Includes photocopies of the following Davis materials: "Negro Trumpeter" by Langston Hughes with a dedication to Davis; "Frank-ly Speaking" column by Davis in the Honolulu Record; draft of Black Moods; newspaper clipping about Davis; Davis's review of Richard Wright's Black Boy; Through Sepia Eyes and I Am the American Negro by Davis; and Davis poems "Lady Day," "Mosby," "Give Us Our Freedom Now!", "I Have Faith," "Ours Is a Modern God," "To the Red Armym" "Three Nuts to You," untitled poems, and handwritten "To My Own."

Also includes the original typescript for Davis poem "To Helen", a published copy of Interlude: Seven Musical Poems, Tidwell's notes from conversations with Beth Charlton, correspondence with University of Wisconsin Press about Livin' the Blues, a letter from Tidwell to Dudley Randall about Randall's interview with Davis, and a copy of the National Endowment for the Humanities application by Susan C. Jarratt of Miami University for project titled "The Victoria Sophistic: A Study in the Method of Rhetoric".

Photocopies of the following articles are also included: Davis entry in Contemporary Authors encyclopedia; "The Film and Canvas of Frank Marshall Davis" by Helena Kloder; "American Jazz Criticism, 1914-1940" by Ronald G. Welburn; "Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol" by Nathaniel Mackey; "Hawthorne's Psychology of the Head and Heart" by Donald A. Ringe; and "The Poet as Journalist (Life at the New Republic" by Reed Whittemore.