This is not to say that white historians have not contributed to the retelling of US national histories that center African Americans - many have.

What is equally inspiring is the rich rethinking of US history by Black writers and historians. Blain, falls in this tradition: an inspiring book of historical observations, poetry, scholarship, and vignettes. called “the Negro Revolution.”įour Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, edited by Ibram X. These were books that, along with so many others, empowered what Martin Luther King Jr. In my high school, they became required reading. These texts were so accessible that teachers passed them on to students. And the third member of this trinity was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings published in 1969, which gave voice to the experiences of young and older Black women who read it. This tome was the literary companion to Lerone Bennett Jr.’s Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America 1619–1962 originally published in 1962 by Black-owned Johnson Publishing Company. A scholar of Jewish descent had edited what seemed to us a revolutionary volume as handy as Muhammad Speaks or the Black Panther Black Community News Service. The volume included essays, novel chapters, poetry, and short stories of a considerable pantheon - Baldwin, Brooks, Du Bois, Evans, Hayden, Hughes, Petry, Walker, and so many more.

IN THE FALL OF 1970, when I entered high school in Chicago, I was introduced to Margaret Walker’s poetry through an anthology, Abraham Chapman’s edited collection Black Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Literature.

Margaret Walker, “The Struggle Staggers Us” The struggle staggers usįor bread, for pride, for simple dignity. Our birth and death are easy hours, like sleepĪnd food and drink.

Four hundred souls review