ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
C
ompletion of a project such as this depends on
the support, counsel, and expertise of col-
leagues, librarians, research assistants, and friends. I
offer sincere thanks to my Mount Holyoke College
students Abigail Horne, Stacy Pringle, Florence
Rice, Jennifer Roberts, Rachel Schaefer, and Emily
Uecker for their enthusiastic research assistance that
has enriched this volume. Thanks to Leigh Golden,
Taran Schindler, and the staff at the Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, the librarians in the
Rare Books Department at the Boston Public
Library, and the librarians of Mount Holyoke
College and of the Five College Consortium for
providing access to instrumental resources and to
archival materials. For permission to reproduce
photographs by Carl Van Vechten housed in the
James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of
Negro Arts and Letters, I thank Bruce Kellner and
the Van Vechten Trust. Many thanks also to Donal
O’Shea, Dean of the Faculty at Mount Holyoke, for
funds that aided the research for the volume and
for his much appreciated and enthusiastic endorse-
ments of the life of the mind.
Edgar and Jean Brown, Anna Brown-Bryant,
Michael Bryant, Carolyn Collette, Greta Heintzel-
man, Amy Martin, Lynda Morgan, Lauret Savoy,
Alycia Smith-Howard, Sally Sutherland, and Kathy
Washburn have offered friendship, good counsel,
and timely and spirited words of encouragement
throughout this period of writing, research, and
compilation. For these bolstering and generous
gifts, I thank them sincerely. Finally, for his wisdom,
his invaluable perspectives on the academic life,
and his inspiring love of history, I thank Peter
Monson.v