Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
“What a self-conscious people your Negroes are!” a recent French visitor exclaimed. He was right. The Negro lives constantly on two planes of awareness. Watching the telecast of a boxing match between Ezzard Charles, the Negro who happened to be heavyweight champion, and a white challenger, a friend of mine said, “I don’t like Charles as a person but I’ve got to root for him to beat this white boy—and good.”
One’s heart is sickened at the realization of the primal energy that goes undeflected and unrefined into the sheer business of living as a Negro in the United States—in any one of the United States.
J. Saunders Redding has also written:
- TO MAKE A POET BLACK
- NO DAY OF TRIUMPH
- STRANGER AND ALONE
- THEY CAME IN CHAINS
- READING FOR WRITING (A college text with Ivan E. Taylor)
- AN AMERICAN IN INDIA
- LONESOME ROAD
Charter Books represent a new venture in publishing. They offer at paperback prices a set of modern masterworks, printed on high quality paper with sewn bindings in hardback size and format.
ON BEING NEGRO IN AMERICA
J. Saunders Redding
Charter Books