Table of Contents:
  • Foundations of a black American literary tradition, 1877-1896
  • Identity and ambiguity : the literary career of Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1892-1906
  • Black literature in transition in the age of Dunbar, 1896-1906
  • The literature of the color line and the meaning of race, 1896-1908
  • The emerging black consciousness of the early twentieth century, 1906-1915
  • The two worlds of James Weldon Johnson.