Clinton,Catherine.
The Plantation Mistress
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. The first serious look at the lives of white Southern women and their restricted place in society before the Civil War.
Collier, Eugenia W. and Long, Richard A., ed.
Afro-American Writing
. Vol. II. New York:New York University Press, 1972. An anthology of prose and poetry.
Cullen, Countee. “If You Should Go.” In
On These I Stand
. New York:Harper &Row Publishers, Inc., 1925. A short poem with deep significance.
Ellison, Ralph.
Invisible Man
. New York:Random House, Inc., 1947. A young Negro’s experiences in the North and South.
Ferris and Wilson. Black Life. In
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
, 131-232. Chapel Hill, North Carolina:University Press, 1989. A wealth of information on Black life.
Fine, Elsa Honig.
The Afro-American Artist
. New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1973. A very informative book filled with examples of black art from the colonial period to the present.
Hughes, Langston.
The Langston Hughes Reader
. New York:George Braziller, Inc., 1958. This is a compilation of this prolific writer’s novels, stories, plays, poems, songs and essays.
Johnson, James Weldon. “The Creation”. In
God’s Trombones
, 59. New York:The Viking Press, Inc., 1927. A work that captures the imagination of a fundamentalist Negro preacher telling the story of The Creation.
Lemann, Nicholas.
The Promised Land
. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Very readable and informative. Factual information on the Great Black Migration written in the style of a novel.
McKay, Claude. “If We Must Die.” In
Selected Poems of Claude McKay
. Boston:Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1953. A militant poem that students will enjoy reading.
“Southern Blacks/Northern Blacks: Is There A Difference.”
Ebony
XLVI (1991): 52-56. Interesting articles on the personalities of those who live in the North and in the South. The article makes the point that the region where you live can affect the way you view life and your behavior.
X, Malcolm. “Message to the Grass Roots.” In
Malcolm
X
Speaks,
edited by George Breitman, 3-17. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965. A stirring speech given by Malcolm in 1963 at the Detroit Council for Human Rights. This is one of the last speeches he gave before his split with Elijah Muhammed and the Black Muslims.