Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots presents the his­tory of a black family from pre-slavery times up to the present. The sections concerning his slave ancestors are very vividly rendered and give the reader a good sense of what life in plantations was like for slaves.

Poet, ambassador, and publisher James Weldon Johnson's 1927 volume of poems, God's Trom­bones, is written in the voice that a nine­teenth-century preacher would use in address­ing a congregation, but unlike the poet in "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," Johnson pointedly refuses to use dialect in spelling words, for reasons ex­plained beautifully in the introduction. The his­tory lesson to be gained from the introduction alone makes this book worth reading.

W.E.B. du Bois was one of our country's lead­ ing African-American intellectuals. His 1961 collection...