Everett Hoagland Working Library

Welcome to the personal working library of Everett Hoagland (1942–2025), the award-winning American Book Award recipient, legendary Black Arts Movement poet, and inaugural Poet Laureate of New Bedford, Massachusetts. This exclusive collection offers an extraordinary glimpse into the intellectual life of a towering figure in African American literature and academic stewardship.

Mentored early in his career by Langston Hughes at Lincoln University, Hoagland spent over five decades crafting a legacy that beautifully fused the rhythmic depths of jazz and blues with the urgent fire of the civil rights movement. As a professor of English and African American Studies at UMass Dartmouth for three decades, his personal library served as the foundation for his curriculum, his activism, and his celebrated poetry collections like Black Velvet and Scrimshaw.

Every volume in this collection carries a unique physical connection to Hoagland’s creative process. For institutional archives, rare book dealers, and private collectors of the African American diaspora, these books represent a rare opportunity to own a piece of literary history. Explore the titles that shaped the mind, poetry, and enduring legacy of one of Black literature's most vital voices.