Black American History in Ballad, Song and Prose

Performed by Langston Hughes, Ossie Davis, Jean Brannon, W.E.B. DuBois, and Pete Seeger, this collection of spoken word, oral history, speech and song represents a comprehensive sociopolitical history of black America. Beginning with America’s rediscovery in 1492 and Columbus’s supposedly black pilot, Pedro Alonso Niño, the collection covers the colonial period, the slave experience, the Civil war, notable African-American women, nineteenth-century black intellectuals, the Jim Crow years and the struggle for civil rights, ending with the late Martin Luther King Jr.

Track Listing

101	Blacks with the Spanish Explorers	Langston Hughes	02:07
102	Black Valor	Jean Brannon	03:11
103	Black Sailors	Jean Brannon	01:37
104	Black Archives	Jean Brannon	01:50
105	Ballad of Benjamin Banneker	Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Pete Seeger	02:44
106	African Chants / Oh Freedom	Langston Hughes, Leon Bibb	05:35
107	Go Down Moses / John Brown's Body / Legacy	Clark Morgan, Hermes Nye, Langston Hughes, Ossie Davis	03:42
108	Election of Lincoln / Lincoln and Libery	Hermes Nye, Ossie Davis	02:04
109	Secession of the South / Bonnie Blue Flag	Hermes Nye, Ossie Davis	02:34
110	Civil War	Ossie Davis	02:50
111	Emancipation Proclamation	Ossie Davis	01:35
112	Negro Troops	Ossie Davis	01:49
113	In Charleston Jail / Douglass Meets Lincoln	Hermes Nye, Ossie Davis	04:51
114	Death of Lincoln / Freedom and Equality	Ossie Davis	04:21
115	Old Rebel / 14th and 15th Amendments	Hermes Nye, Ossie Davis	05:05
116	Ballad of Sojourner Truth	Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Pete Seeger	04:00
117	Ballad of Harriet Tubman	Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Pete Seeger	02:50
118	Francis Watkins Harper	Susan Kempler, Doreen Rappaport	02:29
119	Ida B. Wells Barnett	Dorothy Washington	02:13
120	Eleanor Holmes Norton	Eleanor H. Norton	03:49
121	Shirley Chisholm	Shirley Chisholm	02:59
122	Ballad of Frederick Douglass	Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Pete Seeger	03:49
123	Booker T Washington / George Washington Carver	Langston Hughes	05:42
124	Let's Move It / W.E.B. DuBois	Frederic Ramsey, Jr., W.E.B. DuBois	03:48
125	If We Must Die	Claude McKay	01:35
126	Ballad of the Deacons	Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Pete Seeger	05:42
127	The Negro Voter / The State of Arkansas	Martin Luther King, Jr., Pete Seeger	01:54
128	President Kennedy's Press Conference	John F. Kennedy	01:07
129	Rev. Ralph Abernathy	Ralph Abernathy	02:17
130	Martin Luther King / Ballad of Dr. King / We Shall Overcome	Martin Luther King, Jr., Pete Seeger, Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick	13:41