Designed to meet the needs of high school students, undergraduates, and general readers, this encyclopedia is the most comprehensive reference available on African American literature from its origins to the present. Other works include many brief entries, or offer extended biographical sketches of a limited selection of writers. This encyclopedia surpasses existing references by offering full and current coverage of a vast range of authors and topics. While most of the entries are on individual authors, the encyclopedia gathers together information about the genres and geographical and cultural environments in which these writers have worked, and the social, political, and aesthetic movements in which they have participated. Thus the encyclopedia gives special attention to the historical and cultural forces that have shaped African American writing. - Publisher.

"The stimulus this handsomely produced volume will provide to research and teaching may well surpass that offered by Dr. Southern's earlier studies. This major accomplishment belongs in the libraries of all individuals and institutions interested in any aspect of American music." Ethnomusiciology

In this outstanding cultural biography, the author of the New York Times bestseller A Slave in the White House chronicles a critical yet overlooked chapter in American history: the inspiring rise and calculated fall of the black elite, from Emancipation through Reconstruction to the Jim Crow Era—embodied in the experiences of an influential figure of the time, academic, entrepreneur, and political activist and black history pioneer Daniel Murray. In the wake of the Civil War, Daniel Murray, born free and educated in Baltimore, was in the vanguard of Washington, D.C.’s black upper class. Appointed Assistant Librarian at the Library of Congress—at a time when government appointments were the most prestigious positions available for blacks—Murray became wealthy through his business as a construction contractor and married a college-educated socialite. The Murrays’ social circles included some of the first African-American U.S. Senators and Congressmen, and their children went to the best colleges—Harvard and Cornell. Though Murray and other black elite of his time were primed to assimilate into the cultural fabric as Americans first and people of color second, their prospects were crushed by Jim Crow segregation and the capitulation to white supremacist groups by the government, which turned a blind eye to their unlawful—often murderous—acts. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor traces the rise, fall, and disillusionment of upper-class African Americans, revealing that they were a representation not of hypothetical achievement but what could be realized by African Americans through education and equal opportunities. As she makes clear, these well-educated and wealthy elite were living proof that African Americans did not lack ability to fully participate in the social contract as white supremacists claimed, making their subsequent fall when Reconstruction was prematurely abandoned all the more tragic. Illuminating and powerful, her magnificent work brings to life a dark chapter of American history that too many Americans have yet to recognize.

Under the rubric spirituals are subsumed sorrow songs, jubilee songs, shout songs, chants, homilies, mantras, affirmations, and collective, personal, and historical allegories. Their lyrics tell an impassioned story of an embattled people, while presenting a theology of salvation; in general, they encompass crucial aspects of the Afro-American world view. This research collection contains lyrics of 978 spirituals, including some variants, culled from numerous anthologies and collections. Codes are provided to guide the researcher to an original source with musical notations. The songs are organized in nine thematic categories as follows: lyrics of sorrow, alienation, and desolation; consolation and faith; resistance and defiance; deliverance; jubilation and triumph; judgment and reckoning; regeneration; spiritual progress; and transcendence. Each thematic section is prefaced by an interpretive statement, and the volume introduction discusses the historical background and analyzes the basic poetics of the spirituals with regard to structure, prosody, and figures of speech. Selective bibliographies of song collections and historical and theoretical works are included as well. The lyrics are indexed by title and by first line, and a general index provides access to topics, themes, persons, and places. The spirituals are pervasive in Afro-American life, and this collection will be a basic resource for researchers in all aspects of Afro-American culture, religion, and history, and useful, as well, for musicologists.

Designed to meet the needs of high school students, undergraduates, and general readers, this encyclopedia is the most comprehensive reference available on African American literature from its origins to the present. Other works include many brief entries, or offer extended biographical sketches of a limited selection of writers. This encyclopedia surpasses existing references by offering full and current coverage of a vast range of authors and topics. While most of the entries are on individual authors, the encyclopedia gathers together information about the genres and geographical and cultural environments in which these writers have worked, and the social, political, and aesthetic movements in which they have participated. Thus the encyclopedia gives special attention to the historical and cultural forces that have shaped African American writing. - Publisher.