Critical praise for the success of Go Tell It on the Mountain has not faded since 1953, when the book was first published. One of the earliest reviews, by J. Saunders Redding in The New York Herald Tribune Book Review told potential readers that the book was more than just entertaining, and that "even the most insensitive of readers will put the book down with a troubled feeling of having 'looked on beauty bare.' "

While even the most insensitive of critics has recognized Baldwin's great achievement of having vividly recreated the life and times of a young African-American boy in Harlem, the problem facing critics has been in analyzing the book's significance. Early examinations, in keeping with the prevalence of racial segregation in the early 1950s, showed a fascination with the depiction of Harlem, and therefore early reviewers tended to group it with other novels by...