This is Our Testament

Dark Testament honors the contributions of Black writers for justice, spanning from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement. Over a century represented through literary works from creative explorations—Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poems of Cabin and Field and Richard Wright’s The Outsider—to nonfiction and autobiographical accounts: James Weldon Johnson’s Black Manhattan and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. These authors wielded the written word in pursuit of social change and justice. The earliest writers in the collection—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Douglass, and Ida B. Wells—advocate for freedom and against lynching. This exhibit material is hosted by the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art .Vanderbilt University Museum of Art