“If you don’t know my name, you don’t know your own.”—James Baldwin An anthology of African-American literature featuring contributions from some of the most prominent Black and African-American authors of our time, including James Baldwin, Arna Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Leroi Jones, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Malcom X, and many more. Featuring fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Black Voices captures the diverse and powerful words of a literary explosion, the ramifications of which can be seen and heard in the works of today’s African-American artists. A comprehensive and impressive primer, this anthology presents some of the greatest and most enduring work born out of the African-American experience in the United States. Contributors Also Include: Sterling A. Brown Charles W. Chesnutt John Henrik Clarke Countee Cullen Frederick Douglass Paul Laurence Dunbar James Weldon Johnson Naomi Long Madgett Paule Marshall Clarence Major Claude McKay Ann Petry Dudley Randall J. Saunders Redding Jean Toomer Darwin T. Turner Lerone Bennett, Jr. Frank London Brown Arthur P. Davis Frank Marshall Davis Owen Dodson Mari Evans Rudolph Fisher Dan Georgakas Robert Hayden Frank Horne Blyden Jackson Lance Jeffers Fenton Johnson George E. Kent Alain Locke Diane Oliver Stanley Sanders Richard G. Stern Sterling Stuckey Melvin B. Tolson

From dusty rural villages to northern ghettos, 12 Million Black Voices is an unflinching portrayal of the lives that many black Americans lived in the 1930s. It is a testament to the strength of black communities throughout America.

‘A timely book and a conversation starter on race in Britain.’ Rachel Edwards, Author of Darling and Lucky ‘A timely book in a year that has made clear that Britain still has a very long way to go towards becoming the model of racial equality it aims to be.’ Kenya Hunt ‘Powerful and sometimes painful testimonies but they also provide uplifting and enriching experiences.’ Stephen Bourne ‘I'm so proud to hold this book in my hand. We are here in all our richness.’ Adjoa Andoh, Actor, Director ‘This book is such a moving read for everyone of all ages and races.’ Colin Jackson, CBE ‘A reinforcement of evocative truths that hurt and sting deeply but also empower tremendously.’ Sharon Duncan-Brewster The whole world is watching. 25 May, 2020. George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, is killed in Minneapolis while being arrested. His death, witnessed by horrified bystanders, is captured on camera – and within hours has spread far and wide across social media. We’re all bystanders now. The protests that follow express shock, sorrow, and outrage. Because what’s happened, has happened before – away from witnesses and cameras. The story didn’t begin here, and this is not where it ends… STILL BREATHING assembles a cast of 100 black voices to talk about their experiences of racism in Britain. Actresses Suzette Llewellyn (Eastenders) and Suzanne Packer (Holby City) are joined by musicians, Members of Parliament, poets, artists, athletes, civil servants, doctors, lawyers, and more. Touching on Windrush and the workplace, race riots and reforms, these essays seek to educate, to bear witness – and to offer hope for a better future, in Britain and around the world.

Black Lenses, Black Voices is a provocative look at films directed and written_and sometimes produced_by African Americans, as well as black-oriented films whose directors or screenwriters are not black. Mark Reid shows how certain films dramatize the contemporary African American community as a politically and economically diverse group, vastly different from film representations of the 1960s. Taking us through the development of African American independent filmmaking before and after World War II, he then illustrates the unique nature of African American family, action, horror, female-centered, and independent films, such as Eve's Bayou, Jungle Fever, Shaft, Souls of Sin, Bones, Waiting to Exhale, Monster's Ball, Sankofa, and many more.

In the late 1920s, Reverend A. W. Nix (1880–1949), an African American Baptist minister born in Texas, made fifty-four commercial recordings of his sermons on phonographs in Chicago. On these recordings, Nix presented vocal traditions and styles long associated with the southern, rural Black church as he preached about self-help, racial uplift, thrift, and Christian values. As southerners like Nix fled into cities in the North to escape the rampant racism in the South, they contested whether or not African American vocal styles of singing and preaching that had emerged during the slavery era were appropriate for uplifting the race. Specific vocal characteristics, like those on Nix’s recordings, were linked to the image of the “Old Negro” by many African American leaders who favored adopting Europeanized vocal characteristics and musical repertoires into African American churches in order to uplift the modern “New Negro” citizen. Through interviews with family members, musical analyses of the sounds on Nix’s recordings, and examination of historical documents and relevant scholarship, Terri Brinegar argues that the development of the phonograph in the 1920s afforded preachers like Nix the opportunity to present traditional Black vocal styles of the southern Black church as modern Black voices. These vocal styles also influenced musical styles. The “moaning voice” used by Nix and other ministers was a direct connection to the “blues moan” employed by many blues singers including Blind Willie, Blind Lemon, and Ma Rainey. Both Reverend A. W. Nix and his brother, W. M. Nix, were an influence on the “Father of Gospel Music,” Thomas A. Dorsey. The success of Nix’s recorded sermons demonstrates the enduring values African Americans placed on traditional vocal practices.

Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn, more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art. In Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American speech played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn. Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how the voices of African-Americans have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature. Fishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckleberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature. A slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying"--satire in an African-American vein--when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well--but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized. Was Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon. American literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices." Was Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.