Bibliography
Hull, Gloria. Love, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers
of the Harlem Renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.
Sullivan, Megan. “Folk Plays, Home Girls, and Back
Talk: Georgia Douglas Johnson and Women of the
Harlem Renaissance,” College Language Association
Journal,38, no. 4 (June 1995): 404–419.
Blues: An Anthology(1926)
An assortment of music selected by W. C.
HANDYfor this folio-size publication published
by the well-known Harlem Renaissance press of
ALBERTand CHARLESBONI. In this often repub-
lished history of the blues, Handy included some
works that he himself had arranged. The illustra-
tions in the volume were done by Miguel Covar-
rubias, the talented Mexican caricaturist who
designed the cover-sketch for LANGSTON
HUGHES’s 1925 THE WEARY BLUES and who
composed many other memorable Harlem Re-
naissance images.
Boas, Franz(1858–1942)
The accomplished German-born anthropologist
with whom ZORANEALEHURSTONstudied dur-
ing her college years at BARNARDCOLLEGEin the
1920s. This cofounder of the American Anthro-
pological Association and former teacher who
trained well-known specialists such as Melville
Herskovits and Margaret Mead, recognized Hur-
ston’s potential for scholarship and after seeing
one of her term papers, hired her and began to
train her to conduct anthropological research. It
was her studies with Boas that shaped Hurston’s
pioneering fieldwork in the American South and
in the West Indies, research that gave THEIREYES
WERE WATCHING GOD and other impressive
works their distinctive flair.
Bibliography
Hyatt, Marshall. Franz Boas, Social Activist: The Dy-
namics of Ethnicity.New York: Greenwood Press,
1990.
Stocking, George. A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of
American Anthropology, 1883–1911.Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1982.
Williams, Vernon. Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and his
Contemporaries.Lexington: University Press of Ken-
tucky, 1996.“Bodies in the Moonlight”Langston Hughes
(1927)
A short story by LANGSTONHUGHESin which the
circumstances and certain actions of the romantic
protagonist seem quite autobiographical. Like
Hughes did when he sailed for AFRICAin 1923
aboard the West Hesseltine,the main character, an
unnamed boy, admits that he has “thrown all...
school books overboard” at the beginning of his
first sea voyage. While on the trip that recalls
Hughes’s own six-month journey to West Africa,
the young sailor vies for the affections of a
Nunuma, a provocative West African girl. His
competition, however, is Porto Rico, an extremely
burly and aggressive sailor. Ultimately, provoked by
Nunuma’s charms and seductive invitations, the
two men fight each other. The young sailor is
wounded, and the story ends as he regains con-
sciousness aboard ship. The story appeared in the
April 1927 issue of the MESSENGER.Bibliography
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah,
eds. Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and
Present.New York: Amistad, 1993.
Miller, R. Baxter. The Art and Imagination of Langston
Hughes.Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1989.“Boll Weevil Starts North, The: A Story”
Benjamin Young(1926)
A story told from the perspective of a relatively
powerless northern spectator as he travels by train
through the Black Belt South on his way to Ohio.
In this short story by BENJAMINYOUNGthat ap-
peared in the February 1926 issue of OPPORTU-
NITY,the nameless narrator watches as Elder Scott,
an elderly farmer and church man, suffers the loss
of his life savings and believes that he has been
victimized by a young man from his own commu-
nity. In this depressing story about an inadvertently
misplaced item and derailed life plans, Young also
provides rich details about the black migration to“Boll Weevil Starts North, The: A Story” 51