From early accounts of free blacks in the Colonies to slave narratives recorded by Works Progress Administration employees in the 1930s to a recent speech by Senator Barack Obama, this collection offers a treasure trove of carefully selected primary documents from and concerning African Americans. It is among the largest and widest-ranging collection of documents on the entire African American experience in print. Voices of the African American Experience provides access to fresh voices from history until today in more than 130 documents. Examples include speeches, articles, mission statements, ephemera, testimony, letters, sermons, prayers, spirituals/songs, slave narratives, memoirs, essays, interviews, and more. Key official documents and important communications from noted African Americans are of course present, while making the words of ordinary African Americans from the past easily accessible to the general public. Each document is introduced and contextualized, making this set especially valuable and helpful in student research.

The documents are organized in chronological order. Each document is sourced and the document introduction includes information such as parties involved, location, significance, and impact. A chronology and selected bibliography further aid in the writing of history term papers and African American History Month reports. Sample documents include:

Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man, 1760

Josiah Henson, Thirty Years a Slave, 1849

Frederick Douglass, Slave Holding Provisions in the Constitution, March 26, 1860

The Gullah Proverbs, 1861

What the Southern Negro Is Doing for Himself, by Samuel J. Barrows, 1891

Negro National Anthem, 1897

Restaurant Accommodations, 1903

Twenty-one Negro Spirituals, 1934-1938

Harlem Cocktail Party, Dorothy West, 1934-1939

Bullet or Ballot: Malcolm X, 1964

Jesse Jackson's 1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, 1984

A More Perfect Union Speech, Barack Obama, March 18, 2008