LibGuides: Invisible Man: History & Culture

Books

12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright
Call Number: 301.45109 W952 t
Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement by Sterling D. Spero; Abram L. Harris
Call Number: 331.63 S749 b
First-Person America by Ann Banks
Call Number: 973.91 F5272
Eighty narratives originally recorded by members of the Federal Writers' Project. Like other writers of the time, Ellison worked on this Depression-era project from 1938-1942.
New World A-Coming: Inside Black America by Roi Ottley
Publication Date: 1943
New York Panorama by Federal Writers' Project Staff
Call Number: 917.471 F293 ne 1984
Slave Songs of the United States [E-BOOK]
The Harlem Riot of 1943 by Dominic J. Capeci
Call Number: 974.7104 C2373 h

Cultural Contexts

Washington, Booker T. “Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech.”
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of Our Spiritual Strivings."
In The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others."
In The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.
Hughes, Langston. "Cowards from the Colleges."
In Collected Works of Langston Hughes : Fight for Freedom and Related Writing on Civil Rights, Volume 10. Available through Ebrary.
Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy"
1944.
Brown v. Board of Education
Johnson, Charles S. The Shadow of the Plantation.
Available from ACLS Humanities E-book Collection.
Colson, William N. An Analysis of Negro Patriotism.
Andrews, W.T. "The Black Migration."
Go to page 366 in this article from The Journal of Negro History 63.4 (1978).
Gurley, Leo. "Sweet-the-Monkey"
Read Ralph Ellison's transcript of Gurley's tale. Ellison interviewed Gurley as part of the Federal Writers' Project.
Locke, Alain. "Enter the New Negro"
Briggs, Cyril V. "Race Catechism"
In Messenger, September 1918.
Garvey, Marcus. "Africa for the Africans"
Haywood, Harry. Road to Negro Liberation
Available through University of Central Florida Libraries digital collection.
Landy, Avram. Marxism and the Woman Question
McKay, Claude. "Harlem Runs Wild"
In Nation, April 3, 1935.

Music

(What Did I Do to be So) Black and Blue (LYRICS), by Andy Razaf, performed by Louis Armstrong

"The Devil's Son-in-Law" by Peetie Wheatstraw

"No More Auction Block (Many Thousand Gone") - African American Spiritual, performed by Paul Robeson. See the Sweet Chariot: Story of the Spirituals site for lyrics and information about the song.