The Object

Julius Lester

Black Folktales

illustrated by Tom Feelings

Hardback. Lester, Julius. Black Folktales. Illus. Tom Feelings. New York: Richard W. Baron: 1969. US $4.50

Julius Lester

Black Folktales

Illustrated by Tom Feelings

RICHARD W. BARON NEW YORK 1969 [symbol]

LINCOLN TRAIL LIBRARIES (a stamp from a library that once owned the book)

Julius Lester

Black Folktales

Illustrated by Tom Feelings

RICHARD W. BARON NEW YORK 1969 [symbol]

LINCOLN TRAIL LIBRARIES (a stamp from a library that once owned the book)

Lester Black Folktales [symbol] Baron

The binding is made of stretched, black cloth.

The end pages are deep orange rust color. They show wear as seen on the right with a tear and evidence of having had tape attached to them as seen on the left with a rectangular outline. A sensor of some sort has been applied to them with an adhesive.

Aged and yellowed but still fit to serve as a protective cover.

Julius Lester

Black Folktales

illustrated by Tom Feelings

Stories like the stories called “folktales” here are meant to be told, not written down. They give people a way of communicating with each other about each other—their fears their hopes, their dreams, their fantasies, giving their explanations of why the world is the way it is. It is in stories like these that a child learns who his parents are and who he will become.

These stories are told in the cities and villages of Africa and on the street corners, stoops, porches, in bars, barber shops, and wherever else in America black people gather. When somebody says, “Man, you remind me of the time when . . . .” then everybody knows, here comes a story.

There are many kinds of stories. Stories that partly happened and are partly imagined (but what you imagine can be as real and true as what happens in front of your eyes). There are stories that make you laugh; stories that make you think; stories that make you feel good inside; stories that teach you how to get along in the world; stories that take your mind off your troubles.

The stories in this book come from the black people of Africa and Afro-America. Some are still told in Africa, like “The Girl With the Large Eyes”

(continued on back flap)

(continued from front flap)

and “The Son of Kim-Ana-u-eze and the Daughter of the Sun and the Moon.” Some come from slavery time, like “High John the Conqueror” and “People Who Could Fly.” Some have been told in the South so long that nobody knows where they came from, like “How God Made the Butterflies” and “How the Snake Got His Rattles.” Still others, like “Stagolee,” belong most to black people in the cities. Not all the stories here started as stories. “Stagolee,” for instance, was a song about a man who really lived, and “High John” was three stories, not one.

Julius Lester tells these stories now not as they were told a hundred years ago. And he tells them now only because they have meaning now.

JULIUS LESTER, columnist, folk singer, photographer, and radio personality, is the author also of the 1968 Newberry Medal runner-up To Be a slave. His other books include Revolutionary Notes and Look Out, Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama.

TOM FEELINGS has illustrated many books with distinction, none more so than To Be a Slave. His own A Black Artist’s Pilgrimage will soon be published. It is a book of people he has drawn and known in New York’s ghettos, in the American South, and in West and East Africa.

Jacket illustration by Tome Feelings

Design by Jane Byers Bierhorst

Printed in the United States of America

Richard W. Baron Publishing Co., Inc.

243a East 49^th Street, New York 10017

In memory of

Zora Neale Hurston,

who made me

glad I am me,

and to H. Rap Brown

Folktales are stories that give people a way of communicating with each other about each other—their fears, their hopes, their dreams, their fantasies, giving their explanations of why the world is the way it is. It is in stories like these that a child learns who his parents are an who he will become.

…

These stories are told here not as they were told a hundred years ago, but as I tell them now. And I tell them now only because they have meaning now.

JULIUS LESTER

June, 1969

New York City

21.4 cm X 14 cm

[i-vi], vii-ix [10-14],15-16 [17] 18-35, [36], 37-39 [40], 41-46, [47], 48-53, [52-56], 57-58, [59], 60-64, [65], 66-80, [81], 82-90, [91-92], 93-96, [97], 98-108, [109], 110-114, [115], 116-126, [127], 128-135, [136-138], 139-140, [141], 142-150, [151], 152-159, [1]

Possibly Bullen or Finalia DT Condensed according to Identifont

Easy to read

Well printed

The paper is thick and of a heavy weight. It has a poster board-like feel; it’s not leaf-like. The paper has some yellowing, probably due to its acidity and some minimal staining and inadvertent markings throughout, likely due to patrons’ use over the years.

The book includes 13 full-page illustrations.

Black and white lithography by Illustrator Tom Feelings

An excerpt from "How God Made the Butterflies"; no illustrations.