Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-212) and index.
Modern, modernist, Afro-modernist: Melvin B. Tolson in the 1930s and 40s Afro-modernist chronologies -- A poem for the futurafrique: Tolson's libretto for the Republic of Liberia overview -- "In the modern vein": Tolson's Harlem gallery, Book I, the curator -- Bound by law: Langston Hughes in/and the 1950s -- Toward an Afro-modernist future: Langston Hughes's Ask your mama: 12 moods for jazz -- Amiri Baraka's Wise Why's Y's: lineages of the Afro-Modernist epic