BLACK POWER AND BLACK RELIGION: Essays and Reviews.

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy. Original beige cloth with blue lettering to the spine. Issued, as far as can be ascertained, without a dustwrapper. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean, except for a couple of marginal pencil lines marking the passage in the Introduction referring to this copy's recipient. Lightly pushed to spine tips, with a couple of tiny marks to the spine panel. Loosely laid in are the leaflet announcing publication, and a copy of the recipient's review of the book. A nice association copy of a scarce volume.

Inscribed by the author in black ink to the front free endpaper, "For Sam – / you will see on p. xvii / an attempt to express / my appreciation for you / and your work. you / are an inspiration for / whom I have the / deepest regard, ad- / miration, and respect. / Sincerely, / Dick / 12/86". Richard Newman (1930-2003) was a scholar of black studies, civil rights activist, and senior research officer at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. After teaching appointments at Vassar College, Syracuse University and Boston University, he worked as an editor at G.K. Hall & Co. and Garland, where he published books on black history. In 1993, he joined Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department, serving as managing editor of the "Harvard Guide to African-American History". The recipient is George "Sam" Shepperson (1922-2020), British historian, Africanist and William Robertson Professor of Commonwealth and American History at the University of Edinburgh from 1963 until 1986. Page xvii does indeed contain a paragraph of glowing tribute to Shepperson, the concluding sentence extolling his "ability and willingness to go, to search, and to find, combined with the informed daring of his imaginative connections, the rigor of his scholarship, and the elegance of his style [...] creat[ing] an intellectual excitement from which, happily, I have not yet recovered." The respect was reciprocated, as evidenced by Shepperson's 1989 review of Newman's book in the 'International Journal of African Historical Studies', a copy of which has been loosely laid into this copy, presumably by Shepperson himself, who has also neatly written the source of the review at the head of the page.