Get it now from Barnes & Noble

Tracing the course of black history in America - from the first slave brought over by Spanish explores in the sixteenth century, to the leaders fighting in Congress for civil rights more than 400 years latter - The African-American Archive is a monumental collection of original documents, straight from the hands, mouths and hearts of those who lived it. Early slave narratives, letters from black soldiers in the Civil War, poems from the Harlem Renaissance, songs from the Jazz Age, speeches galvanizing resistance to Jim Crow, excerpts from the works of the most celebrated contemporary writers, and much more, all combine to create a moving and powerful chronicle of the lives and aspirations of African Americans across nearly five centuries.

From Fredrick Douglass to Barbara Jordan. The African-American Archive presents the words of the many great leaders of the black community as it examines the history of a people and the evolution of a struggle. Selections include David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the world," Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?", W.E.B. Dubois' The Souls of Black Folk, Martin Luther King's speech at the March on Washington (and Malcolm X's impassioned response), along with selections by other legendary figures including Sojourner Truth, Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Kweisi Mfume and Louis Farrakhan. Just as the leaders of the black community have shared their visions of what America should be, the laws of the nation have dictated what America is. Here too are the writs, statutes and decisions that have marked the evolution of the black individual in society: Thomas Jefferson's illuminating first draft of "The Declaration of Independence," where he struggles to balance the concept of American liberty with the ongoing subjugation of the black race (in sharp contrast to his bigoted Notes on Virginia, which is also here): Abraham Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation," promising freedom from bondage, and the subsequent Jim Crow laws that proved promise false for many; the Brown w. Board of Education decision that ruled separate was not equal; and the Congressional Black Caucus's charges of fraud and voter intimidation during the presidential election of 2000.

The African-American Archive also includes a wonderful array of renowned writers, composers, athletes and other figures from black popular culture. The nineteenth-century works of Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley represent some of the first African-American poetic voices: novelists Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison exemplify the emergence of a uniquely African-American literature during the twentieth century; in lyrics filled with fire and rebellion, N.W.A. and Public Enemy document the rise of the hip-hop and the explosion of African Americans onto the world musical stage; and Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali attest to the difficult and often controversial role of the black athlete. Along with the thundering speeches, the landmark legal decisions, the stories and poems by the black community's most acclaimed writers, The African-American Archive gives voice the forgotten many whose names don't appear in the conventional history books. A slave who survived the Middle Passage and would later buy his freedom relates the harrowing realities of the Atlantic Slave Trade; a black Union soldier writes to his family, still held in bondage, in a letter that glows with the promise of freedom; a witness to the Watts Riots of 1965 describes the scene from ground zero as years of frustration erupt into violence. These aren't the careful words of historians, but instead the honest language of those who were there, and the stories they tell are rendered with the poignancy that can be painful or inspiring, but always moving and true. The path of our nation's development has not always been marked by honor, a fact that is nowhere more evident than in the history of Africa. Included here are wrenching testimonials from slaves, journals of the harassment suffered by crusaders for Civil Rights, and first person accounts of individual struggles within an urban obstacle course of crime, drugs and poverty.

But, invariably, for every injustice a voice of defiance has emerged; The African-American Archive collects those voices, and many others, in the first book t encompass every realm in the African-American diaspora - the historical, the political, the artistic - in a single volume. Editor insight into each piece, and weaves these disparate elements into a single narrative. In writings that are vivid, heartbreaking, joyous and direct, the many voices of black America are here in one sweeping and important collection, providing an unparalleled eyewitness account of the African-American journey.

Author Biography: Kai Wright is a freelance writer and journalist based in Washington, D.C. His work on Contemporary issues relevant to black communities around the world has appeared in Salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Village Voice, among other publications. He has been a Pew Fellow in International Journalism and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in Public Policy and international Affairs, and is a former reporter for the Washington Blade newspaper.