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The second volume of "The Voice of the Negro", was published in January 1905. This volume is split up into different numbers going all the way to Number 12. This is released on a monthly basis and is shown next to the title of the Journal.
The credited editors on this Volume Two No. 1 are Benjamin Brawley, Corporal Simmons, Mary Terrell, Bishop Warren Candler, Rev. Dr. Bradley, William Ward, W. E. B. DuBois, Kelly Miller, W.H. Council, Dr. Landrum, James Corrothers, Gardner Goldsby, Alice Ward Smith, and Silas Floyd.
"The Voice of the Negro" first opens with a Monthly Review, which would consist of events that are happening within that year and some insight as to some congressional decisions that had occurred within that year. This journal also includes pieces that are written by the editors discussing a variety of topics. These to...
The credited editors in Vol. Two No. 2 were Gardner Goldsby, Pauline E. Hopkins, Wellington Adams, Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Daniel Murray, John Henery Adams, and newer material from W.E.B DuBois, Silas X. Floyd, and W. S. Scarborough.
The third volume of The Voice of the Negro, was published in January 1906. This volume continued the same structure as the previous volumes by releasing twelve different installments corresponding to the year's months.
Vol. 3 No. 1 had contributions from Asa Thombson, William Pickens, T.H. Malone, J.W.E. Bowen, G.A. Lee, W.E.B. DuBois, Mrs. L.K. Wiggins, and Benjamin G. Brawley
Vol. 3 No. 2 had contributions from Alice Ward Smith, Mary White Ovington, J.H. Gray, T.H. Malone, John Henry Adams, Florence Bentley, Daniel Murray, M.A. Majors, Joseph Manning, William Maxwell, John Jenifer, and Silas Floyd
Vol. 3 No. 3 had contributions from Azalia Marlen, Henry Proctor, James Corrothers, Daniel Murray, Will Hendrickson, W.E.B. DuBois, T. THomas Fortune, Lida Wiggins, S.H. Archer, C.C. Poindexter, Anna Comstock, Fanny Williams, and Henery Middleton
The fourth volume of The Voice of the Negro, was published in January 1907. This volume continued the same structure as the previous volumes by releasing twelve different installments corresponding to the year's months. This was the last volume produced by The Voice of the Negro.
The first issue of vol. Four was a conjoined issue with content from January and February of 1907, this issue had contributions from J. Francis Lee, Jasper Phillips, John Daniels, Alexnder Chamberlain, W.S. Scarboroguh, Joseph B. Foraker, Lena Lewis, Russell Fleming, Azalia Martin, John Fraser, Daniel Thompson, John Wo...
The second issue of vol. Four was released in March of 1907 and consisted of contributions from Chas Mayberry, A.D. Delaney, Edward E. Wilson, Will H. Hendrickson, Alexander F. Chamberlain, W.E.B DuBois, W.S. Scarborough, J.E. Bruce, Florence Bentley, William Pickens, John Henery Adams, Mary Church Terrell, Florence Le...
"Praise Song for the Day" is an occasional poem written by the American poet Elizabeth Alexander and delivered at the 2009 presidential inauguration of President Barack Obama. The poem is the fourth to be delivered at a United States presidential inauguration, following in the tradition of recitals by Robert Frost (Joh...
It consists of fourteen unrhymed three-line stanzas (tercets) and a one-line coda. Delivered directly after Obama's inaugural address, it received a lukewarm response and was criticized as "too prosaic." Graywolf Press published the poem in paperback 6 February 2009, with a first printing of 100,000 copies.
Adam Kirsch called the poem "bureaucratic verse."
"Ballad of Birmingham" is a poem by Dudley Randall, that he published as a broadside in 1965. It was written in response to the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The poem was set to music by folk singer Jerry Moore in 1967 after he read it in a newspaper, and features on his album "...
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote the poem when he was seventeen and crossing the Mississippi River on the way to visit his father in Mexico. It was first published the following year in "The Crisis", starting Hughes's literary career. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" u...
Langston Hughes was born in 1902, in Missouri. He attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio, where he first began writing. He graduated from Central High School in 1917. Several years after graduating high school, Hughes decided to travel to Mexico City and live with his father, whom he did not know well. He left in 1920...
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.</poem>
Twenty years after its publication, Hughes suggested the poem be turned into a Hollywood film, but the project never went forward.
