of SlavesAdvertisement, 1835
Part 15 11. Solomon Northrup Describes a New Orleans Slave Auction, 1841
Part 16 12. Cinque and theAmistad Revolt, 1841
Part 17 13. "Let Your Motto Be Resistance!"
Part 18 14. "Slavery as It Is"
Part 19 15. "A'nt' I a Woman?"
Part 20 16. "A Plea for Emigration, or, Notes of Canada West"
Part 21 17. A Black Nationalist Manifesto
Part 22 18. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
Part 23 19. "No Rights That a White Man Is Bound to Respect:" The Dred Scott Case and Its Aftermath
Part 24 20. "Whenever the Colored Man Is Elevated, It Will Be by His Own Exertions"
Part 25 21. The Spirituals: "Go Down Moses" and "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel"
Part 26 Section 2. Reconstruction and Reaction: The Aftermath of Slavery and the Dawn of Segregation, 1861-1915
Part 28 1. "What the Black Man Wants"
Part 29 2. Henry McNeal Turner, Black Christian Nationalist
Part 30 3. Black Urban Workers during Reconstruction
Chapter 31 Anonymous Document on the National Colored Labor Convention, 1869
Chapter 32New York Tribune Article on African-American Workers, 1870
Part 33 4. "Labor and Capital Are In Deadly Conflict"
Part 34 5. Edward Wilmot Blyden and the African Diaspora
Part 35 6. "The Democratic Idea Is Humanity"
Part 36 7. "A Voice from the South"
Part 37 8. The National Association of Colored Women: Mary Church Terrell and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
Part 38 9. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
Part 39 10. Booker T. Washington and the Politics of Accommodation
Chapter 40 "Atlanta Exposition Address"
Chapter 41 "My View of Segregation Laws"
Part 42 11. William Monroe Trotter and theBoston Guardian
Part 43 12. Race and the Southern Worker
Chapter 44 "A Negro Woman Speaks"
Chapter 45 "The Race Question a Class Question"
Chapter 46 "Negro Workers!"
Part 47 13. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Crusader for Justice
Part 48 14. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Chapter 49 Excerpts from "The Conservation of Races"
Chapter 50 Excerpts fromThe Souls of Black Folk
Part 51 15. The Niagara Movement, 1905
Part 52 16. Hubert Henry Harrison, Black Revolutionary Nationalist
Part 53 Section 3. From Plantation to Ghetto: The Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance, and World War, 1915-1954
Part 54 1. Black Conflict over World War I
Chapter 55 "Close Ranks"
Chapter 56 "The Descent of Du Bois"
Chapter 57 "Returning Soldiers"
Part 58 2. "If We Must Die"
Part 59 3. Black Bolsheviks: Cyril V. Briggs and Claude McKay
Chapter 60 "What the African Blood Brotherhood Stands For"
Chapter 61 "Soviet Russia and the Negro"
Part 62 4. Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association
Chapter 63 "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World"
Chapter 64 "An Appeal to the Conscience of the Black Race to See Itself"
Part 65 5. "Women as Leaders"
Part 66 6. Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance
Chapter 67 "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"
Chapter 68 "My America"
Chapter 69 Poems
Part 70 7. "The Negro Woman and the Ballot"
Part 71 8. James Weldon Johnson and Harlem in the 1920s
Chapter 72 "Harlem: The Culture Capital"
Part 73 9. Black Workers in the Great Depression
Part 74 10. The Scottsboro Trials, 1930s
Part 75 11. "You Cannot Kill the Working Class"
Chapter 76 "Speech to the Jury, January 17, 1933"
Chapter 77 Excerpt fromYou Cannot Kill the Working Class
Part 78 12. Hosea Hudson, Black Communist Activist
Part 79 13. "Breaking the Bars to Brotherhood"
Part 80 14. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and the Fight for Black Employment in Harlem
Part 81 15. Black Women Workers during the Great Depression
Chapter 82 "Women of the Cotton Fields"
Chapter 83 "I Am a Domestic"
Part 84 16. Southern Negro Youth Conference, 1939
Part 85 17. A. Philip Randolph and the Negro March on Washington Movement, 1941
Part 86 18. Charles Hamiliton Houston and the War Effort among African Americans, 1944
Part 87 19. "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!"
