AN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE BY AMERICAN NEGROES: Edited with a Critical Introduction, Biographical Sketches of the Authors, and Bibliographical Notes; [Spine title: POETRY BY AMERICAN NEGROES]

Durham: Trinity College Press, 1924. First edition. Collection of poetry by Black authors edited by self-described "Southern white men" with biographical sketches that occasionally (and inexplicably) include home addresses (Countee Cullen, 234 West 131 St., NY; Jessie Redmond [sic] Fauset, 69 Fifth Ave., NY, etc.). Includes poems by and biographical sketches of Phyllis Wheatly (3), George Moses Horton (2), James Madison Bell ("Song for the First of August"), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (2), Charles L. Reason ("Freedon"), Alberry A. Whitman (2), Paul Laurence Dunbar (30), George Marion McClellan (5), Daniel Webster Davis (4), George Hannibal Temple ("Crispus Attucks"), Charles R. Dinkins (3), Timothy Thomas Fortune (2), J. Mord Allen (5), Clara Ann Thompson (2), William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite (14), Joseph Seaman Cotter (3), Walter Everette Hawkins (3), H. Cordelia Ray (3), Edward Smythe Jones ("A Song of Thanks"), Benjamin Griffith Brawley (4), Fenton Johnson (4), James David Corrothers (4), George Reginald Margetson (3), James Weldon Johnson (5), Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. (4), John Wesley Holloway (4), Charles Bertram Johnson (2), Ray E. Dandridge (3), Jessie Redmon Fauset ("Oriflamme"), Leslie Pinckney Hill (9), Claude McKay (7), Georgia Douglas Johnson (4), Countee Cullen ("The Touch"), and Sarah Collins Fernandis ("A Vision"). 8vo gilt-stamped dark-blue ribbed cloth; 250 pages including "Bibliographical and Critical Notes" (pp. 214-37) plus author and title indexes. Contemporaneous ownership signature of Guy Benton Johnson, a "distinguished student of black culture in the rural South and a pioneer advocate of racial equality" (Wikipedia) with a few light pencil markings to the introduction and one dark one (p. 23) where the editors seem to be particularly condescending in their assessments. Near fine with minor shelf wear and small fore-edge stain which marginally encroaches (pp.163-85).