Marita Bonner
June 16, 1899 – December 7, 1971

Early Life & Education

Two years after completing her studies, Bonner took on a position at Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C. — where she taught until 1930, during which time her mother and father both passed away unexpectedly. While in Washington, Bonner became closely associated with poet, playwright and composer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Johnson’s “S Street Salon” was an important meeting place for many of the writers and artists involved in what was being called the “New Negro Renaissance”.

Writing Career

In 1930, Bonner married William Almy Occomy — the couple then moved to Chicago, where Bonner’s writing career took off. After 1941, Bonner gave up publishing her works and devoted her time to her family, including three children. She began teaching again in the 1940s and finally retired in 1963.

The Purple Flower

Influence on the Harlem Renaissance

Bonner’s works focused on the historical specificity of her time and place. In “On Being Young — A Woman — And Colored”, Bonner explores the complex layered identity of black womanhood, discussing the difficulties that come with belonging to two distinct marginalized classes. She describes it as a “group within a group”, and discusses the frustrations that come with expressing anger not only as a woman, but as a black woman – she is doubly expected to express her anger with her own oppression “gently and quietly”, once from white society and once more from black male society. She is one of many writers of the era whose efforts to discuss intersectionality were groundbreaking, but have since been dismissed, forgotten, and largely eradicated from modern literary and theatrical canon.

Death & Legacy

Critical exploration of Bonner’s life and work has noticeably diminished in the twenty-first century, having been at its peak in the late 1980s. The Purple Flower made its world premiere at The Factory Theatre in Boston in 2014 — 87 years after it was written. The production received rave reviews and inspired a surge of performances on college campuses across the country — including a 2018 production at the Yale School of Drama.

Angelina Weld Grimké
June 16, 1880 – December 7, 1958

Early Life & Education

Growing up with her father in Massachusetts,  Grimké was educated at some of the best private schools the state had to offer.  Inspired by her late mother’s letters at the age of thirteen, Grimké began writing poetry. Her first poem The Grave in the Corner, was published in 1893 in the Norfolk County Gazette. She continued to publish her poetry throughout high school. Upon graduating she enrolled in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics (which later became a part of Wellesley College) supplementing her education with classes at Harvard University. In 1902, after completing her studies, she and her father moved to Washington, D.C to be closer to Archibald’s brother, Francis.

The Grimké Family

Angelina’s paternal great aunt (and namesake) Angelina Emily Grimké was an abolitionist, political activist, women’s rights advocate, and supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. She and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké were the only white Southern women to become abolitionists. Together they traveled the abolitionist lecture circuit recounting their firsthand experiences with slavery on their family’s plantation. In February 1868 the sisters came across an article about Lincoln University, praising the academic prowess of a student named Grimké, who came to the university “just out of slavery”. Stunned, the sisters investigated, and found that Archibald and his siblings were her brother’s children. She and Sarah welcomed the boys and their mother as members of their family, and began financing the boys’ educations.

The Grimké Family legacy of radical social activism had a deep impact on Angelina’s writing career. If you wish to learn more about the Grimké family, please refer to Mark Perry’s biography Life Up Thy Voice (which can be purchased here).

Writing Career

While living in D.C Grimké published a large output of essays, short stories, and poems. Her works appeared in esteemed publications including The Atlantic, The Boston Evening Transcript, The Crisis, and Opportunity (among others). Her works were also collected in various anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance, including Negro Poets and Their Poems (1923, edited by Robert Thomas Kerlin), The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925, edited by Alain Locke), Caroling Dusk (1927, edited by Countee Cullen), and The Poetry of the Negro (1949, edited by Langston Hughes). These accomplishments aside, her greatest career success came in 1916 with her first full length drama, Rachel.

Rachel (Blessed Are the Barren)

The NAACP put out a call for plays by Black authors as a vehicle to rally support against the infamous film The Birth of Nation. Grimké answered that call with her groundbreaking three-act drama, Rachel (originally entitled Blessed Are the Barren). The plot concerns the humble Loving family — the matriarch, Rachel Loving loves children and longs to be a mother, but after seeing the devastating effects racism has had on the children she cares for, and learning that her father and brother were lynched (her mother had kept the cause of their deaths secret), begins to grapple with the devastating realities that accompany raising black children.

