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 twentieth 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.

Contributions by: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Richard Allen, Molefi Kete Asante, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Cyril V. Briggs, Stokely Carmichael, Frederick Douglass, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, Olaudah Equiano, Louis Farrakhan, Henry Highland Garnet, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, bell hooks, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, Claude McKay, Elijah Muhammad, Huey P. Newton, Solomon Northrup, Rosa Parks, Adam Clayton Powell, A Philip Randolph, Paul Robeson, Jo Ann Robinson, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Bayard Rustin, Maria W. Stewart, Mary Church Terell, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, David Walker, Booker T. Washington, Harold Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Roy Wilkins, William Julius Wilson