Pioneering feminist Anna J. Cooper once wrote, “black people have to stop imitating white people and white culture.” She went on to say that black Americans in 1893 had to find their own voice, the roots of which are buried in the literature, mythology and folktales and music created by their enslaved ancestors. A century later, when Henry Louis Gates Jr. read her essay, published in “The Southern Workman,” he found her words exceptional. “It [...]
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