12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, run-down farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in America - their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text narrates the story of these pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. Included in the new edition is a foreword by acclaimed historian Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White and coeditor of the quarterly journal Race Traitor.