Black Self Definition, Small Press Circulation, and Black Arts Poetics in Don L. Lee’s "Black Pride," 1968

Don L. Lee Black Pride

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"Black Pride" preserves Don L. Lee’s poems at the point where his Chicago Black Arts voice was moving through Broadside Press’s inexpensive national poetry network. The dedication names Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, and John Coltrane as “innovators in their own way,” placing Lee’s poems inside a lineage of Black political speech, modernist poetry, and jazz experimentation. The copyright page records earlier appearances in Negro Digest, Black Talk, Muhammad Speaks, Black Expressions, Chicago Daily Defender, The Journal of Black Poetry, and Roxbury Rebellion News, mapping the periodical channels that carried Lee’s work before and alongside book publication. Dudley Randall’s introduction frames the volume against white American values that made Black children “cringe” at the words “black” or “Africa,” then identifies Lee’s second book as a direct answer through poems on beauty, speech, confession, racial pride, and political betrayal.

Lee, Don L. "Black Pride." Introduction by Dudley Randall. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1968. First edition, sixth printing, April 1969. Original illustrated wrappers priced $1.00. The front wrapper carries John Porter’s bold title design and paired Black figures above Lee’s name; the copyright page thanks Porter “for that boss cover” and Kenneth Benson for the back image. The title page gives Broadside Press’s address at 12651 Old Mill Place, Detroit, Michigan 48238, and the opening catalog advertises other Broadside titles by Nikki Giovanni, Dudley Randall, Sonia Sanchez, Etheridge Knight, Margaret Danner, James A. Emanuel, and Lee himself. Interior poems include “The Beauty of It,” centered on “the beauty of its darkness,” and “Only a Few Left,” subtitled “America’s Pushkin sings no more to Langston Hughes,” where bravery lies in a “little black man” speaking truth as a poet.

Broadside Press, founded by Randall in Detroit in the mid 1960s, became one of the defining Black Arts Movement presses by issuing low cost poetry books and broadsides that circulated outside older commercial publishing routes. "Black Pride" is an example of this, visible through its $1.00 wrapper price, publisher catalog, serial publication record, and direct association with newspapers and magazines tied to Black literary, political, and community readerships. Lee later took the name Haki R. Madhubuti, and this early volume records the rhetoric and typography of his Broadside period before his later work as a poet, publisher, educator, and institution builder. Wrappers toned and handled, with spotting, small stains, corner wear, and light creasing; interior leaves toned with scattered spots and handling marks. Overall good condition.

Item #23522

Price: $380.00