The Winner

In an event unprecedented in the South, a Negro last month won North Carolina's Mayflower Cup, awarded annually by the North Carolina Society of Mayflower Descendants, for the best book by a resident of the State. This year's winner is 37-year-old J. Saunders Redding, professor of English literature and creative writing at Virginia's Hampton Institute.

Professor Redding's book, published in 1942, is No Day of Triumph (Harper; $3), a study of Southern Negro life beginning with Redding's own family back-ground and finally based on a recent six-month tour of the South. No Day scored over 29 competitors, including North Carolina Resident Betty Smith's best-selling A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Previous cup-winners include Jonathan Daniels' A Southerner Discovers the South and Archibald Henderson's Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet.

Son of a Wilmington, Del. mailman, Jay Saunders Redding was educated (M.A., Ph.D.) at Brown University. In 1939 he published his first book, To Make a Poet Black, a critical analysis of Negro poetry and verse.

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