CULLEN, Countee, editor

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets

First edition. Pencil ownership signature of Allan Knight Chalmers, paper spine label darkened and a little nicked, an about very good copy in an attractive, very good Aaron Douglas-illustrated dustwrapper that is a bit sunned at the spine, and has some modest nicking at the crown. Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers was the pastor of New York's Broadway Tabernacle Congregational Church, a pacifist, and a civil rights activist. He helped organize the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, became chairman of The Scottsboro Defense Committee, and later was the single most instrumental figure in having them pardoned. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledged Chalmers, who taught King at the Boston University School of Theology, as an important influence in his intellectual development toward non-violence in his essay My Pilgrimage to Non-Violence. A nice copy of this important anthology. The contributors represent a who's-who of early 20th-Century African-American poets including: Cullen, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Angelina Grimke, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Sterling Brown, W.E.B. Du Bois, Arna Bontemps, Cuning Waring, and many more.

[BTC #78552]