With the recent upsurge of interest in Afro-American culture, black authors of the earlier part of the century are being studied and reinterpreted in colleges and universities across the nation and in numerous periodicals, newspapers, anthologies, and books. In the midst of these new estimations of Afro-American writers, Darwin T. Turner's "In a Minor Chord" is a landmark. He traces the careers of Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston, all of whom provided some of the spark for the most exciting and important cultural movement which Afro-Americans had ever experienced up to that time -- the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. "In a Minor Chord" is an important contribution toward a fuller understanding of the achievements of black people in the United States. Turner has helped to rescue three interesting and important writers from semioblivion by providing a more complete and more objective study of their works than has as yet appeared. -- From publisher's description.