The author of Native Son paired with three photographers in the 1930s to chronicle black life in America and this book was the result--a vivid portrait of African-American life, from sharecroppers in Mississippi to storefront churches in Harlem. Reprint.

12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, rundown farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in America -- their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text eloquently narrates the story of these pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country.