Africans and their progeny but also celebrates Af-
rican Americans’ history of transcendence. Call
and Response comes with an accompanying CD,
which includes BOOKER T. WASHINGTON’s original
1895 “Atlanta Exposition Address,” as well as “The
Message,” a rap song popularized by Grandmaster
Flash and the Furious Five.
Each section contains selections from both the
oral and written tradition, including proverbs, folk
tales, slave narratives, music, orations, fiction, po-
etry, and essays. A truly inclusive volume in refer-
ence to the contributors and their works, Call and
Response also presents both traditional and evolv-
ing theories. Contributors are vast; ideologies are
vast as well, ranging from OLAUDAH EQUIANO, who
signaled the earliest stages of the African-Ameri-
can literary tradition in the 18th century, to key
abolitionist orators of the 19th century, including
to Washington’s 1895 conciliatory speech at the
Atlanta Exposition, in which he advocates harmo-
nious racial segregation with white supremacy and
black subservience, to HARLEM RENAISSANCE writ-
ers, including CLAUDE MCKAY, who writes in the
spirit of the “New Negro,” the spirit of militancy
and rebellion, to the new Renaissance writings of
the 1960s, characterized as the BLACK ARTS MOVE-
MENT, led by AMIRI BARAKA and LARRY NEAL. The
range of writers since the 1960s is vast, including
notable black women fiction and nonfiction writ-
ers. TONI MORRISON, Pulitzer Prize–winning au-
thor of BELOVED, leads this category. In addition to
the informative and comprehensive introductions
to the various historical eras, Call and Response of-
fers valuable information about each author and
his or her theoretical persuasion.
Finally, the headnotes provided by Hill are both
detailed and scholarly, placing the African-Ameri-
can experience within a historical, sociopolitical,
and economic perspective. Call and Response has
emerged as a significant volume, documenting the
truly holistic African-American literary experience
from its humble beginnings to the present. Within
three months of its release in 1997, Call and Re-
sponse, a massive volume of 2,039 pages, com-
manded a second printing.
Clenora Hudson WeemsCampbell, Bebe Moore (1950–2006)
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
the daughter of George Linwood Peter Moore and
Doris Carter Moore, Bebe Moore Campbell, nov-
elist and freelance journalist, received a bachelor
of science degree in elementary education from
the University of Pittsburgh. Although known
nationally as an outstanding novelist, Campbell’s
memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and
Without My Dad (1989), was her first published
book. Her coming-of-age story details the sum-
mers she spent in the South with her father, a
paraplegic: “I was seven years old, sitting on the
front steps waiting for my daddy to come and
take me to summer. I can’t remember when this
waiting for my father began.... All I know is, it
became an end-of-June ritual, an annual event,
something I could set my clock by, set my heart
on.” The most poignant description in the novel is
when she tells her childhood friend, Carol, about
her father: “Didn’t she know that my father was a
royal king, plowed down by an enemy in the heat
of the battle? Didn’t she realize that he was good,
completely good, and that his survival was a tes-
timony to his nobility and fortitude?” Campbell’s
memoir is often lauded for its positive portrayal of
a black father-daughter relationship.
In 1999 Campbell published Your Blues Ain’t
Like Mine, her first novel in which, like her mem-
oir, the setting is the South and the North. It is
loosely based on the true story of Emmett Till,
a 14-year-old boy who was brutally murdered
in Mississippi in 1955. This powerful novel be-
gins during the early civil rights era, when a poor
white man, Floyd Cox, murders a black teenager,
Armstrong Todd: “Delotha [Armstrong Todd’s
mother] stared at the battered and swollen body of
her son, spread out on the funeral parlor table. A
strange odor she couldn’t place hovered in the air.”
The novel follows the lives of Delotha and Wydell
Todd from the South and to the North, as well as
explores how the small town of Delta handles the
murder of their son, Armstrong, as well as its own
racist past. Campbell’s exploration of the racism in
the South is contrasted with the story of the vast
black migration to Chicago, which the migrants
equate with going to heaven. However, Delotha and90 Campbell, Bebe Moore