“We say now: if we black folk had been allowed to participate in the vital processes of America’s growth, America would have been stronger and greater!”
“We say that we, our history, our present being are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want is what America is. And if we perish, America perishes.”
“What do we want?”
“We want the right to share in the upward march of American life.”
“The Lords of the Land say: ‘We will not grant this!‘”
The lines quoted above were written by Richard Wright (1908 – 1960) in his bardic testimony concerning the harsh lives of African Americans, 12 Million Black Voices. The editors of Coronet showed their sympathies for this minority by publishing these pages, but they also showed their total racial insensitivities by running crude pigeon English captions beneath each of the accompanying photographs.