Rachel is a lost landmark of American theatre. Regarded as the first play by an African American woman to ever be produced professionally, the play saw its first production in 1916 at the Miner Normal School, a teachers college for African Americans founded by abolitionist Myrtilla Miner. With a cast of local, African American thespians, the NAACP touted the production as “The first attempt to use the stage for propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic.” The production was a success, and was produced again the following year at the famed Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City.

Rachel would receive further attention, garnering critical acclaim after it was published as a book in 1920. Alain Locke commented that Rachel was “the first successful drama written by a Negro and interpreted by Negro actors.” The script has been reprinted multiple times over the past century — a scan of the first edition can be accessed online for free here. Rachel made it’s UK debut to critical acclaim in 2014 at the award winning Off-WestEnd, Finborough Theatre — a British company celebrated for their “rarely seen, rediscovered 19th and 20th century plays.”

Death & Posthumous Queer Legacy

Following her death, her work published posthumously revealed an additional layer of her identity: her sexual orientation. While her writings published in her lifetime alluded to lesbian eroticism, those published following her death confirmed her Queer identity. The Dictionary of Literary Biography: African-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance states: “In several poems and in her diaries Grimké expressed the frustration that her lesbianism created; thwarted longing is a theme in several poems.” Many of these unpublished poems are explicitly lesbian, implying that she lived a life of suppression, “both personal and creative.”

It is believed Grimké was in a lengthy adolescent relationship with playwright Mary P. Burill. In 1903, Grimké and her father had a falling out when she told him that she was in love. Archibald Grimké responded with an ultimatum demanding that she choose between her lover and himself. Grimké family biographer Mark Perry speculates that this “lover” was a woman, and that Archibald may have already been aware of his daughter’s sexual identity. Burill later entered a life-long partnership with the renowned academic Lucy Diggs Slowe — Grimké passed away having had no known romantic partners during her adult life. 

Over the course of the past five decades Grimké’s unpublished writings have been championed by Historians and Queer Theorists, venerating her to the status of  “lesbian icon”. This past February, NewNowNext published a Black History Month article entitled: “Harlem Renaissance at 100: Angelina Weld Grimké, Lesbian Poet Laureate.”

Georgia Douglas Johnson
(September 10, 1877 – May 15, 1966) 

In addition to her astounding literary output, Douglas is remembered as the founder of the famous S Street Salon in Washington, D.C. — one of the most celebrated literary salons of the 20th Century — and for serving under President Calvin Coolidge as the Commissioner of Conciliation in the Department of Labor. Johnson’s literary success made her the first Black woman to get national notice for her poetry since Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and made her arguably the most famous Black woman writer in the United States until the rise of Alice Walker.

Early Life & Education

Douglas received her primary school education in Atlanta, where she excelled in music, reading, recitation, and physical education. It was during this time that she developed a lifelong love of music that she expressed in her plays, which make distinct use of sacred music. In 1893 she graduated from Atlanta University (the HBCU known today as Clark Atlanta University) at just 16 years old. She then embarked on a teaching career in both Atlanta and Marietta, Georgia. In 1902 she left teaching  to pursue her love of music, studying composition at the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio (she would continue to compose original music until 1959). She returned to Atlanta and served briefly as a school principal, and in 1903 she married Henry Lincoln Johnson, a prominent Black attorney and Republican politician. The couple had two sons.

The Johnson family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1910, as Henry was appointed as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a political patronage position under Republican President William Howard Taft. The Recorder of Deeds was at the time “regarded as the premier political patronage position reserved for Black Americans.” While the city had an active cultural life among the elite people of color, it was far from the Harlem literary center of New York, to which Douglas was attracted. Douglas’s marital life was at odds with her artistic ambitions, as her husband was not supportive of her writing — insisting that she devote more time to becoming a “homemaker”, rather than publishing poetry. Nevertheless, in 1916 The Crisis (the official journal of the NAACP) began regularly printing Johnson’s poetry, and two book-length collections of her verse soon followed: The Heart of a Woman (1918), and Bronze (1922).

