John Edgar Tidwell is a Professor Emeritus of African American and American Literature at the University of Kansas. He received his bachelor's degree in English from Washburn University in 1969, his master's degree in English from Creighton University in 1971, and his PhD in English from the University of Minnesota in 1981. He has taught courses in English and African American studies at Creighton University, Saint Olaf College, University of Minnesota, Carleton College, University of Kentucky, Miami University, and the University of Kansas. His scholarly publications include books on Sterling A. Brown, Langston Hughes and his mother, Carrie Hughes, and Frank Marshall Davis. He is the editor and author of the introduction to three books by Davis: Black Moods: Collected Poems (2002), Livin' the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet (1992), and Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice of the Black Press (2007).

Frank Marshall Davis was born in Arkansas City, Kansas in 1905 and began working toward a degree in Industrial Journalism at Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University [KSU]) in 1925. While at KSU, Davis was a member of the Delta chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. It was in college that he first began writing poetry, and his literature professor, Ada Rice, encouraged him to develop his skills further.

Davis left college in 1927 and moved to Chicago, working for various newspapers including The Gary American. He returned to KSU in 1929 on a Sigma Delta Chi perpetual scholarship but stayed only for a year, noting that the Depression prevented him from finishing his degree. He then moved to Georgia and helped found the Atlanta Daily World, Atlanta's first African American newspaper.

Davis later returned to Chicago and wrote for a number of newspapers, notably the Associated Negro Press, of which he became executive editor. He was a prolific poet during this time, publishing Black Man's Verse (1935), I Am the American Negro (1937), Through Sepia Eyes (1938), and 47th Street (1948) prior to moving to Hawaii with his second wife, Helen Canfield Davis, in 1948. It was around the time of these publications that Davis became the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case due to the political nature of his poetry and his suspected membership in the Communist Party. The surveillance lasted until 1963.

Once in Hawaii, Davis and his wife had five children, and Davis opened a paper company called Oahu Papers. He continued writing articles for the Associated Negro Press as well as poetry and prose. He published an erotic novel titled Sex Rebel: Black in 1968 under the pseudonym of Bob Greene, and returned to poetry with the publication of Jazz Interlude: Seven Musical Poems in 1977 and Awakening and Other Poems in 1978.

Davis' poetry received renewed attention in the early 1970s as academics sought to establish a canon of African American Literature, and Davis was invited to the United States mainland for a tour of poetry readings in various African American museums and universities. Around this time, Davis began writing his memoirs, to be published posthumously as Livin' the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet in 1992. Davis died in Hawaii in 1987 at the age of 81.

John Edgar Tidwell and Frank Marshall Davis began corresponding in the early 1980s, when Tidwell sought to conduct and publish an interview with Davis, ultimately published in Black American Literature Forum 19:3 (1985). They developed a certain friendship through their correspondence, and once aware of the existence of Davis's memoirs, Tidwell began attempting to help Davis publish them. Through Tidwell's research prior to writing the introduction to Livin' the Blues, he developed relationships with Davis' close friends and family, including Helen Canfield Davis, Beth Charlton (Davis' second daughter), and poet Irma Wassall. The memoirs were published in 1992, five years after Davis' death.