Argues that the success of 'The Letter' can be attributed to the confluence of three distinct rhetorical traits: King's heritage of the highly emotional Negro preaching tradition, his shrewd sense of political timing and polemical skill, and his conscious literary ability, and notes that 'The Letter' is one of the most frequently collected items…

In his 1928 play, the Harlem Renaissance writer Leslie Pickney Hill portrays Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian slave rebellion, with historical accuracy. Hill's presentation was aimed at rehabilitating black pride, "A worthy literature reared upon authentic records of achievement is the present spiritual need of the race."…

Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange have in their plays created images of blacks that dispel the myths of "the contented slave,""the exotic primitive," and "the spiritual singing, toe-tapping, faithful servant." (BJV)

Religious feeling is always interdependent with racial feeling in the poetry of Langston Hughes. He views religion in the larger context of black culture, presenting it variously as a source of strength for the oppressed, an opiate of the people, the religion of slavery, and an obstacle to emancipation. (BJV)

Earlier African novels, addressed to a Western audience, defend the traditional culture of the authors and attack the hypocrisy of the West. Later novels, written after 1960, are addressed to an African audience, and present balanced appraisals of Western culture and religion. Discusses rhetorical devices and other aspects of African novels. (BJV)

Addresses the basic conflict between the Enlightenment's humanitarian credo and slavery, the opposing beliefs of the pro-slavery movement and the abolitionists, and the resulting changes in the perceptions of blacks brought about by the emancipation literature of the French philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century. (BJV)

Expatriate characters in six post-independence African novels are disillusioned by the nasty weather, negative racial attitudes, declining morality, and rigid social structure they find in the Western world. Their loneliness in the West ironically becomes a source of African nationalism. (BJV)

Analyzes "The Great Auction Sale of Slaves, at Savannah, Georgia" (1859), a popular work by Mortimer Neal Thompson, an American humorist better known by his pseudonym, Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B. The book is one of the most readable, credibly authentic accounts of the abuses of slavery. (BJV)