'Annotated African American Folktales' Reclaims Stories Passed Down From Slavery
The new anthology, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar, aims to make century-old stories — of flying Africans, quizzical animals and even Uncle Remus — available to new generations.
Browsing through a weighty new anthology called The Annotated African-American Folk Tales is a journey across space and time. In one chapter called "Defiance and Desire," there's a section devoted to flying Africans, where there's a lyric that I was familiar with from a song Paul Robeson recorded many years ago — "All God's Chillun Got Wings."
There were also folktales told by slaves of newly arrived Africans
