Journey toward freedom
1. "Had she been worth the blood?": the lynching of Emmett Till, 1955. Remembrance / Rhoda Gaye Ascher
The better sort of people / John Beecher
A Bronzeville mother loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi mother burns bacon / Gwendolyn Brooks
The last quatrain of the ballad of Emmett Till / Gwendolyn Brooks
On the state of the union / Aimé Césaire
Temperate belt: reflections on the mother of Emmett Till / Durward Collins Jr.
Emmett Till / James A. Emanuel
Elegy for Emmett Till / Nicolás Guillén
Mississippi 1955 (to the memory of Emmett Till) / Langston Hughes
Money, Mississippi / Eve Merriam
Salute / Oliver Pitcher
2. "Godfearing citizens / with Bibles, taunts and stones": the Little Rock crisis, 1957-1958. The Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock / Gwendolyn Brooks
Little Rock / Nicolás Guillén
School integration riot / Robert Hayden
My blackness is the beauty of this land / Lance Jeffers
3. "The FBI knows who lynched you": the murder of Mack Charles Parker, 1959. Poplarville II / Keith E. Baird
Mack C. Parker / Phillip Abbott Luce
For Mack C. Parker / Pauli Murray
Collect for Poplarville / Pauli Murray
4. "Fearless before the waiting throng" the life and death of Medgar Evers. Medgar Evers (for Charles Evers) / Gwendolyn Brooks
American (in memory of Medgar Evers) / R. D. Coleman
For Medgar Evers / David Ignatow
Blues for Medgar Evers / Aaron Kramer
Micah (in memory of Medgar Evers of Mississippi) / Margaret Walker
5. "Under the leaves of hymnals, the plaster and stone": the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, 15 September 1963. Escort for a president / John Beecher
American history / Michael S. Harper
Here where Coltrane is / Michael S. Harper
Birmingham Sunday / Langston Hughes
Suffer the Children / Audre Lorde
Birmingham 1963 / Raymond Patterson
Ballad of Birmingham / Dudley Randall
Ballad for four children and a president / Edith Segal
September 1963 / Jean Valentine


6. "What we have seen / Has become history, tragedy": the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 22 November 1963. Belief / A. R. Ammons
Elegy for JFK / W. H. Auden
Formal elegy / John Berryman
The assassination of John F. Kennedy / Gwendolyn Brooks
On not writing an elegy / Richard Frost
At the Brooklyn docks, November 23, 1963 / Dorothy Gilbert
Verba in memoriam / Barbara Guest
Until death do us part / Anselm Hollo
A night picture of Pownal / Barbara Howes
Before the Sabbath / David Ignatow
Jacqueline / Will Inman
Down in Dallas / X. J. Kennedy
In Arlington Cemetery / Stanley Koehler
Four days in November / Marjorie Mir
Sonnet for John-John / Marvin Soloman
Not that hurried grief, for John F. Kennedy / Lorenzo Thomas
November 22, 1963 / Lewis Turco
The gulf / Derek Walcott
7. "Deep in the Mississippi thicket / I hear the mourning dove": the search for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, 1964. A commemorative ode / John Beecher
Mississippi, 1964 / Marjorie Mir
The book of Job and a draft of a poem to praise the paths of the living / George Oppen
The demonstration / Gregory Orr
Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman / Raymond Patterson
Speech for LeRoi / Armand Schwerner
When Black people are / A. B. Spellman
For Andy Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney / Margaret Walker
8. "We are not beasts and do not / Intend to be beaten": riots, rebellions, and uprisings, 1964-1971. Riot: 60's / Maya Angelou
Attica, U.S.A. / Keith E. Baird
Finish / Charles Bukowski
Heroes / Karl Carter
Revolutionary letter #3 / Diane di Prima
A mother speaks: the Algiers Motel incident, Detroit / Michael S. Harper
Keep on pushing / David Henderson
Poem against the state (of things): 1975 / June Jordan
On the birth of my son, Malcolm Coltrane / Julius Lester
The gulf / Denise Levertov
Coming home, Detroit, 1968 / Philip Levine
If we cannot live as people / Charles Lynch
Kuntu / Larry Neal
Watts / Ojenke (Alvin Saxon)
In Orangeburg my brothers did / A. B. Spellman
9. "Prophets were ambushed as they spoke": the assassination of Malcolm X, 21 February 1965. A poem for Black hearts / Amiri Baraka
