Black Man and the Promise of America

Title

This edition

"The Black Man and the Promise of America". Ed. Lettie J. Austin, Lewis H. Fenderson, and Sophia P. Nelson. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1970. 523 pp.

Online access

• Internet Archive

Internet Archive

Table of contents

[Authors who are not African American are marked with an asterisk (*)]

• [Preface]
• Prologue--The Promise of America

1. Indenture and Slavery
• Introduction
Chapter One: The Slave Trade
• John Barbot* / Of the Slave Coast
• John Spears* / The Middle Passage
• John Spears* / The Story of the Amistad
• Robert E. Hayden / Middle Passage
• Frederick Bancroft* / New Orleans, the Mistress of the Trade
Chapter Two: Life on the Plantation
• Solomon Northup / Slave Life during the Harvest Months
• S. C. Barker* / A Sermon to Servants
• Solomon Northup / Drivers and Overseers
• Harriet Beecher Stowe* / The Quadroon's Story
• Frances M. Trollope* / Domestic Manners of the Americans
• Richard Mercer Dorson* / The Yearling
• Richard Mercer Dorson* / A Dime for the Sack
Chapter Three: Slave Revolts
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson* / Gabriel's Defeat
• John Lofton* / Denmark Vesey
• Nathaniel Turner / The Confessions of Nat Turner
• Levi Coffin* / A Struggle for Liberty
• Sarah Logue* / Letter to Rev. J. W. Loguen from His Old Mistress
• Jermain Wesley Loguen / Mr. Loguen's Reply
• John P. Waring* / Notice of a Runaway Slave in Washington, D.C.
• William Still / William and Ellen Craft
• Ann Petry / The Railroad Runs to Canada

2: Three-and-a-half Centuries of Discrimination against the Free Negro
• Introduction
Chapter One: Denial of Rights before the Civil War
• Solomon Northup / Kidnaping in the Nation's Capitol
• James Forten / A Late Bill before the Senate of Pennsylvania
• Andrew Jackson* / General Jackson's Proclamation to the the Negroes [21 Sept. 1814]
• Joel Chandler Harris* / Free Joe and the Rest of the World
• David Walker / David Walkers Appeal
Chapter Two: Fifty Years of Shattered Hopes
A. Military Service
• Frederick Douglass / Why Should a Colored Man Enlist?
B. Reconstruction
• W. E. B. DuBois / The Freedmen's Bureau
• Frederick Douglass / An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage
• John R. Lynch / Civil Rights and Social Equality
• Margaret Walker / Ku Klux Klan Don't Like No Koons
• Margaret Walker / Keep the Niggers from the Polls and We'll Return to White Home Rule!
C. Discrimination Intensified
• Comer Vann Woodward* / Capitulation to Racism
• B. A. Botkin* [ed.] / They Kept the Negroes from Voting
• B. A. Botkin* [ed.] / Vote As I Damn Please
• W. E. B. DuBois / The Lynching Industry
• W. E. B. DuBois / The Philosophy of Mr. Dole
D. The Hegira Northward and the Aftermath
• Langston Hughes / Bound No'th Blues
• Waters E. Turpin / O Canaan! [excerpt]
• W. E. B. DuBois / "Today We Return!"
Chapter Three: Further Postponement of the Promise
A. Terror and "Variable Justice"
• John Hope Franklin / The Red Summer
• Claude McKay / If We Must Die
• Gunnar Myrdal* / The Policeman in the Negro Neighborhood
• Protest Song* / Standin' on de Corner
• Angelo Herndon / Let Me Live [excerpt]
• Warren Miller / The Cool World [excerpt]
• Langston Hughes / The Law
B. Separate-but-Equal Provisions in Education
• Pauli Murray / Proud Shoes [excerpt]
• Walter Francis White / Decision Monday
C. Housing
• Lorraine Hansberry / A Raisin in the Sun [excerpt]
• Claude McKay / White Houses
• Langston Hughes / Madam and the Rent Man
D. Voting
• Carl T. Rowan / A Cry in the Wilderness
• Art Buchwald* / Easy Plan to the Polls in Bull Whip
E. Military Service
• John Oliver Killens / And Then We Heard the Thunder [excerpt]
F. Employment
• Langston Hughes / Madam and Her Madam
• Alice Childress / The Pocketbok Game
• Herbert Hill / The Racial Practices of Organized Labor: The Contemporary Record
• Mari Evans / Status Symbol
G. Public Facilities
• Marian Anderson / Easter Sunday
• St. Clair Drake / "In Sickness and in Death"
• Lerone Bennett, Jr. / The Convert

