Yusef Komunyakaa on Crispus Attucks, the first American to die in the Revolutionary War; Jesmyn Ward on the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves; Darryl Pinckney on the Emancipation Proclamation; Rita Dove and Camille T. Dungy on the Birmingham church bombing of 1963; Lynn Nottage on “Rapper’s Delight”; and others. Clint Smith begins and ends the collection, part of The 1619 Project, with poems on the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 and the scene in the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. – The New York Times Magazine