The first black teacher in the Brooklyn school system, Sarah Lee Brown Fleming (1875-1963) is known as an educator and social and community activist, but few know her as a writer. Therefore, her published work has received little critical attention.

Her novel Hope's Highway (1918) is a tale of racial uplift in which, through education and moral fortitude, a black man rises to become a "leader of his people." Also included in this volume is Fleming's collection of poetry, Clouds and Sunshine (1920), a work divided into three sections: the first offers poems on such general themes as love, patriotism, and religion; the second and third sections - entitled "Dialect Poems" and "Race Poems," respectively - treat racial themes.