Langston HUGHES: The American Negro Writer and his Roots, First Edition, signed by co-author Sarah E. Wright

[Literature] [Philosophy] [Civil Rights] [African American]. The American Negro Writer and his Roots: Selected Papers from The First Conference of Negro Writers, March, 1959. New York: American Society of African Culture, 1960. First edition signed in original wrappers. Octavo. 70 pages. The selection of essays presented in this book are from the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC), an organization of mostly black writers and artists that was created as a result of the Congress of Black Writers and Artists. Includes essays by Langston Hughes, Saunders Redding, John Henrik Clarke, Julian Mayfield, William Branch, Arna Bontemps, John Oliver Killens, Sarah E. Wright, Samuel W. Allen, Arthur P. Davis, and Loften Mitchell.
The Congress had a Pan-Africanist orientation, seeking to unite diasporic blacks and Africans on the basis of a common black identity. In the Francophone world, this intellectual project became known as negritude. Some of the essays within this book grapple with that concept, trying to apply it to the American experience. Notable American writers included in this book are the historian John Henrik Clarke, Samuel W. Allen, and Sarah E. Wright, who signed the page containing her essay, "Roadblocks to the Development of Negro Writers." Other essays included focus on the integration struggle, structural disadvantages to black writers in America, and literary analysis of major texts like Richard Wright's Native Son. The AMSAC was a vibrant organization in the early 1960s, and sponsored a festival in Lagos, Nigeria in 1961 that was attended by Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, and others, but the group's membership precipitously declined after 1967 when journalists discovered that it was one of many organizations on the political left being funded by the CIA. Contains photographs at beginning and end of the book of AMSAC writers. Scarce.and in very good condition.