This comprehensive collection of Afro-American literature — from its beginnings to the 1970s — provides a generous selection of autobiographies, essays, speeches, letters, political pamphlets, histories, journals, and folk literature as well as poems, plays, and stories — all chosen for their artistic and social significance. A carefully structured organization and the scope and diversity of selections make the anthology suitable to a variety of approaches — chronological, by topic, by theme, or by genre.