Berry, Faith, Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem, Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1983.

A meticulously researched biography by a founding member of the Langston Hughes Society, this book is full of fascinating anecdotes.

Cashman, Sean Dennis, African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights 1900-1990, New York: New York University Press, 1991.

A very thorough and readable account of the growth of the Civil Rights movement.

Meier, August, and Elliot Rudwick, From Plantation to Ghetto, third edition, New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

This book gives too little attention to the period of the late 1 940s and early 1 950s, but it has a large, informative section about Hughes's part in the Harlem Renaissance.

Truman, Harry S., "Civil Rights Message," in The Negro in American History, Mortimer 1. Adler, gen. ed., Charles Van Doran, ed. Encyclopedia Britannica Corp., 1969.

This is the text of Truman's address to Congress on February 2, 1948, outlining the...