A major new collection of fiction, poetry, and criticism by outstanding black writers.

Fiction.The cotillion (Foreward) / John Oliver Killens -- The numbers writer / Robert Deane Pharr -- Mary's convert / Cyrus Colter -- Three men / Ernest J. Gaines -- We who came after / Ronald L. Fair -- A time to mourn / Etheridge Knight -- A good long sidewalk / William Melvin Kelley -- Bright an' mownin' star / Mike Thelwell -- Chicken Hawk's dream / Al Young -- A solo song : for Doc / James Alan McPherson -- A house divided / Jeanne A. Taylor -- The life and loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger (Prologue) / Cecil Brown -- The long sell / Victor Steven Walker -- Rehabilitation and treatment / Joe Martinez. Poetry. Riot / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Ballad of the hoppy-toad / Margaret Walker -- The dream (1863) / Robert Hayden -- Ka 'Ba ; Sacred chant for the return of black spirit and power / Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) -- The scuba diver recovers the body of a drowned child ; The old gory ; For a black poet / Gerald W. Barrax -- Cathexis / F.J. Bryant, Jr. -- The great Santa Barbara oil disaster or : i rode with geronimo ; Confession to Malcolm / Conyus -- Lonely woman ; I'm a worker ; Suppression ; The rising / Jayne Cortez -- First claims poem ; urban dream / Victor Hernandez Cruz -- Whitey, baby ; Black man, 13th floor ; For "Mr. Dudley," a black spy ; Panther man / James A. Emanuel -- Vive noir! / Mari Evans -- Reading Walt Whitman ; Europe ; Lullaby for Ann-Lucian / Calvin Forbes -- My poem / Nikki Giovanni -- Something old, something new ; The realist ; The excuse / Carl H. Greene -- blackgoldblueswoman ; today is not like they said-- / Kirk Hall -- A mother speaks : the Algiers Motel incident, Detroit ; High modes : vision as ritual : confirmation ; Zocalo ; The guerrilla-cong / Michael S. Harper -- My baby ; A daddy poem / William J. Harris -- The anti-semanticist / Everett Hoagland -- Old love butchered (Colorado Springs and Huachuca) ; Trellie ; I do not know the power of my hand ; There is a nation / Lance Jeffers -- I have seen them ; When a woman gets blue ; Be you ; The silent prophet ; July 27 ; The poet the dreamer / Norman Jordan -- Cocoa morning ; Heavy water blues ; Geneology / Bob Kaufman -- The warden said to me the other day ; Crazy pigeon ; A WASP woman visits a black junkie in prison ; It was a funky deal ; For Langston Hughes / Etheridge Knight -- Suncoming ; Remnant ghosts at dawn ; Lines to the black oak / Oliver LaGrone -- One sided shoot-out ; a poem to complement other poems / Don L. Lee -- Generation ; New York City 1970 ; Coal / Audre Lorde -- Sometimes I go to Camarillo & sit in the lounge ; Lacrimas or there is a need to scream / K. Curtis Lyle -- Sally : Twelfth Street ; Brothers at the bar ; Souvenir ; The twenty grand (Saturday night on the block) / Naomi Long Madgett -- Vietnam #4 ; Self world / Clarence Major -- The African thing ; The hungry black child ; the pruning ; mulch / Adam David Miller -- The middle passage and after ; Harlem gallery : from the inside ; Lady's days / Larry Neal -- Changed mind (or the day i woke up) ; Black Henry ; I wonta thank ya / Tejumola Ologboni (Rockie D. Taylor) -- What we know ; Black Power ; When I awoke ; A word to the wise is enough ; Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman ; This age / Raymond R. Patterson -- The signs ; Passage / N.H. Pritchard -- Primitives ; The melting pot ; Old Witherington / Dudley Randall -- Parapoetics ; Spearo's blues (or : Ode to a Grecian yearn) ; Definition of nature / Eugene Redmond -- catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church / Ishmael Reed -- Four lines of a black love letter between teachers / Ed Roberson -- liberation/poem ; on watching a world series game / Sonia Sanchez -- What marked the river's flow ; Who collects the pain ; I have spent my life ; It is again ; Moving deep / Stephany -- Inauguration / Lorenzo Thomas -- Poem for the birthday of Huey P. Newton ; The Newark Public Library reading room ; Travois of the nameless / Sotère Torregian -- A day in the life of a poet ; Impressions/of Chicago; for Howlin' Wolf ; you come to me ; The syntax of the mind grips / Quincy Troupe -- autobiography ; your eyes are mirth ; blues for franks wooten ; mud water shango / Tom Weatherly -- Whichway ; black is beautiful ; it is overdue time ; lyrics shimmy like ; Condition blue/dress ; put u red-eye in ; and universals ; tu / Ron Welburn -- The neighborhood house ; Jalapeña gypsies / Jay Wright -- A little more traveling music ; A dance for Ma Rainey ; A dance for militant dilettantes ; Dance of the infidels ; The prestidigitator [1] ; The prestidigitator [2] / Al Young -- Blkartsouth poets -- Racist psycotherapy / Isaac J. Black -- For Walter Washington ; Ray Charles at Mississippi State / Tom Dent -- whi/te boys gone ; The blues (in two parts) ; 2 B BLK ; Food for thought / Val Ferdinand (Kalamu ya Salaam) -- legacy of a brother / Renaldo Fernandez -- A message for Langston / Kush -- Bedtime story ; Black woman throws a tantrum ; I watched little black boys ; First time I was sweet sixteen ; easy way out / Nayo (Barbara Malcolm) -- Shades of Pharoah Sanders blues for my baby / John O'Neal -- Vision from the ghetto ; Freedom hair ; Moon bound / Raymond Washington. Criticism. Dilemma of the Negro novelist in the U.S.A. / Chester Himes -- Remarks at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Conference on the Negro American, 1965 / Ralph Ellison -- Why I left America / James Baldwin -- Black studies : International dimensions / Richard A. Long -- Algiers 1969 : a report on the Pan-African Cultural Festival / Nathan Hare -- Through the prism of folklore : the Black ethos of slavery / Sterling Stuckey -- The legacy of Malcolm X, and the coming of the Black nation / Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) -- Blkartsouth/get on up! / Val Ferdinand (Kalamu ya Salaam) -- Psychology : the Black Bible / Eldridge Cleaver -- Black art : mute matter given force and function / Maulana Ron Karenga -- Hemlock for the artist : Karenga style / James Cunningham -- On revolutionary culture / Emory Douglas -- Culture : Negro, Black and Nigger / Johnetta B. Cole -- The teaching of Afro-American literature / Darwin T. Turner -- Afroamerican literature : the conscience of man / Lance Jeffers -- 19 necromancers from now (introduction) / Ishmael Reed -- The son of my father / Addison Gayle, Jr. -- Some observations on a black aesthetic / Adam David Miller -- An interview with Clarence Major and Victor Hernandez Cruz / Walt Shepperd -- Statement on aesthetics, poetics, kinetics / Al Young. Documents. Statement of basic aims and objectives of the Organization of Afro-American Unity ; Basic Unity Program, Organization of Afro-American Unity / Malcolm X -- Statement of purpose and program / Institute of the Black World -- Program / The Black World Foundation program -- Purposes ; Founding address by C. Eric Lincoln : "The Excellence of Soul" ; Second Annual Awards Banquet. / Black Academy of Arts and Letters.