12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States.

WRIGHT, Richard.

Item Number: 117497

New York: The Viking Press, 1941.

First edition of this powerful work by the author of The Native Son, featuring photographs by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn. Quarto, original cloth, illustrated throughout. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Elizabeth Wolff with my very best Richard Wright.” Near fine in a good dust jacket with chipping and wear. Photo-direction by Edwin Rosskam. Uncommon signed and inscribed.

12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, rundown farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in 1930s America—their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text eloquently narrates the story of these 90 pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. "Among all the works of Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry, ... passion, ... and of love" (David Bradley).