Poetry & Politics

“The poems in this book are intensely feminine and for me this means more than anything else that they are deeply human.” 

By contrast, the poems in Bronze are explicitly focused on issues of gender and racial justice. Johnson herself was self-conscious about this change in emphasis, but felt she had a responsibility as the mother of “Black children born into the world’s displeasure.” In keeping with Johnson’s active participation in the Congregationalist Church, many of the poems in Bronze have an optimistic tone — communicating her faith, and her belief that racial justice is possible. During the 1920s, Douglas Johnson traveled extensively to give poetry readings, serving as a beacon of hope in her community. 

Johnson’s husband Henry Lincoln died unexpectedly in 1925, forcing her to become the family’s primary wage earner. She struggled initially, taking on menial clerical work — but as a gesture to her late husband’s loyalty and political service, Republican President Calvin Coolidge appointed Johnson as the Commissioner of Conciliation in the United States Department of Labor— a groundbreaking appointment for a Black woman. She held this position for nine years, investigating the hazardous working conditions that many low-income Americans endured in the early 20th century. She was relieved of her duties in 1934, during the regime change of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her time at the DOL provided her with the financial stability to focus on her writing, and informed the political nature of much of her work. She went on to work in DC Public schools, and sold articles to newspapers as a freelancer, earning enough to send both her sons to college (her son Peter was a graduate of Dartmouth and Howard Medical School, while her son Henry Lincoln, Jr. was a graduate of Bowdoin College and Howard Law School).

Anti-lynching Activism 

Johnson refused to give her plays happy endings since she did not feel it was a realistic outcome, as a result, she had difficulty getting her plays published. However, her anti-lynching activism was immortalized through her poem The Ordeal, which was published in Alain Locke’s 1925 anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation. The outspokenness of her plays is sometimes credited with her obscurity as a playwright, as racial violence was considered a taboo subject.

In 1926, Johnson’s play Blue Blood won honorable mention in The Opportunity drama contest. Her play Plumes won the competition the following year in 1927. Plumes is a folk drama that relates the dilemma of Charity, the main character, whose baby daughter is dying. She has saved up money for the doctor, but she and her confidante – Tilde – don’t believe the medical care would be successful. She has in mind an extravagant funeral for her daughter instead – with “plumes, hacks, and other fancy trimmings.” Before Charity can make a decision, her daughter dies. Plumes was produced by the Harlem Experimental Theatre between 1928 and 1931. 

All of Johnson’s plays were radical, interrogating subjects like the inadequacy of the American healthcare system, the lack of rights and resources for Black veterans, the economic disparities tethered to race, and interracial marriage. At the end of her life, she compiled a formal catalogue of her writings. She divided the 28 plays  she wrote into four groups: “Primitive Life Plays”, “Plays of Average Negro Life”, “Lynching Plays” and “Radio Plays”. The first section of her plays, “Primitive Life Plays”, features Blue Blood and Plumes, which were both published and produced during Johnson’s lifetime. Johnson was one of the only women whose work was published in Alain Locke’s anthology Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American Drama. Although most of her plays are lost, the typescripts for eleven of her plays exist in collections at multiple academic institutions. Dr. Akasha Gloria Hull is credited with the rediscovery of many of Johnson’s plays. In her book Color, Sex, and Poetry, Hull argues that Johnson’s work needs to be reclaimed as an exceedingly distinguished product of the Harlem Renaissance.

Music & Weekly Newspaper Column

In addition to her poetry, playwriting, prose writing, and work with the DOL, Johnson wrote a nationally syndicated Newspaper Column entitled “Homely Philosophy” from 1926 – 1932. The column was published in 20 different newspapers, including The New York News, The Chicago Defender, The Philadelphia Tribune, and The Pittsburgh Courier. Her column achieved wide-spread popularity, and helped many members of the Black community cope with the realities of the Great Depression.

