Four Hundred SoulsFour Hundred Souls

Explores the 400-year history of African Americans in the land that would become the United States, from the "twenty and odd Negroes"--as is written in the lists--dropped off the "White Lion" in Virginia in 1619, up to the present. Collects ninety essays from ninety different Black writers writing on different historical periods, events, Black historical figures, short stories, and personal vignettes and polemics pieces, arranged in what the editors call a "community history."