The Works of James M. Whitfield

by Levine, Robert S.; Wilson, Ivy G.

• ISBN13: 9780807834459
• ISBN10: 0807834459
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

In this comprehensive volume of the collected writings of James Monroe Whitfield (1822-71), Robert S. Levine and Ivy G. Wilson restore this African American poet, abolitionist, and intellectual to his rightful place in the arts and politics of the nineteenth-century United States. Whitfield's works, including poems from his celebratedAmerica and Other Poems(1853), were printed in influential journals and newspapers, such as Frederick Douglass'sThe North Star. A champion of the black emigration movement during the 1850s, Whitfield was embraced by African Americans as a black nationalist bard when he moved from his longtime home in Buffalo, New York, to California in the early 1860s. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, his reputation had faded. For this volume, Levine and Wilson gathered and annotated all of Whitfield's extant writings, both poetry and prose, and many pieces are reprinted here for the first time since their original publication. In their thorough introduction, the editors situate Whitfield in relation to key debates on black nationalism in African American culture, underscoring the importance of poetry and periodical culture to black writing during the period.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
A Note on the Texts	p. 29
America	p. 31
America and Other Poems	p. 35
Black Nationalism and Emigration	p. 99
Extracts from an Eulogy Delivered before the Buffalo Library Association upon the Life and Character of the Late Thomas Harris	p. 109
Letter to Frederick Douglass, 30 August 1849	p. 114
Arguments, Pro and Con, on the Call for a National Emigration Convention	p. 115
From The Vision	p. 169
Morning Song	p. 187
Report on the Establishment of a Periodical, to Be the Organ of the Black and Colored Race on the American Continent	p. 189
Prospectus of the Afric-American Quarterly Repository	p. 194
Lines, Addressed to Mrs. J. T. Holly, on the Death of Their Two Infant Daughters	p. 199
Letter to Frank P. Blair, Jr., 1 February 1858	p. 201
Letter to the Pacific Appeal, 2 August 1862	p. 203
Poems from California	p. 205
Elegy on T.T. Tatem, Esq.	p. 213
To A-. Sketching from Nature	p. 214
A Poem, Written for the Celebration of the Fourth Anniversary of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation	p. 215
Poem, Written by J. M. Whitfield for the Celebration of the Anniversary of West Indian Emancipation	p. 229
Poem	p. 231
Selected Bibliography	p. 237
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