Starting with Lucy Terry of the early eighteenth century and finishing with poet laureate Rita Dove, this inspiring anthology edited by Catherine Clinton captures the enormous talent and passion of black poets. Powerful and diverse, I, Too, Sing America is a forum for voices baring their souls, speaking their minds, tracing their roots and proclaiming their dreams.
Each of the twenty-five poets is introduced with a brief biography and poetry notes to help the listener place their work in context. Included in the anthology is:
- I, Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes
- Bars Fight by Lucy Terry
- Liberty and Peace by Phillis Wheatley
- On Liberty and Slavery by George Moses Horton
- Yes! Strike Again That Sounding String by James M. Whitfield
- Bury Me in a Free Land by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
- The Song of the Smoke by W.E.B. Du Bois
- Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson
- We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar
- The Black Finger by Angelina Weld Grimke
- Your World and Interracial by Georgia Douglas Johnson
- Children of the Sun by Fenton Johnson
- If We Must Die and The White House by Claude McKay
- Beehive by Jean Toomer
- Heritage and To a Dark Girl by Gwendolyn Bennett
- A Black Man Talks of Reaping by Arna Bontemps
- Harlem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Merry-Go-Round, and Cross by Langston Hughes
- Tableau, Saturday's Child, and Incident by Countee Cullen
- Sorrow Home by Margaret Walker
- Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
- Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
- Rites of Passage by Audre Lorde
- In the Year by Amiri Baraka
- The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Nikki Giovanni
- Women by Alice Walker
- Primer by Rita Dove