The S Street Salon

“A woman of tremendous energy, much of which she channeled into her effort to create for the writers who gathered in her home on Saturday nights an atmosphere that was both intellectually stimulating and properly supportive.”

Johnson called her home the “HalfWay House” for friends traveling, and a place where they “could freely discuss politics and personal opinions” and where those with no money and no place to stay would be welcome. While Black men were allowed to attend her weekly meetings, they mostly consisted of Black women, many of whom she personally mentored. These women included the likes of Angelina Weld Grimke, Marita Bonner, May Miller, Mary Burrill, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Zora Neale Hurston. They would later become known as the “Saturday Nighters.” Johnson was especially close to Miller and Grimké, providing extra care and support in nurturing their creative voices. The Salon was known to have discussions on issues such as lynching, women’s rights, and the problems facing Black families. Johnson continued this tradition for 40 years.

Later Life, Death, and Legacy

In 1965, Atlanta University presented Johnson with an honorary Doctorate of Literature, praising her as:

“A sensitive singer of sad songs; faithful interpreter of the feminine heart of a Negro with its joys, sorrows, limitations and frustrations of racial oppression in a male-dominated world; dreamer of broken dreams who translated her disappointments into such memorable and immortal lines as: “The heart of a woman falls back with the night, / and enters some alien cage of its plight, / and tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars / while it breaks, breaks, breaks, on the sheltering bars …”

Johnson died in Washington, D.C. home on May 15, 1966. Much of her unpublished work was lost, including many papers that were discarded after her funeral. At the time of her death, her protege the poet and playwright May Miller, sat at her bedside, stroking her face while repeating the words “The poet, Georgia Douglas Johnson”. 

Georgia Douglas Johnson remains not only the most prolific poet and playwright of the Harlem Renaissance, but also the most criminally neglected. Her tremendous legacy has become almost entirely lost to history, a mere footnote in the lives of her contemporaries and proteges. Like so many women writers who came before her, Johnson was acclaimed during her life, forgotten after her death, and is now relegated to the margins of literary and theatrical history.

May Miller
(Jan. 26, 1899  —  Feb. 8, 1995)

Early Life

Miller’s childhood home was located on the university’s campus, and served as a gathering place for the Black intellectuals and artists. She often told stories about having to give up her childhood room for visits by her fathers friends W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Laurence Dunbar. She also spoke of visits by Booker T. Washington, Carter G. Woodson, and Alain Locke. Miller attended the famed Dunbar High School in DC, where she studied under famous playwrights Mary P. Burrill and Angelina Weld Grimké. It was during this time that her father introduced her to his friend Georgia Douglas Johnson. Miller became an active weekly participant of Johnson’s S Street Salon, one of the most famous literary salons of the 20th century. Miller’s writing flourished under Douglas’s  mentorship, and the two would remain close until Douglas’ passing in 1966.

Miller graduated from Dunbar High School at the age of 16, continued onto Howard University where she graduated at the top of her class in 1920 (a draft of her valedictorian speech is archived, along with all of her publications and personal letters at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library of Emory University) and won an award for her play Within the Shadow.

Career as a Playwright 

During the 1920s and 1930s, Miller wrote twenty one-act plays, including Christophe’s Daughter (1935), In The Dark (1930), and Samory (1935). Many of her plays, like Scratches (1929), Stragglers in the Dust (1930), and Nails and Thorns (1933), addressed racial issues including colorism, classism, lynchings, and the experience of Black Americans in the United States military. She also wrote many historical plays about the Black experience, four of which were anthologized in the 1935 anthology, Negro History in Thirteen Plays. Miller sought through her writing to portray Black people with a level of “respect and dignity” that had been absent in drama. She married John Sullivan in 1941 and wrote her last play, Freedom’s Children on the March, in 1943. The following year she retired from the Baltimore schools system and turned her attention to poetry.

