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In Black Boy, Richard Wright triumphs
over an ugly, racist world by fashioning an inspiring, powerful,
beautiful, and fictionalized autobiography. To help students understand
and appreciate his story in the cultural, political, racial, social,
and literary contexts of its time, this sourcebook provides a rich
source of primary historical documents, collateral readings, and
commentary. The selection of documents is designed
to place in sharp relief the issue of pervasive racism
in American society. Documents include excerpts from other autobiographies
and a novel, legal documents, speeches, and interview, and anthropological
study, magazine and newspaper articles, and contemporary editorials.
From Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington,
and W.E.B. DuBois on the one hand, to Black Codes, Jim Crow laws,
and white supremacist pronouncements on the other, Felgar creates
a dialogue between the voices of oppressed blacks and those of oppressing
whites over the issues of race and racism. Students will be able
to analyze a variety of perspectives on these issues from the earliest
days of the American republic to the present day. Felgar also includes
primary documents on the American dream of success, which
has remained elusive for so any blacks. A chapter on the American
autobiographical tradition places Black Boy squarely
in this genre and shows that Wright was more a believer in the myth
of perpetual upward mobility than he realized. In a chapter called
"The Dream Deferred," documents show how freed blacks
were just as enslaved by new and restrictive laws after the Civil
War as they had been under slavery. Each chapter concludes with
study questions, topics for written or oral examination, and suggested
readings.
In addition, this online sourcebook provides the user access to:
- Reviews by Wright's contemporaries of Black Boy
- Photo gallery of Richard Wright
- Chronology of Wright's life
- Statistical and geographical African-American migration patterns
- Online exhibit of historical photographs on lynching in America
- E-texts of: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass;
Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery; W.E.B. DuBois'
The Souls of Black Folk; Harriet Jacobs' Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; Benjamin
Franklin's The Autobiography; St. Augustine's Confessions;
J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American
Farmer, and excerpts from The Autobiography of Malcolm
X
- Biographical profiles of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington,
W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Jacobs, Benjamin Franklin, J. Hector
St. Jean de Crevecoeur, George Randolph Chester, Ralph Ellison,
and others
- Glossary of cultural references and historical idioms from
Wright's Black Boy
- Web-based study questions
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