Critical studies of Afro-American literature at the turn of the century generally focus on the work of Charles W. Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. As a result one black author who has been undeservedly relegated to footnotes in such scholarship is James D. Corrothers. Not only was Corrothers among the most celebrated and widely published black poets of his day, but he also produced short stories, numerous magazine and newspaper articles, an autobiography, and a book of fictional sketches. Moreover, his career vividly reveals how black writers striving for a broad audience in late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century America had to cope with the racial stereotypes which shaped the expectations of white editors and readers alike.

James David Corrothers was born in Cass County, Michigan, on 2 July 1869, to Maggie and James Richard Carruthers (he changed the spelling of the family name while in grade school). The...