African-American literature

conjures a “magic” Johnson who achieves at a sin- gular level, but the narrator is also aware that the famous basketball player’ ...

legally free. After hearing “voices” that proclaimed she would become an “instrument of God,” she changed her name to Sojourner ...

Turner, Darwin T. (1931–1989) An educator, humanitarian, literary scholar, editor, and critic, Darwin T. Turner was born in Cinc ...

Services (formerly the Minority Scholars Program) for its youngest graduate ever. It remains one of the oldest ethnic scholarshi ...

the first blow towards the execution” (Barksdale, 164). Gray, who Andrews tells us “takes control of the narrative from the outs ...

both inter- and intra-familial dynamics, life during and in the aftermath of the Great Migration and the Great Depression, and r ...

by her hardworking parents. Found attractive, fa- vored and doted on by family and friends primar- ily because of her light skin ...

516  U Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington (1901) BOOKER T. WASHINGTON’s autobiography, Up from Slavery, records one of the m ...

were greater for the master. On the whole, Wash- ington wrote, slaves were devoted to their masters. He overlooked, for example, ...

candidly explains, “the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of ...

519  V Van Peebles, Melvin (1932– ) Melvin Van Peebles exemplified independent film- making in the late 1960s, and by the earl ...

Van Peebles acted, wrote, produced, directed, and created the musical score for the film, which even- tually had a box office re ...

Donalson, Melvin. Black Directors in Hollywood. Aus- tin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The ...

adopted this appellation, reporting in 1925 that Carlo was “the beneficent godfather of all sophis- ticated Harlem” (quoted in D ...

pulsively amassed over the years. It remains one of the richest scholarly collections for American liter- ary study. Van Vechten ...

A Visitation of Spirits and Its Revival of James Baldwin’s Absent Black Gay Man in Giovanni’s Room.” I n James Baldwin Now, edit ...

525  W Walker, Alice M. (1944– ) Alice Malsenior Walker was born the eighth child of sharecroppers Willie Lee and Minnie Lou G ...

the literary and artistic contributions of African- American women. She had become particularly aware of the need for such tools ...

Ignorance,” “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ,” and “Our Wretchedness in Consequ ...

Walker was found dead in his place of busi- ness shortly after the publication of the third edi- tion of his Appeal. Although lo ...