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is one of Hughes's earliest poems and is considered to mark the beginning of his career as a poet. Sandra Merriweather in the "Encyclopedia of American Poetry" considered the poem to be one of Hughes's best works, and it has been described as his "signature" poem. However, it has also been ...
Hughes wrote the poem while the Great Migration, a movement of African Americans out of the Southern United States and into Northern cities like Chicago, was ongoing. William Hogan, a scholar, places Hughes's poem in the context of this vast uprooting of population, noting that it "recognizes the need for a new kind of...
The scholar Allan Burns feels that the poem is written from the perspective of a "'soul' or 'consciousness' of black people in general" rather than Hughes himself. Burns also notes the progression of rivers through the poem from the Euphrates to the Mississippi follows a chronology of history "from the Garden of Eden [...
In his early writing, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", Hughes was inspired by American poet Carl Sandburg. Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues that part of the poem reinterprets Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo", by portraying the Congo River as "a pastoral nourishing, maternal setting." Hughes references the spiritual "Dee...
The poem has been cited as becoming "the voice of the Association [NAACP] itself," along with "Song of the Son" by Jean Toomer and editorials that Du Bois wrote. One of Hughes's most reprinted works, the poem had been reprinted at least eleven times within ten years of publication, including in the 1925 anthology "The ...
After Hughes died on May 22, 1967, his ashes were interred in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem under a cosmogram that was inspired by "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". The cosmogram is entitled "Rivers" and was designed by "Houston Conwill". In the center of the cosmogram is the line: "My soul h...
Pearl Primus, a dance choreographer, developed a work based on the poem.
Keeping the Night Watch is a children's poetry book written by Hope Anita Smith and illustrated by E. B. Lewis. Published by Square Fish Books as the sequel to Smith's "The Way a Door Closes", it was a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book and appeared on several best children's book lists in 2009.
The book is a series of poems from the perspective of thirteen-year-old C.J. Washington III, the narrator from Smith's 2003 poetry book "The Way a Door Closes." While the prequel captures the experiences and emotions of a family abandoned by their father, "Keeping the Night Watch" explores C.J.'s subsequent struggles w...
"The Weary Blues" is a poem by American poet Langston Hughes.
Written in 1925, "The Weary Blues" was first published in the Urban League magazine, "". It was awarded the magazine's prize for best poem of the year. The poem was included in Hughes's first book, a collection of poems, also entitled "The Weary Blues". (Four poems from the book, although not the title poem, inspired t...
Langston Hughes was known as one of the most prominent and influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, a rebirth movement of African Americans in the arts during the 1920s. He wrote about the world around him, giving a voice to African Americans during a time of segregation. Hughes was both a contributor and support...
Hughes wrote of inequality ("I, Too”), of resilience ("Mother to Son" and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"), of pride ("My People"), of hope ("Freedom's Plow"), and of music ("The Trumpet Player" and "Juke Box Love Song"). He was the author of several novels, a memoir, song lyrics, children's books, plays, countless songs ...
"The Weary Blues" takes place at an old Harlem bar on Lenox Avenue. There is a piano player playing the blues. As he plays, the speaker observes his body movement and the tone of his voice. Throughout the poem, several literary devices are used to guide the reader through the mixture of emotions the blues player is fee...
The music in “The Weary Blues” is a metaphor for life as a black man. The color in the poem is symbolic of the black struggle. It starts with slave spirituals in which “slaves calculatingly created songs of double-entendre as an intellectual strategy” as Hughes does in his poem. When he says, “I heard a Negro play” he ...
However, the poem is a celebration of blues. In lines eleven, fourteen and sixteen there are apostrophes to the blues. “O Blues!” and “Sweet Blues” are the speaker's exclamations of delight. He just cannot contain himself when it comes to the blues. He even notices the musician enjoying the music and adds the onomatopo...
"The Weary Blues" is one of Hughes's most famous poems. Critics have claimed that the poem is a combination of blues and jazz with personal experiences. It embodies blues as a metaphor and form. It has also been coined as one of the first works of blues performance in literature. Throughout the poem, music is seen as n...
Langston Hughes slow jams "The Weary Blues" (1925) to jazz accompaniment with the Doug Parker Band on the CBUT (CBC Vancouver) program "The 7 O'Clock Show" in 1958. Host, Bob Quintrell introduces the performance.
