A review by sel1999
12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright

5.0

Wright's gorgeous narrative about the lives of African-Americans who endured slavery and their descendants up to about the early 1940's takes us through the real struggles and hardships that they faced post-Emancipation and their eventual mass-migration to the cities of the North. The stark photographs mixed with the bluntness of the third person plural narration style sinks readers into the truth of the harsh realities of the African-American population of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. History is helpful in learning what things have been like in order to not repeat any mistakes. A lot of the racist sentiments against African-Americans that Wright describes are unfortunately still very much seen today. Reading this book and other narratives like it can help us to understand the political climate of the present and enact change upon the broken systems of our government.