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