Black Moods collects for the first time all of Frank Marshall Davis's extant published poems as well as his known previously unpublished work.

Cogently framed by John Edgar Tidwell's insightful introduction, this volume recovers the rich variety of Davis's poetic expression, much of it informed by his political convictions and by his multifaceted work as a journalist. His early work helped promote Chicago as a site of the New Negro Renaissance in the 1930s; late in his career the Black Arts Movement welcomed him as "the long lost father of modern Black poetry." Between these...

Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987) was a central figure in the black press, working as reporter and editor for the Atlanta World, the Associated Negro Press, the Chicago Star, and the Honolulu Record. Writings of Frank Marshall Davis presents a selection of Davis's nonfiction, providing an unprecedented insight into one journalist's ability to reset the terms of public conversation and frame the news to open up debate among African Americans and all Americans.

During the middle of the twentieth century, Davis set forth a radical vision that challenged...