Book excerpt: "Preface -- Introduction. A Veiled History -- 1. Where Is Black Boston? Geographies of Experience in the Cradle of Liberty, 1638-1900 -- 2. The Black Bostonian Elites: Color, Class, Culture, and Family, 1880-1920 -- 3. Gender and Culture: Black Women as Arts Organizers, 1917-1930 -- 4. Black Faces on the White Stage: Space and Race, 1925-1930 -- 5. Writing While Black: The Saturday Evening Quill, 1925-1930 -- 6. The Boston Players: Broadway Bound, 1930-1935 -- 7. The New Deal for Boston's Black Theatre: Four Golden Years, 1935-1939 -- Afterword. A Retrospective View of the Boston Renascence, 1920-1940.