Early Negro American writers : selections with biographical and and critical introductions / edited by Benjamin Brawley.

An evening thought: salvation by Christ -- A dialogue intitled the kind master and the dutiful servant / Jupiter Hammon -- To the University of Cambridge, in New England -- On the death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield -- To the right honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Secretary of State for North America -- An hymn to the morning -- An hymn to the evening -- On imagination -- Niobe in distress for her children slain by Apollo -- To S. M., a young African painter, on seeing his works -- His Excellency General Washington -- Liberty and peace / Phillis Wheatley -- The interesting narrative of the life of Oloudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa (selection) / Gustavus Vassa -- Letter to the Secretary of State -- A plan of peace-office for the United States / Benjamin Banneker -- A narrative of the proceedings of the Black people during the late awful calamity in Philadelphia (selections) / Richard Allen and Absalom Jones -- A charge delivered to the African Lodge at Menotomy, Mass. / Prince Hall -- A discourse delivered on the death of Captain Paul Cuffe / Peter Williams -- On liberty and slavery -- The slave's complaint -- On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the poet's freedom -- On spring -- Love -- On the truth of the Saviour -- George Moses Horton, Myself / George M. Horton -- Appeal (selections) / David Walker -- The mournful lute, or the preceptor's farewell -- Poem composed for the soirée of the vigilant committee of Philadelphia / Daniel A. Payne -- Truth stranger than fiction (selection) / Josiah Henson -- Visit of a fugitive slave to the grave of Wilberforce / William Wells Brown -- My bondage and my freedom (selections) -- American slavery (selection) -- What the Black man wants / Frederick Douglass -- The condition, elevation, emigration, and destiny of the colored people of the United States, politically considered (selections) / Martin R. Delany -- America -- How long? -- Prayer of the oppressed -- The misanthropist -- Lines on the death of John Quincy Adams -- The North Star / James M. Whitfield -- Freedom -- The spirit voice / Charles L. Reason -- Vincent Ogé -- A life-day / George B. Vashon -- The day and the war (selection) -- Emancipation in the District of Columbia / James Madison Bell -- Bury me in a free land -- Ethiopia -- Vashti -- President Lincoln's Proclamation of Freedom -- Fifteenth amendment / Frances E. W. Harper -- Hope for Africa (selection) / Alexander Crummell.

"In this anthology, the black man speaks for himself. Beginning with the earliest published work of an American Negro, selections in this volume cover the period of 1761 through the Civil War years. Varying greatly in education and technical skill, from self-taught slave to college-trained scholar, the writers in this collection did much to shape the developing culture of Black America. Prof. Brawley prefaces each selection with a biographical account of its author, and with sympathetic but objective critical analysis of the work presented. His introduction gives a valuable overview of Negro literature in this early period, telling the reader who black writers were and what were the issues, political, social and moral, which concerned them as they wrote." -- from the back cover.

From the library of Roscoe and Oletta Proctor.