Bibliography
Bernard, Emily. Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of
Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten.New York:
Knopf, 2001.
Berry, Faith, ed. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond
Harlem.Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Com-
pany, 1983.
Coleman, Leon. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renais-
sance: A Critical Assessment.New York: Garland
Publishers, 1998.
Kellner, Bruce. Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent
Decades.Norman; University of Oklahoma Press,
1968.
———. Letters of Carl Van Vechten.New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987.
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for
Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963.New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
Lueders, Edward. Carl Van Vechten.New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1965.
Van Vechten, Carl. Nigger Heaven.Introduction by
Kathleen Pfeiffer. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2000.
No Alabaster Box Evelyn Crawford Reynolds
(1936)
The first of three books of verse that EVELYNCRAW-
FORDREYNOLDSpublished and the only volume that
she produced during the Harlem Renaissance. The
PHILADELPHIA-based publishers, Alpress, produced
some 350 copies in the first run of the work. The
book appeared as the work of Eve Lynn, the name
that Reynolds used as a pseudonym.
Reynolds’s title alludes to the New Testament
story of Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, who
broke an expensive alabaster jar so that she could
use the expensive perfume within it to minister to
Jesus.
A Philadelphia poet, Reynolds tended to write
about religious themes, racial issues, citizenship,
and patriotism. The volume received positive re-
views, including an endorsement by literary critic
BENJAMINBRAWLEY.
Reynolds’s subsequent works reflected her so-
cial prominence and connections as the wife of
Hobson Richmond Reynolds, a highly respected
Pennsylvania assemblyman and magistrate. The
educator and activist MARYMCLEODBETHUNE
provided the introduction for her second work, To
No Special Land: A Book of Poems(1953), and the
celebrated contralto MARIANANDERSONpenned
the introduction for her third collection, Put a
Daisy in Your Hair(1963).Bibliography
Reynolds, Evelyn Crawford. No Alabaster Box.Philadel-
phia: Alpress, 1936.No Hiding PlaceSterling Brown(unpublished)
A collection of poems that author and HOWARD
UNIVERSITYprofessor STERLINGBROWNcould not
get published. Works that he had intended for the
volume, such as “Sharecropper,” a rousing tribute
to agricultural workers in the South, were pub-
lished later in other collections.
Brown was a talented poet whose intense po-
etical renderings of African-American folklife, di-
alect, spirituals, blues, and jazz earned him praise
from many in and beyond the Harlem Renaissance
literary world. Unfortunately, however, his col-
leagues at Howard held his writing in lower regard,
and that criticism made it extremely difficult for
the poet to acquire a publisher for his GREAT
DEPRESSION–era second volume.
After failing to publish No Hiding Place,Brown
turned to literary criticism, and it was 40 years be-
fore he published another volume of verse, The
Last Ride of Wild Bill,in 1975.Bibliography
Gabbin, Joanne. Sterling Brown: Building the Black Aes-
thetic Tradition.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1985.
Harper, Michael. The Collected Poems of Sterling A.
Brown.Chicago: TriQuarterly Books, 1989.
Sanders, Mark. Afro-Modernist Aesthetics and the Poetry
of Sterling A. Brown.Athens, Ga.: University of
Georgia, 1999.“Nomah—a Story”John Matheus(1931)
A short story by JOHNMATHEUS,a COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITYgraduate and college professor, that
appeared in the July 1931 issue of OPPORTUNITY.
Set in Monrovia, Liberia, the tale focuses on the
drowning death of Kadah Watu and the deep
mourning of his devoted daughter Nomah.392 No Alabaster Box