Violence in the Black imagination

About this book

In Violence in the Black Imagination, Ronald T. Takaki presents three short novels by major African-American leaders in the nineteenth century: The Heroic Slave, by Frederick Douglass, the leading black abolitionist; Blake, by Martin Delany, the father of black nationalism; and Clotelle, by William Wells Brown, a pioneer of the black novel. The novels are accompanied by substantive essays which provide biographical information on the authors and explore the common theme of their works -- the issue of black revolutionary violence in antebellum America. This edition includes a new preface which examines the 1992 South Central Los Angeles racial explosion in relationship to Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the 1965 Watts Riot, and helps us understand the history of racism in America and its legacy of antagonism and violence.