The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America


Read by Jim Locke

(1 stars; 2 reviews)

This essay is an attempt to set forth more clearly than has hitherto been done the effect which the Negro has had upon American life. Its thesis is that despite slavery, war and caste, and despite our present Negro problem, the American Negro is and has been a distinct asset to this country and has brought a contribution without which America could not have been; and that perhaps the essence of our so-called Negro problem is the failure to recognize this fact and to continue to act as though the Negro was what we once imagined and wanted to imagine him—a representative of a subhuman species fitted only for subordination. (by the author) (7 hr 2 min)

Chapters

Forward and Prescript 49:46 Read by Jim Locke
The Black Explorers 20:25 Read by Jim Locke
Black Labor 29:31 Read by Jim Locke
Black Soldiers 1:03:29 Read by Jim Locke
The Emancipation of Democracy 58:47 Read by Jim Locke
The Reconstruction of Freedom 45:18 Read by Jim Locke
The Reconstruction of Freedom, Continued 51:23 Read by Jim Locke
The Freedom of Womanhood 18:45 Read by Jim Locke
The American Folk Song 17:02 Read by Jim Locke
Negro Art and Literature 40:54 Read by Jim Locke
The Gift of the Spirit and Postscript 26:48 Read by Jim Locke