12 Million Black Voices

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12 Million Black Voices
OCLC
1023739946

12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States

Edwin Rosskam. Viking Press
first published the book in 1941, to relatively positive reviews, and it has since been analyzed by various critics.

Writing and publication

Edwin Rosskam edited and selected the images.[1][2] Viking published the book in October 1941.[5] It was 150 pages when first published.[1]

Content

The book contains four "sections", "Our Strange Birth," "Inheritors of Slavery," "Death on the City Pavements," and "Men in the Making", which are divided into "scenes". These scenes are in turn composed of "movements". A central portion of the work is its images.

Talented Tenth", who were "fleeting exceptions to that vast, tragic school that swims below in the depths, against the current, silently and heavily, struggling against the waves of vicissitudes that spell a common fate". Wright later told Edwin Seaver:[2]

I had thought of doing something like the text of 12 Million Black Voices for the past five or six years-hadn't thought of it as a book however. What I wanted to do was make an outline for a series of historical novels telescoping Negro history in terms of the urbanization of a feudal folk. My aim was to try to show in a foreshortened form that the development of Negro life in America parallels the development of all people everywhere.

The book has noticeable

Communist Party of the United States when he wrote it.[7]

Reception

Upon publication the book received mostly positive reviews.

The Journal of Southern History felt it would not be well received by historians or social scientists because it presented a one sided story. However, they concluded "it will move the ordinary reader as few books on the Negro in American life have ever moved him." They praised Wright's writing.[11]

Reception was, according to the scholar Jack B. Moore, "unusually complimentary, particularly considering its clearly uncomplimentary portrait of life that white Americans had forced upon black Americans". Moore continued to note that it stands out as "a smashing critical success" when considering how Wright's later works were received.[6] Nicholas Natanson in 1992 wrote that the book had "received some play in the general-circulation press", some of which was characterized by "echoes" of white guilt.[12]

The book was republished in 1988.[13]

Analysis

The book has been analyzed by various critics, several of whom have noted its relative lack of attention.[14][6][15][16][17] In 1982 John M. Reilly analyzed how the book was written as if it were sermons given by a preacher.[18] Moore (1989) drew comparisons between the work and documentary films, as it aimed to be an accessible work, specifically referencing The March of Time, The Plow That Broke the Plains, and The River.[6] In 2006, Jeff Allred wrote an essay on the book and its connection to collective identity.[14]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-87067-562-1
    .
  2. ^ a b c d Leigh, G. 1999, "Imposed integration: Folk identity in 12 Million Black Voices", Rethinking Marxism, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 49.
  3. ^
    OCLC 1061860449
    .
  4. ^ Wright & Fabre 1997, pp. 144–145.
  5. ^ Reilly 1978, p. xvii.
  6. ^
    JSTOR 26475148
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0-8229-3187-4
    .
  8. JSTOR 41883406
    .
  9. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2021-05-05.
  10. ^ 12 MILLION BLACK VOICES. Kirkus Reviews.
  11. JSTOR 2191991
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-87049-724-7
    .
  13. ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright, Author, Edwin Rosskam, Photographer, David Bradley, Foreword by Thunder's Mouth Press $15.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-938410-44-7". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2021-05-05.
  14. ^
    ISSN 0002-9831
    .
  15. JSTOR 40027406
    .
  16. ISSN 1765-2766
    .
  17. ^ Roggenkamp, Karen: "Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices: Refiguring the American Jeremiad" The Langston Hughes Review 24-25 [Winter 2010] p.138-149,157
  18. S2CID 165378945
    .

Bibliography
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