For Malcolm: after Mecca / Gerald W. Barrax
Malcolm X (for Dudley Randall) / Gwendolyn Brooks
Judas / Karl Carter
Malcolm / Lucille Clifton
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz / Robert Hayden
Portrait of Malcolm X (for Charles Baxter) / Etheridge Knight
Malcolm X, an autobiography / Larry Neal
At that moment / Raymond Patterson
If blood is black then spirit neglects my unborn son / Conrad Kent Rivers
Malcolm / Sonia Sanchez
For Malcolm who walks in the eyes of our children / Quincy Troupe
For Malcolm X / Margaret Walker
That old time religion / Marvin X
10. "In the panic of hooves, bull whips and gas": Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march, 1965. Ode to Jimmy Lee / Jim "Arkansas" Benston
The road to Selma / June Brindel
Selma, Alabama, 3/6/65 / Louis Daniel Brodsky
The sun of the future / Thich Nhat Hanh
Race relations / Carolyn Kizer
Alabama centennial / Naomi Long Madgett
On a highway east of Selma, Alabama / Gregory Orr
Crumpled notes (found in a raincoat) on Selma / Maria Varela


11. "Set afire by the cry of / Black Power": the birth and legacy of the Black Panther Party. The Black mass needs but one crucifixion / Kathleen Cleaver
Apology (to the Panthers) / Lucille Clifton
Revolutionary letter #20 / Diane di Prima
For Angela / Zack Gilbert
May King's prophecy / Allen Ginsberg
Black power (for all the beautiful Black Panthers east) / Nikki Giovanni
Newsletter from my mother: 8:30 a.m., December 8, 1969 / Michael S. Harper
[Let the fault be with the man] / Ericka Huggins
The day the audience walked out on me, and why / Denise Levertov
One sided shoot-out / Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)
Revolutionary suicide / Huey P. Newton
We called him the General / Melvin Newton
The Panther, after Rilke / Craig Randolph Pyes
From "Ghazals: homage to Ghalib" / Adrienne Rich
12. "America, self-destructive, self-betrayed": the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 4 April 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. / Gwendolyn Brooks
Riot / Gwendolyn Brooks
The meeting after the savior gone, 4/4/68 / Lucille Clifton
A poem to my brothers killed in combat or something about a conversation with my father after Rev. King was killed / Ebon Dooley
How to change the U.S.A. / Harry Edwards
Reflections on April 4, 1968 / Nikki Giovanni
April 5th / Donald L. Graham
What color? / Nicolás Guillén
Words in the mourning time / Robert Hayden
Rites of passage (to M.L.K., Jr.) / Audre Lorde
Two walls / Robert Lowell
Assassination / Haki Madhubuti
April fourth / Robert Mezey
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X / Muriel Rukeyser
Elegy for Martin Luther King / Léopold Sédar Senghor
Black Thursday / Victor Manuel Rivera Toledo
White weekend (April 5-8, 1968) / Quincy Troupe
Amos, 1963 / Margaret Walker
Amos (postscript, 1968) / Margaret Walker
13. "A gun / struck, as we slept, a caring public man": the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 5 June 1968. Assassination raga / Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The assassination / Donald Justice
Season of lovers and assassins / Carolyn Kizer
For Robert Kennedy / Robert Lowell
For Robert Kennedy / Al Purdy
A flower from Robert Kennedy's grave / Edward Sanders
Elegy / Derek Walcott
Freedom to kill / Yevgeny Yevtushenko
14. "Mighty mountains loom before me and I won't stop now": struggle, survival, and subversion during the civil rights era. Black art / Amiri Baraka
Poem for half white college students / Amiri Baraka
Free world notes / John Beecher
Georgia scene: 1964 / John Beecher
War and silence / Robert Bly
Passive resistance / Margaret Danner
Revolutionary letter #8 / Diane di Prima
Revolutionary letter #9 / Diane di Prima
Freedom rider: washout / James A. Emanuel
Adulthood / Nikki Giovanni
Nikki-Rosa / Nikki Giovanni
Mississippi voter rally / Bruce Hartford
Grenada march #107 / Bruce Hartford
The last river / Galway Kinnell
Poem, small and delible / Carolyn Kizer
Revolutionary mandate 1 / Julius Lester
A note to Olga (1966) / Denise Levertow
For the Union dead / Robert Lowell
Midway / Naomi Long Madgett
Be nobody's darling / Alice Walker.