"If We Must Die" is a poem by Claude McKay published in the July 1919 issue of "The Liberator". McKay wrote the poem as a response to mob attacks by white Americans upon African-American communities during Red Summer. The poem does not specifically reference any group of people, and has been used to represent many grou...
During the Red Summer, from late summer to early autumn 1919, there was a wave of anti-black attacksat least twenty-five major "mob actions". In the attacks, hundreds of people were killed and thousands more were injured. James Weldon Johnson coined the term "Red Summer" to refer the period. Claude McKay was born in Ja...
McKay experienced the Red Summer personally, seeing violent mobs of white people while he worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He wrote "If We Must Die" in response to the events. The sonnet was first published in the July 1919 issue of "The Liberator".
Frank Harris had sought to convince McKay to publish the poem in his "Pearson's Magazine" and was angry when it was not, telling McKay "It belongs to me ... I gave you the inspiration to write that sonnet and I want to have the credit of publishing it." The poem was reprinted in "The Messenger" and the "Workers' Dreadn...
Tonya Foster wrote that McKay's poem turned those who were persecuted into heroes and described it as a "call to arms for workers". By using "we" repeatedly, McKay extends his poem to whoever the poem reaches. It is a nonspecific poemthere are no phrases tying it to a specific group or raceand can apply to any group un...
McKay wrote the poem as a Shakespearean sonnet, using a 'ababcdcdefef' rhyming pattern across three quatrains and ending with a "perfectly rhymed" couplet. The poem begins with eight lines written as conditional sentences (if/then) centered around "the inevitable death" of the subject. The next six lines are a separate...
The scholar Robert A. Lee provided a close reading of the poem in "CLA Journal". He noted that "If We Must Die" is structured to develop with imagery. It begins the subject being described as "hogs" who are "hunted" and "penned" by "animals". In the second quatrain, the animals have become "monsters" and the hogs are h...
The poem was recited in the film "August 28: A Day in the Life of a People", which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. Eric Robert Taylor wrote a book about insurrections during the Atlantic slave trade and titled it "If We Must Die" after the poe...
"Let America Be America Again" is a poem written in 1935 by American poet Langston Hughes. It was originally published in the July 1936 issue of "Esquire Magazine". The poem was republished in the 1937 issue of "Kansas Magazine" and was revised and included in a small collection of Langston Hughes poems entitled "A New...
The poem speaks of the American dream that never existed for the lower-class American and the freedom and equality that every immigrant hoped for but never received. In his poem, Hughes represents not only African Americans, but other economically disadvantaged and minority groups as well. Besides criticizing the unfai...
The title of this poem was used by Democratic United States senator John Kerry as a campaign slogan in his 2004 presidential campaign.
Afro-Surrealism or Afrosurrealism is a literary and cultural aesthetic. In 1974, Amiri Baraka used the term to describe the work of Henry Dumas. D. Scot Miller in 2009 wrote his famous "Afrosurreal Manifesto" in which he says, "Afro-Surrealism sees that all 'others' who create from their actual, lived experience are su...
Afro-Surrealism, in its origins and its ethos as a movement, is global and diasporic. It is practiced and embodied in music, photography, film, the visual arts and poetry. Notable practitioners of Afro-Surrealism include Ted Joans, Bob Kaufman, Krista Franklin, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, René...
The AfroSurreal arts movement came about after D. Scot Miller penned "The Afrosurreal Manifesto" for The San Francisco Bay Guardian in May, 2009. Until that time, the term "Afrosurreal Expressionism" was used solely by Amiri Baraka to describe the writings of Henry Dumas. Later that year, Miller spoke with Baraka about...
Afro-Surrealism incorporates aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude and Black Radical Imagination as described by Professor Robin DG Kelley in his definitive work Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2003), and further with his Afrosurreal historical anthology, "Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writing...
Though much has been written and said about artist/activist/statesmen Aimé Césaire, much more needs to written about his partner Suzanne, a surrealist thinker and an important figure in the history of the Afrosurreal aesthetic . Her quest for “The Marvelous” over the “miserablism” expressed in the usual arts of protest...
“The true task of mankind consists solely in the attempt to bring the marvelous into real life,” Ménil says in “Introduction to the Marvelous,”[1930s] “so that life can become more encompassing. So long as the mythic imagination is not able to overcome each and every boring mediocrity, human life will amount to nothing...
