To my two editors, for their incalculable help: Cynthia Merman of Harper & Row, and Roslyn Zinn.
To Hugh Van Dusen, of HarperCollins, for wonderful help and support throughout the history of this book.
To Rick Balkin, my tirelessly attentive agent and friend.
To Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation, for the passage from Ila Abernathy’s poem.
To Dodd, Mead & Company, for the passage from “We Wear the Mask” from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar.
To Harper & Row, for “Incident” from On These I Stand by Countee Cullen. Copyright 1925 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.; renewed 1953 by Ida M. Cullen.
To Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for the passage from “I, Too” from Selected Poems of Langston Hughes.
To The New Trail, 1953 School Yearbook of the Phoenix Indian School, Phoenix, Arizona, for the poem “It Is Not!”
To Random House, Inc., for the passage from “Lenox Avenue Mural” from The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Time by Langston Hughes.
To Esta Seaton, for her poem “Her Life,” which first appeared in The Ethnic American Woman by Edith Blicksilver, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1978.
To Warner Bros., for the excerpt from “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” Lyric by Jay Gomey, Music by E. Y. Harburg. © 1932 Warner Bros. Inc. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission.