Songs of my People African Americans: A Self Portrait

Author: Eric Easter, D. Michael Cheers, Dudley M. Brooks
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Year: 1992
Pages: 209
ISBN: 978-0316109666

Songs of My People, an extraordinary and historic photo documentary of the world of African Americans, is a stunning self-portrait through the eyes and lenses of a rare assemblage of some of the the nation’s best Black photojournalists. In this unprecedented collaborative project, fifty photojournalists examine and capture on film the the stirring lives of African American across the nation, creating “a revalatory window to a world of pulsing Blackness.” 

Songs of My People’s provocative and unforgettable images takes us from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the floor of the NEw York Stock Exchange on Wall Street; from the anguish of the homeless in the nation’s capital to the selflessness of the nuns of the Oblate Sisters of Providence; from a White House reception where General Colin Powell waltzes with First Lady Barbara Bush to a festive lunch where a grandfather and granddaughter celebrate her promotion to the fifth grade; from scholars to athletes, poets to painters, dancers to doctors cowboys to symphony conductors, from grandparents to thirtysomethin adults to children who will dream and determine the future of our country. We see in this photographic tribute to African Americans today ordinary people living extraordinary lives.