Description: Revised and updated edition of the standard anthology of Negro poetry in America.
Brief description: Arna Bontemps (1902-1973), produced more than twenty-five novels, anthologies, children's books, and histories of black life, including the novel God Sends Sunday and The Story of the Negro. Bontemps's later years were spent at Fisk University as chief librarian and writer-in-residence.
Review Quotes: "[Bontemps's] most distinctive works are ringing affirmations of the human passion for freedom and the desire for social justice inherent in us all. Arnold Rampersad called him the conscience of his era and it could be fairly added that his tendency to fuse history and imagination represents his personal legacy to a collective memory." --Charles L. James, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (on the life and work of Arna Bontemps, editor of American Negro Poetry)