3. The Psychological Effects in a Racist Society
• Introduction
Chapter One: The White Personality Molded by Hate, Fear, and Guilt
• Lillian Smith* / Two Men and a Bargain
• Witter Bynner* / Defeat
• Erskine Caldwell* / Kneel to the Rising Sun
• Gwendolyn Brooks / A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississipi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
• P. D. East* / The Petal Paper
• James W. Silver* / "Mississippi is Going Down the Road to Thought Control"
• Lenny Bruce* / Just How Do You Relax Colored People at Parties
• Relman Morin* / Events at Central High School, September 23, 1957 ("Black Monday")
• Shirley Jackson* / After You, My Dear Alphonse
• Robert Penn Warren* / How Awful It Is for a Man to be Split Up
Chapter Two: The Negro Personality Imprisoned by Self-Hatred, Hopelessness, and Frustration
• J. Saunders Redding / On Being Negro in America [excerpt]
• James Arthur Baldwin / My Dungeon Shook
• Kenneth B. Clark / The Negro Child and Race Prejudice
• Gwendolyn Brooks / We Real Cool
• Gordon Parks / The Learning Tree [excerpt]
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
• Ralph Ellison / Prologue from "Invisible Man"
• Claude Brown / Manchild in the Promised Land [excerpt]
• Richard Wright / The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch
• LeRoi Jones / Black Bourgeoisie
• George S. Schuyler / Black No More [excerpt]
• Carl Holman / Song [Dressed up in my melancholy]

4. Achievement against Odds
• Introduction
Chapter One: Contributions Woven into American Culture
A. Loyalty, Heroism and Courage
• Allan Pinkerton* / John Scobell and the Loyal League
• William Wells Brown / Heroism of Negroes on the High Seas
• Patricia Stephens Due / Tallahassee: Through Jail to Freedom
B. Folk Art
• Alain Leroy Locke / The Negro Spirituals
• Negro Spiritual / Deep River
• Negro Spiritual / Go Down, Moses
• Negro Spiritual / Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• Negro Spiritual / Steal Away
• Negro Work Song / John Henry
• William C. Handy / How "St. Louis Blues" Was Born
• William C. Handy / St. Louis Blues
• Gilbert Chase / Jazz
• Negro Folktale / B'rer Rabbit Fools Buzzard
• James Weldon Johnson / Along This Way [excerpt]
• James Weldon Johnson / The Creation
C. Conquest of the Frontier
• Philip Durham* and Everett L. Jones* / Cowboys and Indian Fighters
• Nat Love / On the Trail with Three Thousand Head of Texas Steers . . . I Win the Name of Deadwood Dick
• Sterling Allan Brown / Strong Men
Chapter Two: "The Past Is Prologue"
A. Education
• Booker T. Washington / A Classroom Comes to Life
• Carter G. Woodson / History Made to Order
B. Science
• Helen Buckler / "Sewed Up His Heart!"
• Rackham Holt* / "Go tell Doubting Thomas"
• Emma Gelders Sterne* / "The Job is Done"
C. Sports
• Andrew Sturgeon Nash Young / Jackie Robinson
• Leonard Shecter* / The Passion of Muhammed Ali
D. Literature
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Little Brown Baby
• Countee Cullen / Yet Do I Marvel
• Langston Hughes / Epilogue [I, too, sing America]
• Langston Hughes / Mother to Son
• Owen Dodson / Yardbird's Skull (for Charlie Parker)
• Richard Wright / Native Son [excerpt]
• Melvin B. Tolson / Harlem Gallery [excerpt]
• Ralph Ellison / Invisible Man [excerpt]
• Eldridge Cleaver / A Religious Conversion, More or Less
• William Melvin Kelley / The Only Man on Liberty Street
• Ernest Gaines / The Sky is Gray [excerpt]
E. Art
• James A. Porter / Henry O. Tanner
F. Music
• LeRoi Jones / The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
• Ted Joans / Lester Young
G. Leadership
• Frederick Douglass / What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
• Arthur Huff Fauset / Sojourner Truth
• Marcus Garvey / An Eye for an Eye
• Asa Philip Randolph / Why Should We March?
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Malcolm X / The Black Revolution
• Stokeley Carmichael / Toward Black Liberation
• Horace Julian Bond / A New Vision, A Better Tomorrow

• Epilogue--The Dawn of a New Day
• Index

About the anthology

• A sourcebook of historical documents and texts, some by white authors but the majority by black authors.

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