12 Million Black Voices

12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, rundown farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in 1930s America—their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text eloquently narrates the story of these 90 pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. Also included are new prefaces by Douglas Brinkley, Noel Ignatiev, and Michael Eric Dyson. "Among all the works of Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry, ... passion, ... and of love."—David Bradley "A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised."—The New York Times Book Review

• The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African Americans
• The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union
• Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000
• Uncle Tom's Children (P.S.)
• All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
• Native Son (Perennial Classics)
• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South
• A Raisin in the Sun
• Richard Wright : Early Works : Lawd Today! / Uncle Tom's Children / Native Son (Library of America)
• The Street: A Novel