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New World A-Coming. Inside Black America.
New World A-Coming. Inside Black America.
New World A-Coming. Inside Black America.

New World A-Coming. Inside Black America.

Life in Harlem and being black in war-time America


Life in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s with efforts to investigate numerous questions such as: “What is the Negro’s attitude toward his white employer, toward the white man’s assumption of superiority? [...] Do Negroes want American democracy or communism, socialism, nazilism, or fascism Japanese style? How doe the Negro actually live, and earn a livelihood? [...] What is his reaction to slum-shock? What happens to a white person who marries a Negro? [...] Will Negroes seek to wreak vengeance upon the white man if he gets arms an opportunity?” [And so forth.]

Born in Harlem, Vincent Lushington “Roi” Ottley (1906–1960) was the child of Grenada immigrants. His skills in journalism led him to a career as a war correspondent during World War II for which he received plaudits.

New World A-Coming, Ottley’s first book, became a best seller, winning prestigious prizes including the Ainsworth Award and the Peabody Award. The book was a published as a “Life-in-America Prize Book.” A pleasing copy of the first edition.


Description: New World A-Coming. Inside Black America.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943). 364pp. First Edition. Publisher’s cloth. Endpapers illustrated in color; text with modest illustrations in black and white. Near fine in a pictorial dustwrapper in like condition. (Curiously, in an apparently contemporaneous small hand, the author’s address has been neatly inked beneath his name on the dustwrapper’s front flap.)

[3727250]

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