As a young playwright in the 1920s and 1930s, May Miller early recognized the need to write and produce plays that would break away from the early crude rendering of blacks on stage and portray them with some measure of faithfulness to their daily lives. Encouraged by Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, and W.E.B. Du Bois, she is part of the movement of young writers whose literature reawakened racial pride and dignity and created an acceptance and a respect for blacks that had not before been afforded in drama. In the 1940s, she turned her energies to poetry, inspired by the work of the Chicago Imagists and the poetry of Archibald MacLeish. A lyricist of quiet strength, May Miller personifies the same dignity, nobility, and courage found in her dramatic characters. Frequently using nature as a point of reference, she poses the human dilemma of people...