New York: Dial Press, 1972. First edition - African American poet and novelist's first book - a study of Black writers in America, focusing on James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones and Ernest Gaines. An uncommon title in any format, but scarce in this, the earliest printed version. Williams was the daughter of migrant African American farm workers and she picked cotton in California's central valley as a child, a single parent, who became not only an honored professor but one of the first to teach the study of African American literature, a poet, playwright, a Caldecott winning children's writer and an author whose only published novel was nominated for the Pulitzer, all in a too brief life cut short by cancer. 11 1/4 inches tall by 4 3/4 inches wide. Footnotes. Bibliography. 159 hand-numbered pages. Publisher's note laid in.