SOURCE: "Let Freedom Ring," in To Make a Poet Black, McGrath Publishing Company, 1968, pp. 19-48.

In To Make a Poet Black Redding provides a scholarly appraisal of black poetry, including a historical overview as well as biographical information about individual poets. In the following excerpt from that book, originally published in 1939, Redding discusses Harper's attempts to broaden the scope of African-American verse in her Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects and other collections.

In 1854, while Douglass was climbing in importance as the spokesman and ideal of the Negro race, there appeared in Philadelphia a thin volume called Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, by Frances Ellen Watkins. The title is significant, for it indicates a different trend in the creative urge of the Negro. Except for Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Negro writers up to this time were interested mainly in the one theme of slavery and in the one purpose of...