Living our stories, telling our truths : autobiography and the making of the African-American intellectual tradition

Franklin, V. P. (Vincent P.) 1947- (Author).

Summary: In Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths V. P. Franklin reinterprets the lives and thought of twelve major black American writers and political leaders - including Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Adam Clayton Powell, as well as now lesser known but equally crucial figures, among them Alexander Crummell, who declared black Americans a "chosen people" of the Lord; James Weldon Johnson, a key member of the Harlem Renaissance; Harry Haywood, a Communist Party member who forced the party to recognize the revolutionary potential of the black working class; and reformer, journalist, and women's rights advocate Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the most famous black American woman of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Item details

ISBN: 068912192X
ISBN: 9780689121920
Physical Description: print
464 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Publisher: New York : Scribner, c1995.

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 418-454) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Defining matters of principle / Alexander Crummell -- To tell the truth freely / Ida Wells-Barnett -- The creative genius of the Negro / James Weldon Johnson -- In defense of the Black working class / Harry Haywood -- Conflicting blueprints for Black writing / Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston -- The autobiographical legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois -- The confessions of James Baldwin -- Malcolm X and the resurrection of the dead -- The creation of a Black literary aesthetic / Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka -- The need for independent Black leadership / Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.