The history of African Americans is explored in their writings, narratives, letters, editorials, speeches, lyrics, & folktales, from U.S. colonial times to today. Here is the most comprehensive collection of African-American writing to date and includes poetry, prose, speeches, songs, documents, and letters from the pre-Colonial era through today's best and most well-known writers. An anthology that anyone interested in the full scope of African-American history should not be without. The history of African-American life and thought presented in this anthology represents a far-reaching written and oral tradition, which is thought-provoking, inspiring, and impressive in its breadth. It includes poetry and prose by today's best and most well-known writers.

First Africans in North America -- Olaudah Equiano -- Early slave revolts : Report of Gov. Hunter on the New York Slave Conspiracy (1712) -- Lucy Terry -- Jupiter Hammon -- African-Americans in the American Revolution -- Phillis Wheatley -- Benjamin Banneker -- Slave revolts -- Testimony on Gabriel's Revolt (1800) ; Testimony on the Vesey Conspiracy (1822) -- Founding of the African-American press : from Freedom's Journal (1827) -- Colonization debate -- David Walker -- Nat Turner -- George Moses Horton -- Amistad Case (1839) -- Convention movement, 1830-1864 : Address...from the Colored National Convention of 1848 -- Henry Highland Garnet -- Martin Delany -- Declaration of the principles of the National Emigration Convention (1854) -- Case of Dred Scott -- Frederick Douglass -- Harriet Ann Jacobs -- from Clotel / William Wells Brown -- Harriet E. Wilson -- Sojourner Truth -- Harriet Tubman -- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper -- John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry -- Emancipation Proclamation -- New York Draft Riots -- Henry Highland Garnet -- African-Americans in the Civil War -- Folk culture & literature -- Spirituals -- Civil War Amendments -- Reconstruction --Freedman's Bureau ; South Carolina Black Code ; Frederick Douglass's speech to the 32nd Annual Convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society ; Blanche K. Bruce's speech to the U.S. Senate ; Henry Turner's speech to the Georgia Legislature ; Petition from Kentucky citizens on Ku Klux Klan violence -- Exodusters -- Charles Chesnutt -- Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Booker T. Washington -- W.E.B. Du Bois -- Ida Wells-Barnett -- Mary Church Terrell -- Anna Julia Cooper -- Plessy v. Ferguson -- Niagara Movement -- Founding of the NAACP -- Jack Johnson -- James Weldon Johnson -- Great migration, 1910-1920 : from The Chicago defender -- Red Summer of 1919 -- Marcus Garvey -- Alain Locke -- Claude McKay -- Langston Hughes -- Jean Toomer -- Countee Cullen -- Zora Neale Hurston -- Scottsboro cases -- Joe Louis -- Sterling Brown -- Robert Hayden -- Richard Wright -- A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement (1942) ; Executive order 8802 -- Truman integrates the military : Executive order 9981 (1948) -- Paul Robeson -- Gwendolyn Brooks -- Ralph Ellison -- James Baldwin -- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka -- Martin Luther King -- Songs of the Civil Rights Movement -- Kwanzaa --Malcolm X -- Eldridge Cleaver -- Black Panther Party -- Amiri Baraka -- Kerner Commission -- African-Americans in the Vietnam War -- Maya Angelou -- Alice Walker -- Jesse Jackson -- Rap music -- Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings -- L.A. riots : Maxine Waters's testimony.