Toni Cade Bambara was a well-known and respected civil rights activist, a professor of English and of African-American studies, the editor of anthologies of black literature, and the author of short stories and novels. Throughout her career, Bambara used her art to convey social and political messages about the welfare of the African-American community and of African-American women especially. According to Alice A. Deck in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the author was "one of the best representatives of the group of Afro-American writers who, during the 1960s, became directly involved in the cultural and sociopolitical activities in urban communities across the [United States]." However, Deck pointed out that "Bambara is one of the few who continued to work within the black urban communities (filming, lecturing, organizing, and reading from her works at rallies and conferences), producing imaginative reenactments of these experiences in her fiction. In addition, Bambara...