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The Black Book
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The Black Book Hardcover - 2019

by Middleton A. Harris (Editor); Ernest Smith (Editor); Morris Levitt (Editor)

Now in a deluxe 35th anniversary hardcover edition, "The Black Book" remains a breathtaking testament to the legendary wisdom, strength, and perseverance of black men and women intent on freedom. Features a new Foreword and original poem by Toni Morrison.


From the publisher

A new edition of the classic New York Times bestseller edited by Toni Morrison, offering an encyclopedic look at the black experience in America from 1619 through the 1940s with the original cover restored. "I am so pleased the book is alive again. I still think there is no other work that tells and visualizes a story of such misery with seriousness, humor, grace and triumph."--Toni Morrison Seventeenth-century sketches of Africans as they appeared to marauding European traders. Nineteenth-century slave auction notices. Twentieth-century sheet music for work songs and freedom chants. Photographs of war heroes, regal in uniform. Antebellum reward posters for capturing runaway slaves. An 1856 article titled "A Visit to the Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child." In 1974, Middleton A. Harris and Toni Morrison led a team of gifted, passionate collectors in compiling these images and nearly five hundred others into one sensational narrative of the black experience in America--The Black Book. Now in a newly restored hardcover edition, The Black Book remains a breathtaking testament to the legendary wisdom, strength, and perseverance of black men and women intent on freedom. Prominent collectors Morris Levitt, Roger Furman, and Ernest Smith joined Harris and Morrison (then a Random House editor, ultimately a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Nobel Laureate) to spend months studying, laughing at, and crying over these materials--transcripts from fugitive slaves' trials and proclamations by Frederick Douglass and celebrated abolitionists, as well as chilling images of cross burnings and lynchings, patents registered by black inventors throughout the early twentieth century, and vibrant posters from "Black Hollywood" films of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, it was an article she found while researching this project that provided the inspiration for Morrison's masterpiece, Beloved. A labor of love and a vital link to the richness and diversity of African American history and culture, The Black Book honors the past, reminding us where our nation has been, and gives flight to our hopes for what is yet to come. Beautifully and faithfully presented and featuring a foreword and original poem by Toni Morrison, The Black Book remains a timeless landmark work.

Details

  • Title The Black Book
  • Author Middleton A. Harris (Editor); Ernest Smith (Editor); Morris Levitt (Editor)
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition 35th Anniversary
  • Pages 224
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Random House, New York, NY
  • Date 2019-12-03
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9781400068487 / 1400068487
  • Weight 1.93 lbs (0.88 kg)
  • Dimensions 11.64 x 8.28 x 0.86 in (29.57 x 21.03 x 2.18 cm)
  • Themes
    • Ethnic Orientation: African American
    • Topical: Black History
  • Library of Congress subjects African Americans - History
  • Dewey Decimal Code 973.049

Media reviews

"This book should be in every home to be read and shown to every child, at least until that child reaches age 12." —Bill Cosby

"The Black Book is an incredible testament to the strength, character, and endurance of a people never meant to succeed.  Especially in these historic times, I can think of no better way to celebrate African American achievement than through a retrospective look at our history–painful and pleasurable–our shared experiences and our successes.  This is a book no American–black or white–can afford to ignore."—Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University

"I love The Black Book. I vividly remember when it was published: I was a graduate student in England, at Cambridge, desperately looking for sources in the emerging field of African American Studies.
Both the book and Toni Morrison's brilliant New York Times Magazine essay–which I avidly devoured–opened up for me the very possibilities for, and the keen attraction of, the use of documents and artifacts to recreate the full and rich narrative of African American History. I read it like one reads a coffee table book, making my way through its lovely pages leisurely; but I also used it religiously as a scholarly reference source. One of the beautiful things about this beautiful book is that it fulfills both functions, and does so with great aplomb. When The Black Book was published, virtually no one knew that these sources even existed. No single book has done more to shape the field of African American History than has this brilliantly conceived book. It is the ultimate treasure chest of the Black Experience."—Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University

"A terrible error grew as humans spread out around the globe from our common ancestors in Southern Africa: race became a source of division and hierarchy instead of the minor adaptation to climate it truly was. The Black Book records some of the everyday suffering and wisdom that this false hierarchy has caused. There is not a member of the human family on earth who cannot learn from it."—Gloria Steinem

"The Black Book is an important document of American history that defines a people's strength, hope, and perseverance. By honoring the past, Toni Morrison's remarkable book sheds light on the present, and shows the unlimited potential for the future."—Gay Talese

"Terrific, terrific, terrific... tell the truth and shame the devil."—Melvin Van Peebles, Writer/Director

"Bountiful…Resonant…As fresh as the day it was born, 35 years ago, this category-smashing book is scrapbook, photo album, treasure chest and time capsule."—Publishers Weekly,
starred review

Citations

  • Ebony, 12/01/2009, Page 52
  • Essence, 12/01/2009, Page 82
  • Publishers Weekly, 09/21/2009, Page 52

About the author

"A friend introduced me to Middleton (Spike) Harris [a retired city employee], who became the chief author of the project. His collection of black memorabilia is extensive and his passion for the subject as intense as it is thorough. . . . His friend Morris Levitt, a retired public-school teacher and amateur black sports enthusiast, joined Harris on the project. So did Roger Furman, an actor and director of New York's black New Heritage Repertory Theater. Finally, Ernest Smith [a collector of black memorabilia since he was fourteen] also joined. . . . All of these men have one thing in common: an intense love for black expression and a zest wholly free of academic careerism."--Toni Morrison, in "Rediscovering Black History," The New York Times Toni Morrison was the author of award-winning works of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. Her fifth novel, Beloved, earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She died in August 2019.
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The Black Book: 35th Anniversary Edition

The Black Book: 35th Anniversary Edition

by Harris, Middleton A.

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The Black Book
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The Black Book

by Middleton A. Harris, Ernest Smith

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The Black Book
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The Black Book

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The Black Book
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The Black Book

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The Black Book
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The Black Book

by Harris, Middleton A

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The Black Book: 35th Anniversary Edition
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The Black Book: 35th Anniversary Edition

by Editor-Middleton A. Harris; Editor-Ernest Smith; Editor-Morris Levitt; Editor-Roger Furman; Foreword-Toni Morrison

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The Black Book
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The Black Book

by Harris, Middleton A. [Editor]; Smith, Ernest [Editor]; Levitt, Morris [Editor]; Furman, Roger [Editor]; Morrison, Toni [Foreword];

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