Historian Scott Reynolds Nelson recounts how he came to discover the real John Henry, an African-American railroad worker who became a legend in the famous song.

Retells the life of the legendary steel driver of early railroad days who challenged the steam hammer to a steel driving contest.

The life of a 13-year-old Harlem black boy, on his way to becoming a confirmed heroin addict, is seen from his viewpoint and from that of several people around him.

This sizzling revue of the blues and blues infused songs that changed the way the world hears the human heartbeat took New York by storm. Ravishing songs trace the evolution of the blues from Africa to Mississippi to Memphis to Chicago.

This first book-length study of John Oliver Killens aims to help secure his place in literary history and explores his creation of an inspiring Black vernacular art—one that ennobles people of African descent and urges their political liberation. No serious history of the development of the African American novel from the 1950s onward can be written without reference to John Oliver Killens. A two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize and founding chairman of the legendary Harlem Writers Guild, Killens was regarded by many as a spiritual father who inspired a generation of African American novelists with his politically charged works. And yet today he rarely receives proper critical attention. Seeking to strengthen our understanding of this important literary figure, Keith Gilyard departs from standard critical frameworks to reveal Killens’s novels as artful renderings of rich African American rhetorical forms and verbal traditions. Gilyard finds that many critics, adhering to ideals of art for art’s sake or narrative conciseness, are ill-equipped to appreciate the many ways in which Killens’s fiction succeeds. Rejecting the "pure art" position, Killens sought to articulate Black heroism particularly within a family or community context, offering a set of values he deemed liberatory. He focused on rendering noble and polemical characters, and his work represents a distinguished fusion of sociopolitical persuasion (rhetoric) and literary artifact (poetics). To help illuminate such novels as Youngblood (1954), And Then We Heard the Thunder (1962), and The Cotillion (1971), Gilyard examines Killens’s work as an essayist and cultural organizer, highlighting his activism. His life and literary production can be partly characterized, Gilyard suggests, by the African American jeremiad—a major rhetorical form in the Black intellectual tradition expressing faith that America’s destiny is to become an authentic, pluralistic democracy.

John Oliver Killens's politically charged novels And Then We Heard the Thunder and The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His works of fiction and nonfiction, the most famous of which is his novel Youngblood, have been translated into more than a dozen languages. An influential novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and teacher, he was the founding chair of the Harlem Writers Guild and mentored a generation of black writers at Fisk, Howard, Columbia, and elsewhere. Killens is recognized as the spiritual father of the Black Arts Movement. In this first major biography of Killens, Keith Gilyard examines the life and career of the man who was perhaps the premier African American writer-activist from the 1950s to the 1980s. Gilyard extends his focus to the broad boundaries of Killens's times and literary achievement--from the Old Left to the Black Arts Movement and beyond. Figuring prominently in these pages are the many important African American artists and political figures connected to the author from the 1930s to the 1980s--W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Alphaeus Hunton, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte, and Maya Angelou, among others.

Alan Lomax is a legendary figure in American folk music circles. Although he published many books, hundreds of recordings and dozens of films, his contributions to popular and academic journals have never been collected. This collection of writings, introduced by Lomax's daughter Anna, reintroduces these essential writings. Drawing on the Lomax Archives in New York, this book brings together articles from the 30s onwards. It is divided into four sections, each capturing a distinct period in the development of Lomax's life and career: the original years as a collector and promoter; the period from 1950-58 when Lomax was recording thorughout Europe; the folk music revival years; and finally his work in academia.

What up?! Just like to welcome you to this class here at W.F.U. I am Dr. Horatio Honeycutt. As you all know, a class in multicultural studies is required of all entering freshmen, so I¡_m happy that you¡_ve chosen this course to fulfill that requirement. I know that you will find this class stimulating, exciting, and truly challenging. So, welcome again! I¡_m passing out a syllabus for your perusal. This semester you will get aquainted with Black people in the urban ghetto of this city. We will be going on a field-trip into the heart of the ¡rhood to get a firsthand look at how the language is spoken. But I must warn you, before we get to that point you must do a complete overhaul of your perception of Black people. We will have to become as ¡°black¡± as we can be as not to standout and as they say in the hood, ¡°get our asses bumrushed.¡± In other words, we don¡_t want to draw too much attention to ourselves and cause the indigenous population to pummel our bodies into mutilated pieces of DNA. But not to worry, I¡_ve already established communication with some of the more violent elements in the community. See?! You¡_ve already learned your first black word, ¡°bumrush.¡± It means to suddenly bombard without warning; to attack. Put it in your vocabulary, you¡_ll need it. ¡ªKahlil Amani, Jive 101/Ebonics 1619 Khalil Amani offers his take on Black America through both poetry and prose in Hip-Hop-Operations. Amani is a graduate of San Diego Mesa College and the author of Ghetto Religiosity 2000.

For music lovers who've always wanted to play guitar but have been put off by traditional guitar methods, these books get you playing right away without having to pick through heavy theory and music-reading lessons first. Every book in the For Beginners series progresses from the very basics of buying your first instrument through the fundamentals of playing your favorite style of music. 48 pages each with enhanced CD.

Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs “Marcus delivers yet another essential work of music journalism.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic.”—Hilton Als “Greil Marcus is already the most important chronicler of Dylan. But here he outdoes himself.”—Rachel Kushner Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan’s story through seven of his most transformative songs. Marcus’s point of departure is Dylan’s ability to “see myself in others.” Like Dylan’s songs, this book is a work of implicit patriotism and creative skepticism. It illuminates Dylan’s continuing presence and relevance through his empathy—his imaginative identification with other people. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.