The two volumes edited by Dr Wilson, Director of the John Memorial Foundation, make an important body of Johnson's writings more readily available to scholars in African-American studies. Volume I comprises editorials from "The New York Age" organized thematically, and a critical introduction discusses Johnson's role in the history of the black press.

The two volumes edited by Dr Wilson, Director of the John Memorial Foundation, make an important body of Johnson's writings more readily available to scholars in African-American studies. Volume II comprises literary essays, political essays, and song lyrics. The critical introduction places Johnson in relation to other black artists, the development of African-American literature and early integrationist movements.

This volume offers a glimpse into the minds of three NAACP leaders who occupied the centre of black thought and action during some of the most troublesome and pivotal times of the civil rights movement. These writings illustrate the roles of three builders in constructing a people's liberation. Though progressive in their time, they may still serve as a vision of the future as race relations enter the 21st century.

A "brassy yet deeply respectful book" ("Publishers Weekly"), this is a lively social history based on first-hand accounts of the legendary Hotel Theresa--one of the New York landmarks that established Harlem as a mecca of black culture.
In mid-twentieth century America, Harlem was the cultural capital of African America, and the Theresa was the place for black people to see and be seen. The hotel was known to have the hottest nightlife in the world and to be the only grand hotel in Manhattan that welcomed nonwhites. The thirteen-story building still stands on the historic corner of Seventh Avenue (or Adam C. Powell Jr. Boulevard) and 125th Street, but few of the legions that pass it day after day know that, as Sondra Wilson writes, "For thirty years life in and outside the hotel was an exhilarating social experience that has yet to be duplicated."
The Theresa was situated among a cluster of famous nightspots of the day. Locals and out-of-towners could stroll from the hotel to take in jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, see floorshows at the Baby Grand, admire chorus girls at Club Baron, do the jitterbug at the Savoy Ballroom, and watch showbiz heavyweights at the Apollo Theater. Black America's biggest and brightest--Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and so many more--made the hotel their New York stay-over. The book reveals little known facts and stories about the celebrities and the regulars: the owners, the gangsters, the showgirls, the politicians, entertainers, intellectuals, the fast crowd, and even the hangers-on.
The Hotel Theresa is the stuff of legend, and though it closed its doors in 1970, there are still many who live to tell the tales. "Meet Me at the Theresa" is the first book devoted to the fabulous and continually fascinating story of the Hotel Theresa.

The autobiography of the celebrated African American writer and civil rights activist Published just four years before his death in 1938, James Weldon Johnson's autobiography is a fascinating portrait of an African American who broke the racial divide at a time when the Harlem Renaissance had not yet begun to usher in the civil rights movement. Not only an educator, lawyer, and diplomat, Johnson was also one of the most revered leaders of his time, going on to serve as the first black president of the NAACP (which had previously been run only by whites), as well as write the groundbreaking novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Beginning with his birth in Jacksonville, Florida, and detailing his education, his role in the Harlem Renaissance, and his later years as a professor and civil rights reformer, Along This Way is an inspiring classic of African American literature. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Messenger was the third most popular magazine of the Harlem Renaissance after The Crisis andOpportunity. Unlike the other two magazines, The Messenger was not tied to a civil rights organization. Labor activist A. Philip Randolph and economist Chandler Owen started the magazine in 1917 to advance the cause of socialism to the black masses. They believed that a socialist society was the only one that would be free from racism.

The socialist ideology of The Messenger "the only magazine of scientific radicalism in the world published by Negroes," was reflected in the pieces and authors published in its pages. The Messenger Reader contains poetry, stories, and essays from Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, and Dorothy West.

The Messenger Reader, will be a welcome addition to the critically acclaimed Modern Library Harlem Renaissance series.

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance

In 1923, the Urban League's Opportunity magazine made its first appearance. Spearheaded by the noted sociologist Charles S. Johnson, it became, along with the N.A.A.C.P.'s Crisis magazine, one of the vehicles that drove the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. As a way of attracting writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Johnson conducted literary contests that were largely funded by Casper Holstein, the infamous Harlem numbers gangster, who contributed
several essays in addition to money.
        Dorothy West, Nella Larsen, and Arthur Schomburg were among Opportunity's contributors. Many of the pieces included in The Opportunity Reader have not been seen since their publication in the magazine, whose motto was "Not alms, but opportunity."

The fertile artistic period now known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930) gave birth to many of the world-renowned masters of black literature and is the model for today's renaissance of black writers.

After its start in 1910, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races magazine became the major outlet for works by African American writers and intellectuals. In 1920, Langston Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis and W. E. B. Du Bois, the magazine's editor, wrote about the coming "renaissance of American Negro literature," beginning what is now known as the Harlem Renaissance.

The Crisis Reader is a collection of poems, short stories, plays, and essays from this great literary period and includes, in addition to four previously unpublished poems by James Weldon Johnson, work by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Charles Chesnutt, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke.