Title: Words of protest, words of freedom : poetry of the American civil rights movement and era /
Authors: Coleman, Jeffrey Lamar.; Coleman, Jeffrey Lamar,
Publisher: Duke University Press,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Civil rights movements United States History Poetry.; Civil rights movements Poetry.; American poetry
Abstract: This work is an anthology of poems from the civil rights era, from 1955 until 1975. The poems featured are grouped chronologically around major events of the time, including the Emmett Till lynching, the integration of Little Rock High School, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, and the rise of the Black Panthers.
Contents: "Had she been worth the blood?" : the lynching of Emmett Till, 1955 -- "Godfearing citizens / with Bibles, taunts and stones" : The Little Rock Crisis, 1957-1958 -- "The FBI knows who lynched you" : the abduction and murder of Mack Charles Parker, 1959 -- "Fearless before the waiting throng": the life and death of Medgar Evers -- "Under the leaves of hymnals, the plaster and stone" : the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, September 15, 1963 -- "What we have seen / Has become history, tragedy" : The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963 -- "Deep in the Mississippi thicket / I hear the mourning dove" : the search for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, 1964 -- "We are not beasts and do not / Intend to be beaten" : riots, rebellions, and uprisings -- "Prophets were ambushed as they spoke" : the assassination of Malcolm X, February 21, 1965 -- "In the panic of hooves, bull whips and gas" : Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March, 1965 -- "Set afire by the cry of / BLACK POWER" : birth and legacy of the Black Panther Party, 1966- -- "America, self-destructive, self-betrayed" : the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1968 -- "A gun / Struck, as we slept, a caring public man" : The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, June 5, 1968.