Foreword by Ishmael Reed.
I. AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
To My Old Master, Jourdon Anderson (19th century).
From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897).
I Could be a Conjure Doctor and Make Plenty of Money, Lorenzo Ezell (WPA Archives).
My White Folks Treated Us Good, Marriah Hines (WPA Archives).
Don't Guess Names Matter Much No Way. Lizzie Williams (WPA Archives).
From Satchmo, Louis Armstrong (1900-1971).
Remembering Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994).
Somebody Done Hoodoo'd the Hoodoo Man, Al Young (b. 1939).
From The Motion of Light in Water, Samuel R. Delaney (b. 1942).
Granddaddy, Itabari Njeri (b. 1954).
II. FICTION.
The Wife of His Youth, Charles W. Chestnut (1858-1932).
Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston (1881-1960).
Esther, Jean Toomer (1894-1967).
Almos' a Man, Richard Wright (1908-1960).
Headwaiter, Chester Himes (1909-1984).
Like a Winding Sheet, Ann Petry (b. 1911).
The Homecoming, Frank Yerby (b. 1916).
Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin (1924-1987).
Son in the Afternoon, John A. Williams (b. 1925).
To Da-duh in Memoriam, Paule Marshall (b. 1929).
The Jewel in the Lotus, Kristin Hunter (b. 1931).
Recitatif, Toni Morrison (b. 1931).
The Sky is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933).
Five Years Ago, Clarence Major (b. 1936).
The Only Man on Liberty Street, William Melvin Kelley (b. 1937).
The Lesson, Toni Cade Bambara (b. 1939).
Everybody Knew Bubba Riff, John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941).
Alice Walker (b. 1944).
Nineteen Fifty-Five.
To Die of Old Age in a Foreign Country, Brenda Flanagan (b. 1944).
Menagerie, Charles Johnson (b. 1948).
Girl, Jamaica Kincaid (b. 1949).
Kiswana Browne, Gloria Naylor (b. 1950).
The End, Terry McMillan (b. 1951).
The One That Did Not Get Away, Fatima Shaik (b. 1952).
Guess Who's Coming to Seder, Trey Ellis (b. 1962).
Paper Garden, Jerome Wilson (b. 1970).
III. POETRY.
An Evening Thought, Jupiter Hammon (1720?-1806?).
Bars Fight, Lucy Terry (18th Century).
Imagination, Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784).
On Liberty and Slavery, George Moses Horton (1797-1883).
The Slave Auction, Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911).
The Song of Smoke, W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963).
Lift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938).
The Creation: A Negro Sermon.
Sympathy, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).
When Malindy Sings.
We Wear the Mask.
The Tropics in New York, Claude McKay (1891-1948).
The Lynching.
If We Must Die.
Lamda, Melvin B. Tolson (1898-1966).
African China.
After Winter, Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989).
Foreclosure.
Harlem, Langston Hughes (1902-1967).
The Weary Blues.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers.
I. Too, Sing America.
Mother to Son.
Havana Dreams.
Birmingham Sunday.
Frederick Douglas, Robert Hayden (1913-1980).
The Whipping.
Homage to the Empress of the Blues.
The Wise, Countee Cullen (1903-1946).
Incident.
Booker T. and W. E. B., Dudley Randall (b. 1914).
An Answer to Lerone Bennett's Questionnaire on a Name for Black Americans.
Miss Molly Means, Margaret Walker (b. 1915).
October Journey.
First Fight, Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917).
Then Fiddle.
On DeWitt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery.
The Birth in a Narrow Room.
We Real Cool.
Black Muslim Boy in a Hospital, James A. Emmanuel (b. 1921).
Son.
Walking Parker Home, Bob Kaufman (1925-1986).
Battle Report.
Willie, Maya Angelou (1928).
A Far Cry from Africa, Derek Walcott (b. 1930).
Omeros.
Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane, Etheridge Knight (1931-1991).
The Idea of Ancestry.
Haiku.
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. Amiri Baraka (b. 1934).
125th Street and Abomey, Audre Lord (1934-1993).
A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King, Sonia Sanchez King (b. 1934).
My Father's Wars, Collen McElroy (b. 1936).
Queen of the Ebony Isles.
Good Times, Lucille Clifton (b. 1936).
Homage to My Hips.
Quilting.
Railroad Bill, A Conjure Man, Ishmael Reed (b. 1938).
The Reactionary Poet.
Lake Bud.
Blue Ruth, Michael S. Harper (b. 1938).
America.
Time for Tyner.
Folksong.
Worship, Primus St. John (b. 1942).
Church Poem, Joyce Carol Thomas (b. 1942).
Third Eye World, David Henderson (b. 1943).
Death of the Ice Queen.
Poem for My Father, Quincy Troupe (b. 1943).
Wonders, Lorenzo Thomas (b. 1944).
Historiography.
The Old O. O. Blues, O. O. Gabugah (b. 1945).
A Poem for Players.
New and Old Gospel, Nathaniel Mackey (b. 1947).
American Plethora: MacCorporate MacDream, George Barlow (b. 1950).
Rite-ing, Ntozake Shange (b. 1948).
For Billie Holiday, Kofi Natambu (b. 1950).
A History of Faces.
Banneker, Rita Dove (b. 1952).
Canary.
O.
Tokyo Story, Cyrus Cassells (b. 1958).
Africa Says, Carl Phillips (b. 1959).
What Myth Is.
Mujer de Vocanes y Terremotos, Harryette Mullen (b. 1960).
She Landed on the Moon.
The Venus Hottetot, Elizabeth Alexander (b. 1953).
Boston Year.
Knowledge is King, Kool Moe Dee (b. 1962).
The Preserving, Kevin Young (b. 1965).
IV. DRAMA.
He Who Endures, Bill Harris (b. 1941).
Alternate Table of Contents by Theme.
Bibliography.
Index.
Acknowledgments.
