12 Million Black Voices

by Richard Wright, David Bradley (Introduction), Noel Ignatiev (Foreword by)

Overview

12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, rundown farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in 1930s America—their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text eloquently narrates the story of these 90 pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. Also included are new prefaces by Douglas Brinkley, Noel Ignatiev, and Michael Eric Dyson. "Among all the works of Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry, ... passion, ... and of love."—David Bradley "A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised."—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781560254461
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/16/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	166
Sales rank:	131,777
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard Wright is among this country's most widely recognized and critically acclaimed authors. His books Native Son and Black Boy represent pivotal developments in American literature, politics, and culture.

Date of Birth:

September 4, 1908

Date of Death:

November 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Near Natchez, Mississippi

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Smith-Robertson Junior High in Jackson, Mississippi (1925)

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreward

Part One

Our Strange Birth

Part Two

Inheritors of Slavery

Part Three

Death on the City Pavements

Part Four

Men in the Making

About the Photographs

Editorial Reviews

This long-out-of-print photographic documentary was first published in 1941. The excellent black-and-white picturesby such renowned photographers as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn et al. and culled from the Farm Security Administration files compiled during the Depressioncapture the wretchedness of Southern rural shantytown and urban ghetto, but also reveal a people's unstinting, stately determination to survive with mind, body and dignity intact. Wright's (Native Son) text is a denunciation of American bigotry directed at the national conscience. He discusses each phase of black American social evolution: the horrors of the slave trade; the degradation of plantation life; the lynchings and violence after Reconstruction; and the great migration of blacks to Northern cities following World War I. Wright anchors his economic analyses to profiles of individual lives, providing a sense of the obstacles black families faced simply to stay together. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

“Among all the works of Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry, of passion, of lyricism, and of love” —David Bradley

“Short text and picture folk history of the Black American, in which the author of Native Son writes a burning commentary on three centuries of slavery, persecution, and want...Edwin Rosskam, the photographic editor, reinforces the text with superb photographs” —The New Yorker

“A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised… flawless prose that takes on at times the quality of a folksong” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher