Readings in Black American Music

In this companion volume to The Music of Black Americans, Eileen Southern draws on letters, journals, memoirs, ledgers, books, articles, and even slave advertisements in newspapers to illuminate the story told that historical survey.

The collection includes documents dating from early America through the twentieth century. Monumental figures such as Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northrup, W. E. B. DuBois, W. C. Handy, Ethel Waters, Dizzy Gillespie, Imamu Baraka, and Martha Jackson are represented, as are several complete musical works, by Francis Johnson and others.