The Jenkins manuscripts include a number of compositions from his student days, and later popular and serious compositions. For some orchestral works only piano scores or incomplete orchestral parts have survived. There are also several unfinished compositions, some only sketches. Both Jenkins’s student compositions and his later works show evidence of his interest in and use of African-American folk and popular themes. Two such works for full orchestra were performed during his lifetime: Folk Rhapsody (on American Folk Tunes) which was written and premiered in 1919, and American Folk Rhapsody: Charlestonia, written in 1917 and premiered in 1925. His operetta, Afram ou la belle Swita, set partly in Africa, includes a chorus in an African language, along with American songs. Another late work, his Negro Symphonie Dramatique, subtitled “Scenes de la Vie d’un Esclave,” exists only as a piano score.

One folder of printed biographical material is included, but the family correspondence on which Green based his book is not part of this collection.