Part 88 20. "The Negro Artist Looks Ahead"
Part 89 21. Thurgood Marshall: TheBrown Decision and the Struggle for School Desegregation
Part 90 Section 4. We Shall Overcome: The Second Reconstruction, 1954-1975
Part 91 1. Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
Chapter 92 Jo Ann Robinson's Letter to Mayor of Montgomery
Chapter 93 Interview with Rosa Parks
Chapter 94 Excerpts from Jo Ann Robinson's Account of the Boycott
Part 95 2. Roy Wilkins and the NAACP
Part 96 3. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1957
Part 97 4. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Sit-In Movement, 1960
Part 98 5. Freedom Songs, 1960s
Chapter 99 "We Shall Overcome"
Chapter 100 "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
Part 101 6. "We Need Group-Centered Leadership"
Part 102 7. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nonviolence
Chapter 103 Excerpt from "Nonviolence and Racial Justice," 1957
Chapter 105 "I Have a Dream," 1963
Part 106 8. "The Revolution Is at Hand"
Part 107 9. "The Salvation of American Negroes Lies in Socialism"
Part 108 10. "The Special Plight and the Role of Black Women"
Part 109 11. "SNCC Position Paper: Women in the Movement," 1964
Part 110 12. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam
Part 111 13. Malcolm X and Revolutionary Black Nationalism
Chapter 112 "The Ballot or the Bullet"
Chapter 113 "Statement of the Organization of Afro-American Unity"
Part 114 14. Black Power
Chapter 115 "What We Want"
Chapter 116 "Position Paper on Black Power"
Chapter 118 "'Black Power' and Coalition Politics"
Part 119 15. "CORE Endorses Black Power"
Part 120 16. "To Atone for Our Sins and Errors in Vietnam"
Part 121 17. Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
Part 122 18. "The People Have to Have the Power"
Part 123 19. "I Am a Revolutionary Black Woman"
Part 124 20. "Our Thing is DRUM"
Part 125 21. Attica "The Fury of Those Who Are Oppressed," 1971
Part 126 22. The National Black Political Convention, Gary, Indiana, March 1972
Part 127 23. "There Is No Revolution Without the People"
Chapter 128 "The Pan-African Party and the Black Nation"
Chapter 129 Poem
Part 130 24. "My Sight Is Gone But My Vision Remains"
Chapter 131 "On Returning to the Struggle"
Chapter 132 "A Letter to My Brothers and Sisters"
Part 133 Section 5. The Future in the Present: Contemporary African-American Thought, 1975 to the Present
Part 134 1. Black Feminisms: The Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977
Part 134 2. "Women in Prison: How We Are"
Part 135 4. "I am Your Sister"
Part 135 3. "It's Our Turn"
Part 136 5. "Shaping Feminist Theory"
Part 136 6. The Movement against Apartheid: Jesse Jackson and Randall Robinson
Chapter 137 "Don't Adjust to Apartheid"
Chapter 138 "State of the U.S. Anti-Apartheid Movement: An Interview with Randall Robinson"
Part 139 7. "Keep Hope Alive"
Part 140 8. "Afrocentricity"
Part 141 9. The Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Controversy, 1991
Chapter 142 "African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves"
Chapter 143 "Can I Get a Witness?"
Part 144 10. "Race Matters"
Part 145 11. "Black Anti-Semitism"
Part 146 12. "Crime—Causes and Cures"
Part 147 13. Louis Farrakham: The Million Man March, 1995
Part 148 14. "A Voice from Death Row"
Part 149 15. "Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters"
Chapter 150 "Statement by Sing Sing Prisoners"
Chapter 151 "The Prison-Industrial Complex: An Investment in Failure"
Chapter 152 "River Hudson"
Part 153 16. Black Radical Congress, 1998
Chapter 154 "Principles of Unity"
Chapter 155 "The Struggle Continues: Setting a Black Liberation Agenda for the 21st Century"
Chapter 156 "The Freedom Agenda"
Part 157 17. 2000 Presidential Election
Chapter 158 "Letter to Governor Bush from Chairperson Mary Frances Berry," 2001
Part 159 18. Hip-Hop Activism
Chapter 160 "What We Want" Statement Hip-Hop Action Summit Network, 2001
Chapter 161 "Tookie Protocol for Peace," 2004
Part 162 19. World Conference Against Racism—Durban, South Africa
Part 163 20. African Americans Respond to Terrorism and War
Chapter 164 "Barbara Lee's Stand," 2001
Chapter 165 10 Points from Iraq Veterans against the War, 2001
Part 166 21. The Cosby vs. Dyson Debate, 2004-2005
Chapter 167 Summary of "Dr. Bill Cosby Speaks at the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision"
Chapter 168 Excerpt from "Is Bill Cosby Right?: or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?"
Part 169 22. U.S. Senate Resolution Against Lynching, 2005
Part 170 23. Hurricane Katrina Crisis, 2005
Chapter 171 "This is Criminal: Malik Rahim Reports from New Orleans," 2005
Part 172 24. Barak Obama's Presidential Campaign, 2007-2008
Chapter 173 Excerpts from National Democratic Party Convention Speech, 2004
Chapter 174 "A More Perfect Union," 2008
Part 175 Permissions
Part 176 Index
Part 177 About the Editors