World-renown poet and master of prose Langston Hughes enlightened Americans nationwide when his poem Lèt̀ America Be America Again'' appeared in 1936. Today, more than half a century later, this poem's insights into American society and its dream of social justice continue to resonate powerfully among readers. In celebration of the poem's inspiring message, artist Antonio Frasconi illustrated Hughes's poem with thirty-two woodcuts in an extraordinary...

Across a turbulent history, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people voice their passionate...