Chariot in the Sky - A Story of the Jubilee Singers by Bontemps, Arna ; Cyrus Leroy Baldridge (illustrator) - 1951

Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 1951. Hardcover. Land of the Free Series; xiii, (3), 238 pages; Contents clean and secure in original cloth binding (light brick) in very nice dustjacket (Not clipped). This wonderful book by the noted Harlem Renaissance writer was issued in the Land of the Free Series. Caleb Willows, a 16-year-old slave, makes a break for freedom and later is a student at Fisk University in Tennessee. He becomes one of the Jubilee Singers, eleven young African Americans who tour the United States and England singing spirituals in order to raise money for the school. The author Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902 – 1973) was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. Through his librarianship and bibliographic work, Bontemps became a leading figure in establishing African-American literature as a legitimate object of study and preservation. His work as a poet, novelist, children's writer, editor, librarian and historian helped shape modern African-American literature, but it also had a tremendous influence on African-American culture. The illustrator Cyrus Leroy Baldridge (1889 – 1977) was an artist, illustrator, author and adventurer. When World War I began, Baldridge traveled through occupied Belgium and France as a war correspondent and illustrator. Baldridge's reputation as an illustrator was launched in the United States when his battlefield drawings appeared on many covers of Leslie's Weekly and Scribners. Like most liberals in the 1920s Baldridge believed that war could be outlawed and espoused a one-world internationalism. He was a follower of Norman Thomas and at least once spoke on behalf of Jane Addams' pacifist Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. .