While Miller achieved tremendous success in the world of publishing dramatic literature, she would never live to see a professional New York staged production of one of her plays. However, in 2017 New Perspectives Theatre Company in Association with the New School for Drama presented two readings of Miller’s plays, as well as a selection of her poetry.

Miller’s work enjoyed critical acclaim well into the 1980s. O.B. Hardison, former director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, wrote, “May Miller is a Washington institution… a leader of Washington’s poetry community.” May served as poetry coordinator of the Friends of Arts program in the District of Columbia Public Schools. Miller’s poetry was once praised by Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks as “excellent and long-celebrated”. Former United States Poet Laureate Robert Hayden once said that “Miller writes with quiet strength, lyric intensity. She is perceptive and compassionate, a poet of humane vision.” 

When the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities was established, Miller was named chair of the Literature Panel for three terms. In 1976 she read her poetry at the inauguration of Washington D.C.’s first home-rule mayor, Walter Washington. The following year she read at the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter. Her works have been immortalized in the 1972 Library of Congress collection of poets reading their own work.

Death &  Legacy

Her published volumes of poetry include Into the Clearing (1959); Poems (1962); Lyrics of Three Women: Katie Lyle, Maude Rubin, and May Miller (1964); Not That Far (1973); The Clearing and Beyond (1974); Dust of Uncertain Journey (1975); and The Ransomed Wait (1983). Editor of Green Wind (1978) and My World (1979), she also authored a book of children’s poems, Halfway to the Sun (1981). 

May Miller died on February 8th 1995, at the age of 96. Her lengthy obituary in The Washington Post concluded with the following; 

“She wrote with feeling about people and places in and around Washington and about memories and folk tales from her childhood. In the 1970s and 1980s, she often read her poems aloud at formal and informal settings.One of her favorites was a poem titled “Pond Lament,” which was influenced by stories about croaking frogs and which she liked to deliver in a frog-croaking style; “Who’ll dig my grave when I die? Not I. Not I. Who’ll pay my debts when I die? Not I. Not I.”

Zora Neale Hurston
(Jan. 7, 1891  —  Feb. 8, 1960)

Prolific in her day, and forgotten after her death, Hurston went relatively unrecognized by the literary world for decades. However, interest in her work was revived in March of 1975 after Pulitzer-Prize winning author Alice Walker published the article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in Ms. Magazine. Today Hurston is celebrated as one of the most distinguished American artists of the 20th Century.

Early Life

“In Eatonville, Hurston was never indoctrinated in inferiority, and she could see the evidence of Black achievement all around her. She could look to town hall and see Black men, including her father, John Hurston, formulating the laws that governed Eatonville. She could look to the Sunday Schools of the town’s two churches and see Black women, including her mother, Lucy Potts Hurston, directing the Christian curricula. Growing up in this culturally affirming setting in an eight-room house on five acres of land, Zora had a relatively happy childhood.”

Hurston’s mother died in 1904, and her father quickly remarried Mattie Moge in 1905. They sent her to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, though they eventually stopped paying her tuition and she was dismissed.

Education

In 1925 accepted a scholarship from Barnard trustee Annie Nathan Meyer to Barnard College of Columbia University. While at Barnard she conducted ethnographic research with noted anthropologist Franz Boas. She also worked with noted folklorist Ruth Benedict, and future anthropologist Margaret Mead. Hurston received her B.A. in Anthropology in 1928, when she was 37; she was Barnard’s first Black graduate. After receiving her B.A., Hurston studied for two years as a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University, working further with Boas during this period.

Literary Career

“Zora Neale Hurston knew how to make an entrance. On May 1, 1925, at a literary awards dinner sponsored by Opportunity Magazine, the earthy Harlem newcomer turned heads and raised eyebrows as she claimed four awards: a second-place fiction prize for her short story “Spunk,” a second-place award in drama for her play Color Struck, and two honorable mentions. The names of the writers who beat out Hurston for first place that night would soon be forgotten. But the name of the second-place winner buzzed on tongues all night, and for days and years to come. Lest anyone forget her, Hurston made a wholly memorable entrance at a party following the awards dinner. She strode into the room–jammed with writers and arts patrons, Black and white–and flung a long, richly colored scarf around her neck with dramatic flourish as she bellowed a reminder of the title of her winning play: “Colooooooor Struuckkkk!” Her exultant entrance literally stopped the party for a moment, just as she had intended. In this way, Hurston made it known that a bright and powerful presence had arrived.” 

