of a DuBoisian “double consciousness”—Negro
and American—there were those, STANLEY BRAITH-
WAITE and FRANK YERBY, for example, who “write
like whites.” In fact, the anthologists conclude,
“the entire stock of their referent is white, Anglo
Saxon-American derived” (xvii). However, the
“twin rooted” majority finds that whereas “one
root is nourished by the myths, customs, culture
and values traditional in the Western world, the
other feeds hungrily on the experiential reality of
blackness” (xvii). The writers in this group have
a special vision and mission: “In their work they
combine the sermon and the liturgy, the reality
and the dream” (xvii).
Davis and Redding offered a new paradigm
for examining and discussing African-American
literature. Moving chronologically from slavery
to the 1970s, they divided their work into four
major periods: pioneer writers (1760–1830),
freedom fighters (1830–1865), accommodation
and protest (1865–1910), and integration versus
Black Nationalism (1954–present). They included
short stories, novels, essays, plays, biographies,
and autobiographies and prefaced each section
with a critical introduction and bio-bibliographi-
cal headnotes for each author. In designing this
specific format, Davis and Redding established a
paradigm that, with the exception of a few varia-
tions based on ideological perspectives or thematic
emphasis, continues to dominate the mapping of
the African-American literary tradition through
the publication of The Norton Anthology of African
American Literature (1997), edited by HENRY LOUIS
GATES, JR., and colleagues and CALL AND RESPONSE:
THE RIVERSIDE ANTHOLOGY OF THE AFRICAN AMERI-
CAN LITERARY TRADITION (1998), edited by Patricia
Liggins Hill and colleagues.
Despite their claimed impartiality and their cov-
erage of integration and Black Nationalism, Davis
and Redding registered, with their use of the word
“Negro” in the title of their pioneering work, their
association with ties to historically black colleges
and their commitment to a more academic and
Western aesthetic. Significantly, Cavalcade appeared
just when the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT and the BLACK
AESTHETICS movement were reaching their apothe-
osis among black writers and critics. However, the
editors chose not to use the labels “Afro-American
literature,” “black American literature,” or “black
American writers,” unlike succeeding compilers
such as RICHARD BARKSDALE and DARWIN T. TURNER.
Davis, University Professor at Howard University,
and Redding, Ernest I. White Professor of American
Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University,
aligned themselves more with white critic Robert
Bone, who, in his historically important work The
Negro Novel in America, divided writers of the black
literary tradition into two basic camps: assimila-
tionism and Negro nationalism (Bone, 7).
In 1992 Howard University Press added scholar-
critic Joyce Ann Joyce to the original compilers and
updated its now-classic text by issuing The New
Cavalcade: African American Writing from 1760 to
the Present, volumes 1 and 2. The first volume cov-
ers contributions through 1954, the second vol-
ume from 1954 to the 1980s.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bone, Robert A. The Negro Novel in America. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1958.
Davis, Arthur P., and J. Saunders Redding, ed. Cav-
alcade: Negro American Writing from 1760 to the
Present. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1971.
Wilfred D. SamuelsCave Canem
Established by poets TOI DERRICOTTE and COR-
NELIUS EADY in 1996, Cave Canem began as a re-
treat and writer’s workshop for African-American
poets. According to the program’s Web site, it was
“designed to counter the under-representation
and isolation of African American poets in writers’
workshops and literary programs” (http://www.
cavecanempoets.org).
Derricotte, Eady, and Sarah Micklem, Eady’s
wife, found the name and symbol for the retreat
while on vacation in Italy. In Pompeii, at the en-
trance to the House of the Tragic Poet, they came
across the mosaic of a black dog and an inscrip-
tion that read: “cave canem,” Latin for “beware of
the dog.” They adopted the words and mosaic as92 Cave Canem