Early Black American Writers

Everyone is familiar with the rhetoric of reform and humanism, written by whites, which did much to inflame the nation to the point of civil war. Who spoke for the black man during this crucial period of his history? How did he see the issues which bore so directly on himself and his race — present and future? How did he feel about them? In this anthology, the black man speaks for himself. Beginning with the earliest published work of a black American, selections in this volume cover the period