Henry Louis Gates

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves....

In this 1939 novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith. Narrated in a mixture of biblical rhetoric, black dialect, and colloquial English, Hurston traces Moses's life from the day he is launched into the Nile river in a reed basket, to his development as a great magician, to his transformation...

Hurston's first novel, published in 1934, tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Even after becoming a popular pastor at Zion Hope where his sermons rouse his congregation, he has to confess that he's far from perfect. In this sympathetic portrait of a man, Zora Neale Hurston shows that good intentions cannot resolve the tension between the spiritual and physical.

When her master is betrothed to a woman who conceals a tragic secret, Hannah Crafts, a young slave on a wealthy North Carolina plantation, runs away in a bid for her freedom up North. Pursued by slave hunters, imprisoned by a mysterious and cruel captor, held by sympathetic strangers, and forced to serve a demanding new mistress, she finally makes her way to freedom in New Jersey. An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in...

An anthology of the works of 120 black writers, spanning two centuries, beginning with Lucy Terry's poem, Bars Fight. The anthology features poems, novels, essays, journals, spirituals, gospel, sermons, jazz--for a total of 2,700 pages.