In this book, Mary Ann Calo examines the involvement of African American artists in the New Deal art programs of the 1930s. Focusing primarily on the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Calo documents African American artists' participation in community art centers in Harlem, in St. Louis, and throughout the South. She examines the internal workings of the Harlem Artists' Guild and its alliances with other groups, such as the Artists' Union and the National Negro Congress, and she explores African American artists' representation in the exhibitions sponsored by WPA administrators and the critical reception of their work. In doing so, Calo makes the case that the revolutionary vision of these federal art projects is best understood in the context of access to opportunity, mediated by the reality of racial segregation. The book concludes with an essay by Jacqueline Francis on Black artists in the early 1940s, after the end of the FAP program.