BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 34 “Let Us March On ‘Till Victory Is Won” 42HUGHES, Langston. Laughing to Keep from Crying. New York, 1952. Octavo, original half blue cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box. $6000 First edition of Hughes’ major second collection of short fiction, boldly inscribed by both civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson and Langston Hughes to a local New York politician: “To Ruth Brown Price, Over the years—’Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on ‘till victory is won’ James Weldon Johnson from Lift Every Voice and Sing. Grace Nail Johnson. Mar. 30—’52” and “For Ruth Brown Price—with the sincere regard of—Langston Hughes. New York, March 30, 1952.” Nail Johnson was the wife of James Weldon Johnson, whose poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” she quotes in her inscription. “Set to music... it was soon adopted by the NAACP as its official song. Today ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is one of the most cherished songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement” (“Black Culture Connection,” PBS). Johnson was also an activist in her own right and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Book near-fine, with minor rubbing to extremities and a couple tiny bumps to edges. Dust jacket extremely good, with a bit of soiling mainly to rear panel and light wear to extremities. “An Especially Illuminating Look Into The Connections Between Her Life And Art” 43HURSTON, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. An Autobiography. Philadelphia London New York, 1942. Octavo, original beige cloth, dust jacket. $6500 First edition of Hurston’s fascinating memoir. “Hurston was more prolific than any black woman writer before her… [She] recognized that African Americans, despite their oppression by whites, had created alternative spaces, at least in language, where they asserted their selfhood” (Smith, Baechler & Litz, 175, 186). Dust Tracks “chronicles her growth and development as a writer, as well as her many migrations throughout the South, the North, and the Caribbean… Read alongside her novels, it provides an especially illuminating look into the connections between her life and art” (Jones, Critical Companion, 29). Book with faint dampstain to front cloth panel and along bottom edge of text block, not visible on pages. Bright dust jacket unusually nice with minor wear to spine ends and along front flap fold. A nearfine copy.
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