Suzanne Césaire’s proclamation, “Be in permanent readiness for The Marvelous,” quickly became a credo of the movement; the word “marvelous” has since become re-contextualized with regard to contemporary black arts and interventions.
In his 1956 essay for "Présence Africaine," Haitian novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis wrote:" "What, then, is the Marvellous, except the imagery in which a people wraps its experience, reflects its conception of the world and of life, its faith, its hope, its confidence in man, in a great justice, and the explanation whi...
The term "Afro-Surrealism" was coined by Amiri Baraka in his 1974 essay on Black Arts Movement avant-garde writer Henry Dumas. Baraka notes that Dumas is able to write about ancient mysteries that were simultaneously relevant to the present day. The idea that the past resurfaces to haunt the present day is crucial to A...
Unlike Afro-Futurism which speculates on possibilities in the future, Afrosurrealism, as Miller describes, is about the present. "Rather than speculate on the coming of the four horseman, Afrosurrealists understand that they rode through too long ago. Through Afrosurrealism, artists expose this form of the future past ...
Much of Afro-Surrealism is concerned with the everyday life because it is said that there is nothing more surreal than the Black experience. According to Terri Francis, "Afrosurrealism is art with skin on it where the texture of the object tells its story, how it weathered burial below consciousness, and how it emerged...
In the manifesto from which present day Afrosurrealism is based, writer D. Scot Miller states in a response to Afrofuturism:
"Afro-Futurism is a diaspora intellectual and artistic movement that turns to science, technology, and science fiction to speculate on black possibilities in the future. Afro-Surrealism is about the present. There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future. Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, fam...
As The AfroSurreal Manifesto and Afrofuturism come to the fore in artistic, commercial and academic circles, the struggle between the specific and “the scent” of present-day manifestations of Black absurdity has come with it, posing interesting challenges to both movements. For Afrofuturists, this challenge has been me...
"Zong!," M. NourbSe Philip and Setaey Adamu Boateng.
nappy edges is a collection of poetry and prose poetry written by Ntozake Shange and first published by St. Martin's Press in 1978. The poems, which vary in voice and style, explore themes of love, racism, sexism, and loneliness. Shange's third book of poetry, "nappy edges," was met with positive reviews and praise fro...
The collection is divided into five sections of poetry and prose. The first section, "things i wd say", contains an opening essay on the nature of poetry called "takin a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative", and is followed by four more sections: "love & other highways", "closets", "& she bleeds", and "whis...
The subtitle of the collection is "the roots of your hair/what turns back when we sweat, run, make love, dance, get afraid, get happy: the tell-tale sign of living." The salient themes of the various writings within "nappy edges" all can be tied back to the multifaceted existence and complicated identities of black wom...
Many of Shange's poems are about poetry itself—what it means to write it and what it means to read it. In "takin a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative", she implores black writers to cultivate the kinds of distinctive and original voices that we appreciate and expect from black musicians. Her fear is that b...
In "inquiry", Shange explains the importance that poems elicit a visceral reaction out of the reader in the same way that a kiss or cold water would. Following this expectation, Shange focusses some of her poems on the responsibility of the poet to the reader. Generally speaking, the poet is expected to speak on behalf...
Shange also looks at what it means to be a black woman poet when the world of poetry is dominated by white men. Particularly during this historical moment in the late 1970s, not long after the Black Arts Movement which was a very male-dominated and patriarchal movement, Shange's position as a black woman poet is ground...
Stories of love and relationships can be found in each section of "nappy edges". Shange explores how traditional gender dynamics can mistreat women. From manipulative men who take advantage of women sexually, to women who stand up for themselves, each poem tells a different story. Shange explores love and relationships...
Although the women in Shange's poems are self-sufficient, there is still an overarching theme of loneliness throughout "nappy edges". Rather than dwelling on this loneliness, Shange focusses on the theme of self-care as a woman and as a poet. It is clear from these poems that being a woman and being a poet in a patriar...
Shange is also incredibly influenced by music, particularly Jazz and Blues artists. Her poems are lyrical and sometimes reminiscent of the style of improvisation in jazz. "i live in music", for instance, is explicitly about Shange's love of music, and doesn't stick to a particular rhythm or meter (like most of her poem...
"Note on Commercial Theatre" is a poem by Langston Hughes written in 1940 and republished in 2008.
