"What the Negro Wants," 1944

In 1944,the University of North Carolina Press published What the Negro Wants, a collection of essays by influential black leaders that called for the end of segregation. Edited by Rayford Logan, its contributors included Mary McLeod Bethune, W. E. B. DuBois, Sterling Brown, A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes, and Roy Wilkins. Press director W. T. Couch was horrified by what he saw as the contributors' militant views but published the book anyway.