On African-American Rhetoric traces the arc of strategic language use by African Americans from rhetorical forms such as slave narratives and the spirituals to Black digital expression and contemporary activism. The governing idea is to illustrate the basic call-response process of African-American culture and to demonstrate how this dynamic has been and continues to be central to the language used by African Americans to make collective cultural and political statements. Ranging across genres and disciplines, including rhetorical theory, poetry, fiction, folklore, speeches, music, film, pedagogy, and memes, Gilyard and Banks consider language developments that have occurred both inside and outside of organizations and institutions. Along with paying attention to recent events, this book incorporates discussion of important forerunners who have carried the rhetorical baton. These include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Cade Bambara, Molefi Asante, Alice Walker, and Geneva Smitherman. Written for students and professionals alike, this book is powerful and instructive regarding the long African-American quest for freedom and dignity.

This is an extraordinarily well-balanced collection of essays focused on varied expressions of African American Rhetoric; it also is a critical antidote to a preoccupation with Western Rhetoric as the arbiter of what counts for effective rhetoric. Rather than impose Western terminology on African and African American rhetoric, the essays in this volume seek to illumine rhetoric from within its own cultural expression, thereby creating an understanding grounded in the culture's values. The consequence is a richly detailed and well-researched set of essays. The contribution of African American rhetoric can no longer be rendered invisible through neglect of its tradition. The essays in this volume neither seek to displace Western Rhetoric, nor function as an uncritical paen to Afrocentricity and Africology. This volume is both timely and essential; timely in advancing a better understanding of the richly textured history that is expressed through African American discourse, and essential as a counterpoint to the hegemonic influence of Greek and Roman rhetoric as the origin of rhetorical theory and practice. Written in the spirit of a critical rhetoric, this collection eschews traditional focus on public address and instead offers a rich array of texts, in musical and other forms, that address publics.

The Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric is a comprehensive compendium of primary texts that is designed for use by students, teachers, and scholars of rhetoric and for the general public interested in the history of African American communication. The volume and its companion website include dialogues, creative works, essays, folklore, music, interviews, news stories, raps, videos, and speeches that are performed or written by African Americans. Both the book as a whole and the various selections in it speak directly to the artistic, cultural, economic, gendered, social, and political condition of African Americans from the enslavement period in America to the present, as well as to the Black Diaspora.

African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an introduction to fundamental concepts and a systematic integration of historical and contemporary lines of inquiry in the study of African American rhetorics. Edited by Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson II, the volume explores culturally and discursively developed forms of knowledge, communicative practices, and persuasive strategies rooted in freedom struggles by people of African ancestry in America. Outlining African American rhetorics found in literature, historical documents, and popular culture, the collection provides scholars, students, and teachers with innovative approaches for discussing the epistemologies and realities that foster the inclusion of rhetorical discourse in African American studies. In addition to analyzing African American rhetoric, the fourteen contributors project visions for pedagogy in the field and address new areas and renewed avenues of research. The result is an exploration of what parameters can be used to begin a more thorough and useful consideration of African Americans in rhetorical space.

This long-needed sourcebook assesses the unique styles and themes of notable African-American orators from the mid-19th century to the present—of 43 representative public speakers, from W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson to Barbara Jordan and Thurgood Marshall. The critical analyses of the oratory of a broad segment of different types of public speakers demonstrate how they have stressed the historical search for freedom, upheld American ideals while condemning discriminatory practices against African-Americans, and have spoken in behalf of black pride. This biographical dictionary with its evaluative essays, sources for further reading, and speech chronologies is designed for broad interdisciplinary use by students, teachers, activists, and general readers in college, university, institutional, and public libraries.

This volume is perhaps the most important and significant contribution yet made in rhetoric and composition to critical race studies.

"The most complete compendium of American oratory now available! This expansive anthology covers a broad range of discourses dealing with civic affairs. The collection reflects the diversity of speakers throughout American history. Not only do history's "winners" appear among the selections, but its important "losers" appear as well. Each of the 100 discourses is preceded by a commentary section. These editor commentaries, most useful for students who lack sufficient historical background to appreciate the context of individual discourses, are organized by first sketching the general context and then outlining the immediate situation. Enough material has been provided for students to enlarge their understanding of history, broaden their perspective of rhetorical theory and improve their own rhetorical skills, including their skills as practitioners of various kinds of Aristotelian criticism." -- Publisher.

The Routledge Anthology of African American Rhetoric is a compendium of primary texts, including dialogues, creative works, critical articles, essays, folklore, interviews, news stories, songs, raps, and speeches that are performed or written by African Americans. Both the book as a whole and the various selections in it speak directly to the artistic, cultural, economic, social, and political condition of African Americans from the enslavement period in America to the present, as well as to the Black Diaspora. The focal point of this project will be the reader�s companion website that will encourage students and instructors to copious amounts of supplemental material. The standard student/instructor resources are planned (further readings, syllabi, links, etc.) but the editors wish to feature materials that mirror the content in the text. We�ve explored the inclusion of music playlists that will showcase musical selections mentioned in the book. There will be YouTube and various multimedia clips of film, television, and music videos. Finally, there will be excerpts from literature (fiction and non-fiction) along with poetry and other applicable readings.

This book explores the pragmatic, theoretical and philosophical issues that emerge in contemporary considerations of rhetoric and race relations. It examines the epistemological assumptions at work in our understanding of, and participation in, the language of oppression. Contents: In the Shadow of the Word; From Socrates to South Africa; Language and Oppression; Racism in Black and White; Race as Symbolic Reality; From Complicity to Coherence; References; Index.