I. "The scaffolding of a nation": the black belt and beyond
Atlanta Exposition address / Booker T. Washington
Of our spiritual strivings / W.E.B. Du Bois
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington / W.E.B. Du Bois
Founder's day address at Tuskegee, 1931 / Anson Phelps Stokes
Cowards from the colleges / Langston Hughes
Social equality / Gunnar Myrdal
Brown v. Board of Education: the effects of segregation / Supreme Court brief
The shadow of the plantation / Charles S. Johnson
Tore up and a-movin' / Bernice Kelly Harris
An analysis of negro patriotism / William N. Colson
The black migration / W.T. Andrews
12 million black voices / Richard Wright
II. "A heap of signifying": vernacular culture
(What did I do to be so) black and blue / Andy Razaf
Run, nigger, run / African American folk song
Jack the rabbit! Jack the bear! / African American folk song
The devil's son-in-law / Peetie Wheatstraw
Many thousands gone / African American spiritual
Why Mr. Dog runs Brer Rabbit / Emma Backus
Brer Rabbit and the goobers / Carl Carmer
De sweet pertater man / street market song
Sweet-the-monkey / Leo Gurley
Hip language / Mezz Mezzrow
III. "The city within a city": Harlem, U.S.A.
Portrait of Harlem / Federal Writers' Project
The new negro / Alain Locke
Blacks in the labor movement / Sterling Spero and Abram L. Harris
Race catechism / Cyril V. Briggs
Africa for the Africans: speech delivered at Liberty Hall, August 1921 / Marcus Garvey
The road to negro liberation / Harry Haywood
Marxism and the American negro / Will Herberg
Marxism and the woman question / Avram Landy
Negro Americans, what now? / James Weldon Johnson
Harlem runs wild / Claude McKay
The Harlem riot of 1943 / Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.
The negro and the Second World War / Ralph Ellison
Harlem is nowhere / Ralph Ellison.