“For more than 250 years,” writes poet and scholar Kevin Young in his introduction to the Lift Every Voice Reader, “African Americans have written and recited and published poetry about beauty and injustice, music and muses, Africa and America, freedoms and foodways, Harlem and history, funk and opera, boredom and longing, jazz and joy.” Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Lift Every Voice encourages participants to reflect upon several humanities themes that emerge from a close examination of this tradition.
 
The project supports moderated discussions in communities across the nation to explore both these themes and other issues as revealed in African American poetry. Within each theme, it offers a sampling of poems ranging from the colonial period to the present to reveal the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, of preserving and challenging history, and of giving voice to creative genius.