Later Life & Death

In Search of Zora Neale Hurston

Posthumous Publication & Legacy

Hurston infamous collaboration with Langston Hughes, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, was produced on Broadway in 1991 by Lincoln Center Theater, and was published shortly there after. Hurston’s manuscript for Every Tongue Got to Confess, a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously in 2001. Her nonfiction book Barracoon was published in 2018. Eatonville, Florida celebrates Hurston’s life every year with the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. Eatonville is also home to the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts. The Zora Neale Hurston House in Fort Pierce has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. Hurston was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994, and the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2010. An excerpt from her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was recited in the documentary film August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, directed by Ava DuVernay, which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.

Mary P. Burrill
(August. 28, 1881  —  March. 13, 1946)

Early Life & Education

Burrill returned to Emerson in 1929, and received a B.L.I. (Bachelor of Literary Interpretation) degree in 1930. During her junior year, Burrill wrote Unto the Third and Fourth Generations: A One Act Play of Negro Life. The play was published in the college yearbook of 1930 and earned the title of “Best Junior Play of the Year.”

Teacher & Playwright 

In 1919, two of her best known plays, They That Sit in Darkness and Aftermath, were both published. They That Sit in Darkness first appeared in a 1919 edition of Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review, a progressive monthly publication that advocated for women’s reproductive rights. In this one-act, a young mother keeps having children even after midwives caution her to “be careful.” She eventually dies in childbirth, and her eldest child must forgo college to care for her brothers and sisters. The play shows birth control as a way to escape the cycle of poverty. Burrill considered her plays to be deliberate acts of political protest advocating radical positions on race and gender issues. 

Burrill was a prominent member of Georgia Douglas Johnson’s famed S Street Salon, among the likes of Angelina Weld Grimke, Marita Bonner, May Miller, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Zora Neale Hurston.

The Krigwa players were co-founded W.E.B. Du Bois and playwright Regina M. Anderson in 1925 to “advance the careers of Black playwrights and actors.” The Krigwa Players achieved great commercial success in ticket sales, and great critical acclaim from both Black and white critics in the late 1920’s. However, after an infamous feud with playwright Eulalie Spence in 1927, Du Bois left the company (you can read more about this story in our Eulalie Spence newsletter). After his unceremonious departure from the company, Du Bois contacted Burrill requesting permission for the players to enter her play Aftermath as their bid for the 1928 Little Theater Competition. Burrill agreed, unaware that Du Bois was no longer affiliated with the players.

The production was a critical success, with the New York Daily News writing; “The Krigwa Players presented the only original play of the evening, Aftermath, the work of Mary Burrill. It had moments of beauty and salient points of pathos.” However the play was criticized for its “cheap melo-dramatic claptrap” ending, an ending Burrill did not write. The Krigwa Players added an additional scene in which John returns to the stage having been shot, and melodramatically dies onstage. Burrill was furious about the change, which had been undertaken without her awareness or consent. (The effect was to dull the militancy of Burrill’s message, perhaps in deference to the white producers of the theatrical tournament.) Devastated, Burrill wrote to Du Bois and called on him at his home, but he would not see her. Transcripts of their letters show him writing her weeks later, admitting that he had never actually read Aftermath, nor was he in any way involved with the production. 

Burrill would not live to see any of her plays produced in New York again. However, in 2015 JACK in Brooklyn produced a reading of Aftermath, directed by Courtney Harge of the Colloquy Collective. The reading marked the first in a series highlighting black-authored anti-lynching plays running at JACK as part of their Forward Ferguson series, focused on artistic work tied to racial justice movements of the past and present. In 2021 the Metropolitan Playhouse and Artemisia Theatre both announced plans for virtual readings of Aftermath.

