During the three years it has taken to complete this edition, I received a great deal of assistance, for which I am extremely grateful. Wesleyan University has helped immeasurably with research grants and a sabbatical leave. I am especially indebted to colleagues and friends Joseph Reed, Richard Slotkin, Clarence Walker, Daniel Aaron, William J. Harris, Robert Hemenway, Robert Stepto, and Ernest J. Wilson III, who read parts of the manuscript and offered encouragement as well as comments and suggestions for research and analytical approaches.
I am indebted to more librarians and libraries than I can name. For their extraordinary professionalism and kindness, I am pleased to thank Steven Lebergott at Wesleyan's Olin Library, Ernest Kaiser at the Schomburg Library of New York, and the research librarians at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of Howard University and the Beinecke Library of Yale University. I am especially grateful to the tireless and dedicated Henry Fulmer, Thomas Johnson, and Alan Stokes at the South Caroliniana Library in Columbia, South Carolina.
For permission to use documents in the Langston Hughes Papers at Yale, I am grateful to Arnold Rampersad. For information on New World Africanisms in Adams's work, I am grateful to Robert Farris Thompson. For suggesting approaches to problems concerning the history of southern racial etiquette, I am indebted to Joel Williamson. For leading me, through his own writings, to Adams's books in the first place, and for offering wise counsel and warm encouragement, I am grateful (again) to Sterling A. Brown.
E. C. L. Adams's family took me in; made pictures, manuscripts, and memorabilia available to me; fed me; corresponded with me; and shared with me their memories of their illustrious family member. Thanks especially to Stephen and Pam Adams, Mr. Stephen B. Adams, and Mrs. George C. S. Adams. I also wish to thank these others who made me feel at home in Columbia and led me to information about Dr. Adams: Rev. J. P. Neal, Sr., Rev. J. P. Neal, Jr., and Mrs. Mamie Blakeley.
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