Vincent D. Smith came of age in Greenwich Village in the 1950s, listening to friends Charlie "Bird" Parker and Thelonius Monk play jazz and researching the works of black artists. Smith developed a tight, energetic narrative style that he uses to depict life in black communities. He created "Eight Etchings" in the mid-1960s while part of the militant Black Arts Movement. Nancy E. Green, who curated a Smith retrospective, says the masklike faces in The Long Hot Summer provide "anonymity in an unsympathetic world." The title could also refer to the unrest that broke out in Harlem, Watts and elsewhere as the tumultuous sixties wore on.