Death &  Legacy

Regina M. Anderson
(May. 21, 1901  —  February. 5, 1993)

Regina M. Anderson (May 21, 1901 —  Feb. 5, 1993), was a Black librarian, writer, activist, and interdisciplinary theatre artist. Remembered today as the “Librarian at the Nexus of the Harlem Renaissance,” Anderson’s life and work served as a catalyst for much of the cultural movement. Alongside friend and roommate Ethel Ray Nance she co-hosted the famed West Harlem Literary Salon, and co-organized the Civic Club Dinner of 1924, an event frequently cited as the “birthplace of the Harlem Renaissance.” An indomitable figure of Black Theatre History, Anderson co-founded the Krigwa Players with W.E.B Du Bois and later served as the Executive Director of the Harlem Experimental Theatre. An accomplished playwright, Anderson authored multiple plays that were published and produced in the 1930s, all under her pen-name “Ursula Trelling.” Frequently cited as the first Black person to head a branch of the New York Public Library, Anderson was instrumental in the early years of programming, acquisition, and community engagement at the 135th street branch, a location that would eventually become the celebrated Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Early Life & Education

Librarian at the New York Public Library

Today Dream Haven is listed as an NYC LGBT Historic Site, thanks to the welcoming environment it created for various queer artists of the period.

Anderson’s next two plays Underground and Matilda both tell the story of slaves escaping through the Underground Railroad. Underground was produced in 1932 at the New School for Social Research, and then again at St. Philips parish House. Anderson’s final play The Man Who Passed was never produced during her lifetime, but was published posthumously in 1996. The play was well ahead of its time, exploring the politics and isolation of “passing for white.” The Man Who Passed paved the way for future playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy and Cassandra Medley, who would later explore similar themes.

The group began producing in 1928 at the basement black-box theatre of the 135th Street Library. They found success with acclaimed productions of Plumes by Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Get Thee Behind Me, Satan by Robert Dorsey. Eventually the company started staging Anderson’s plays. While the company was still associated with the NYPL, Anderson wrote her under the pseudonym “Ursula Trelling,” in order to protect her job. Discontent with only producing and writing, Anderson took to the stage, starring in many productions as well. In 1931 the ensemble moved to St. Philips Parish House and continued producing many original works by Black authors, as well as several white authors. Legendary Broadway actress Rose McClendon joined the group later as a director, offering her professional guidance and expertise. The group continued to operate until the mid 1930s, when the Federal Theatre Project came to New York City, and many of their members defected. After the demise of her own company, Anderson continued to encourage and advise other little theatre group by Black artists, including the Harlem Suitcase Theatre and the American Negro Theatre. Anderson was a well-known, and highly respected figure in the Black Community during the Little Theatre Movement. As a cultural ambassador of the Harlem Renaissance, she assembled and inspired the group of artists and intellectuals who encouraged the next generation of Black theatre artists and educators.

Later Life

Due to the NYPL’s strict retirement policy, she left the library in 1966, at age 65, after 42 years of service. Before her retirement, Anderson served as the National Urban League’s Representative to the U.S. Commission for the United Nations. As the second Vice President of the National Council of Women, she worked with the State Commission for Human Rights. Anderson received countless awards, including an Asian Foundation grant that enabled her to visit India, Hong Kong, Japan, Iran, Thailand, and Afghanistan, to meet with visiting scholars who had been guests in the programs she directed at the library. She settled in upstate New York after her retirement, and in 1971 she and longtime friend Ethel Ray Nance co-edited a book titled Chronology of African-Americans in New York, 1921–1966.In 1980 Anderson was honored by AUDELCO for her contributions to African American Theatre, Debbie Allen and Gregory Hines co-hosted the event.

Death &  Legacy

In 2015, Dr. Ethelene Whitmire of the University of Wisconsin, Madison authored Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian (University of Illinois Press), a biography advocating for the inclusion of Anderson’s  legacy within the cultural history of the Harlem Renaissance.

