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Negro Poets and Their Poems.
Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, Inc., 1928. Hardcover. Sm 8vo (7.625” x 5.25”), gilt green cloth. Frontis., xv, 285 pp., 39 b&w illus. port. Bookplate of “Clarence Edwin Tobias, Jr.” at front paste-down. CONDITION: Very good, mild wear to extremities, lacking dj. First edition. An anthology of African American poetry with an emphasis on contemporary works of the Harlem Renaissance. Includes poems by Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and many others. Robert T. Kerlin (1866–1950) was a professor, minister, soldier, and civil rights activist. A Missouri native and the son of farmers, Kerlin rose from poverty to pursue higher education at Central College (Fayette, Missouri), Johns Hopkins, and Harvard, before earning his PhD from Yale in 1906. He then worked as an English professor and minister, serving as a chaplain during the Spanish-American War. Kerlin authored several books on religion, English, African American studies, and other subjects. Throughout his career, Kerlin remained a stalwart supporter of civil rights for African Americans, with his activism costing him faculty positions on several occasions. In 1921, the Virginia Military Institute dismissed Kerlin as professor and head of the English department after he published his “Open Letter to the Governor of Arkansas” in The Nation, advocating on behalf of African Americans who defended themselves from a white mob and federal troops during the Elaine massacre in Arkansas. REFERENCES: Blockson 5962 citing the second edition of 1935; “Robert T. Kerlin, VMI Faculty & Civil Rights Activist” at VMI Archives online.
Item #10378
Price: $350.00
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