This the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this study, the author recalls the lost history of a crucial era. Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples. As he shows, through contemporary documents, the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary criticism by both black and white critics. Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, this work paints a portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.

Irredeemable promise : the bittersweet career of J. Saunders Redding -- Three swinging sisters: Harlem, Howard, and the South Side (1934-1936) -- The Black avant-garde between Left and Right (1935-1939) -- A new kind of challenge (1936-1939) -- The triumph of Chicago realism (1938-1940) -- Bigger Thomas among the liberals (1940-1943) -- Friends in need of Negroes: Bucklin Moon and Thomas Sancton (1942-1945) -- "Beating that boy": white writers, critics, editors, and the Liberal Arts Coalition (1944-1949) -- Afroliberals and the end of World War II (1945-1946) -- Black futilitarianists and the welcome table (1945-1947) -- The peril of something new, or, the decline of social realism (1947-1948) -- The Negro new liberal critic and the big little magazine (1948-1949) -- The Communist dream of African American modernism (1947-1950) -- The insinuating poetics of the mainstream (1949-1950) -- Still looking for freedom (1949-1954) -- The expatriation: the price of Brown and the new Bohemians (1952-1955) -- Liberal friends no more: the rubble of white patronage (1956-1958) -- The end of the Negro writer (1955-1960) -- The reformation of Black new liberals (1958-1960) -- Prometheus unbound (1958-1960).