This volume offers a comprehensive survey of African-American rhetoric within a broad historical context, exploring the major cultural and theoretical issues in the field. The 19 original essays that make up the collection look at distinct African-American rhetorical traditions.

This is an extraordinarily well-balanced collection of essays focused on varied expressions of African American Rhetoric; it also is a critical antidote to a preoccupation with Western Rhetoric as the arbiter of what counts for effective rhetoric. Rather than impose Western terminology on African and African American rhetoric, the essays in this volume seek to illumine rhetoric from within its own cultural expression, thereby creating an understanding grounded in the culture's values. The consequence is a richly detailed and well-researched set of essays. The contribution of African American rhetoric can no longer be rendered invisible through neglect of its tradition. The essays in this volume neither seek to displace Western Rhetoric, nor function as an uncritical paen to Afrocentricity and Africology. This volume is both timely and essential; timely in advancing a better understanding of the richly textured history that is expressed through African American discourse, and essential as a counterpoint to the hegemonic influence of Greek and Roman rhetoric as the origin of rhetorical theory and practice. Written in the spirit of a critical rhetoric, this collection eschews traditional focus on public address and instead offers a rich array of texts, in musical and other forms, that address publics.

"Understanding African American Rhetoric is the most comprehensive, scholarly, methodologically sound presentation of African American rhetoric to date! Given the many leading intellectuals who wrote chapters, this book is essential reading for both scholars and practitioners. It is likely to become a canonical text." -- Jack L. Daniel, co-author, with Omari C. Daniel, of We Fish: The Journey to Fatherhood