Langston Hughes was a prominent writer during the Harlem Renaissance, which is obvious in most of his poetry. Hughes writes about the issues of the day, and "Note on Commercial Theatre" is no different.
During the Harlem Renaissance, one of the main controversies was that African American culture became the "vogue" of the day. This included interest not only in black writing and art, but in the rising jazz and theatre scenes as well. Harlem became the hot spot for this new black culture; both black and whites explored...
Hughes was a huge proponent of creating a separate black identity and art, hence the extreme antipathy within "Note on Commercial Theatre" to black culture being absorbed by whites. This is reflected in his use of an experimental form for his poem; there is a lack of rhyme scheme and no discernible rhythm to the lines....
This vogue of African American culture became a controversy because not only was it becoming meshed with white culture in a time when the Pan-African movement was strong and blacks were trying to create a separate identity, but "Note on Commercial Theatre" also shows an anxiety over the dependence of black culture on w...
"Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria" is a two-page poem by Langston Hughes, accompanied by illustrations by Walter Steinhilber, which takes the form of a parody of a magazine advertisement. The poem was first published in "The New Masses" in December 1931 and later in Hughes's autobiography of that time period, "The...
The poem was composed in response to a multi-page advertisement for the new $28 million hotel Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. The Great Depression had begun to hit New Yorkers and disproportionately affected minorities in the city. The disparity between the rich and poor was widening at the onset of the Depression a...
"The hotel opened at the very time when people were sleeping on newspapers in doorways, because they had no place to go. But suites in the Waldorf ran into thousands a year, and dinner in the Sert Room was ten dollars! (Negroes, even if they had the money, couldn't eat there. So naturally, I didn't care much for the Wa...
The poem is viewed as a response to the economic milieu as well as cultural, racial, and class issues. "Advertisement for the Waldorf Astoria" is frequently grouped together with Hughes's other radical leftist writings of the 1930s. When Hughes first submitted his manuscript for "The Big Sea", Carl Van Vechten found th...
When it was published in "The Big Sea" in 1940 Richard Wright wrote of the poem that it exemplified the toughness of Hughes that he could approach even the solidarity he feels with the working class with "humor, urbanity, and objectivity".
Dancing the Dream is a 1992 book of poems and reflections written by the American recording artist Michael Jackson. His second book, it followed his 1988 autobiography "Moonwalk". "Dancing the Dream" was dedicated to his mother, Katherine, and Deepak Chopra. Its foreword was written by Jackson's friend, the actress Eli...
"Dancing the Dream" was published by Doubleday on June 18, 1992, seven months after the release of Jackson's 1991 "Dangerous" album. It was not a significant commercial success. The book was reissued by the British publisher Transworld on July 27, 2009, following Jackson's death the previous month on June 25, 2009.
Jackson dedicated "Dancing the Dream" "with love" to his mother Katherine, and has an introduction written by his longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor.
The volume consists of 46 pieces of poetry and essays. The subjects Jackson writes about are primarily children, animals and the environment. For example, one specific poem titled "Look Again, Baby Seal" promotes environmentalism as Jackson imagines anthropomorphic seals who brood about the fate of being killed by hunt...
"Dancing the Dream" includes approximately 100 photographs. Although the volume was promoted to include previously unreleased photographs of Jackson, some of the photographs had been previously published, such as those that were published in the 1985 Jackson calendar, and others that had been published in magazines suc...
"Dancing the Dream" was first published on June 18, 1992, by Doubleday. It followed Jackson's 1988 autobiography "Moonwalk", which was also published by the American company. Prior to publication, "Dancing the Dream" was hailed by the publishers as a book that would "take us deep into [Jackson's] heart and soul", as we...
A representative for Doubleday (Marly Rusoff) revealed in March 1993 that the company shipped 133,000 copies of the book, and took around 80,000 returns and 3000 reorders. Thus, the project was close to 60% down in total sales. Rusoff stated that the commercial performance of "Dancing the Dream" was low because an anti...
During a Simulchat in 1995, Jackson stated, "I wrote a book called "Dancing the Dream". It was more autobiographical than "Moonwalk", which I did with Mrs. Onassis. It wasn't full of gossip and scandal and all that trash that people write, so I don't think people paid much attention to it, but it came from my heart. It...
"Bury Me in a Free Land" is a poem by African-American writer and abolitionist Frances Harper, written for "The Anti-Slavery Bugle" newspaper in 1858.

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