Willis Richardson 
(November. 5, 1889  —  November. 7, 1977)

Early Life & Education

At age nine, Willis Richardson and his family survived what is now known as the Wilmington Massacre of 1898. Angered by the success of the Black community, white supremacists launched a violent assault on Wilmington’s Black businesses and neighborhoods, destroying the newspaper offices and forcibly removing the democratically elected coalition of white and Black republicans from office. The white supremacists who incited the Wilmington Massacre killed up to 100 Black Americans and forced more than 2000 out of the city, overturning Wilmington’s majority Black census status. Like many other Black families, the Richardsons relocated to Washington D.C. shortly after the 1898 massacre, seeking a safer environment. Although Willis Wilder, Richardson’s father, is not frequently mentioned by Richardson or his family in surviving texts, Wilder is credited with encouraging Richardson’s love of reading and writing. Richardson recalls being teased by neighbors for reading too much:“I used to forget the rest of the world and become a part of the adventures of Frank and Dick Merriwell, Old King Brady, the Liberty Boys of Seventy-six, the James Boys, and others too numerous to mention.” 

While in D.C., Richardson attended the famed M Street School (later renamed Dunbar High School), the first Black public high school in the country, where he was mentored by playwright Mary P. Burrill. After graduating, Richardson was awarded a partial scholarship to Howard University, but his family could not afford to send him to college, so he studied via a correspondence school while working as a clerk at the U.S. Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

“The Hope of a Negro Drama”

“When I say Negro plays, I do not mean merely plays with Negro characters… Miss Grimke’s Rachel is nearer to this idea; still even this, with its Negro characters, is not exactly the thing I mean. It is called a propaganda play, and a great portion of it shows the manner in which Negroes are treated by white people in the United States. Still there is another kind of play; the kind that shows the soul of the people; and the soul of this people is truly worth showing.”

Richardson’s first adult play was published in The Crisis and produced in St. Paul, Minnesota the following year.

Between 1921 and 1923, Richardson unsuccessfully campaigned to get The Deacon’s Awakening produced by the Howard Players in Washington, D.C. Richardson first approached noted author and librarian Edward Christopher Williams, as Williams had been one of his teachers at Dunbar High School and had since moved on to work at Howard. Williams was successful in placing Richardson’s plays in the hands of the Co-Directors of the Howard Players, Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory. Richardson stated in a 1972 interview, “They liked my writing and wanted to put on a play of mine, but you see the President of Howard University was a white man at the time and they couldn’t get his consent.” Upon hearing of this rejection, W.E.B Du Bois intervened, and put Richardson in touch with his friend Raymond O’Neil, the Artistic Director of the Ethiopian Players in Chicago, Illinois.

The success of the original Chicago production led to its subsequent re-staging as part of a triple bill alongside Oscar Wilde’s Salome and a jazz interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. This re-staging opened in Washington D.C. on April 23rd, 1923; at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem on May 7th, 1923; and finally on Broadway at the Frazee Theatre on May 15th, 1923. This production is of tremendous historic significance, as it was the first dramatic work by a Black author to be produced on Broadway (Black writers had previously been represented on the Broadway stage in musical and vaudeville revues, but never with a play). The Broadway production enjoyed a short run with healthy ticket sales and critical praise. Drama critic John Corbin praised Richardson’s realistic Black characters in his review for The New York Times, writing’ “The Chip Woman’s Fortune is an unaffected and wholly convincing transcript of everyday character. No one is glorified or otherwise tricked out to please; and no one is blackened to serve as a “dramatic” contrast.” The Chip Woman’s Fortune was first published in Fifty More Contemporary One Act Plays, edited by Frank Shaw (New York: Appleton, 1928). The play has since been reprinted multiple times, and can be read here.

Richardson’s plays were radical in nature and well ahead of his time. Over the course of his prolific career, he covered complex topics including Black women’s rights, the exploitation of the Black working class, classism within the Black community, interracial marriage, Prohibition, and American slavery. His plays received consistent critical attention, and received numerous awards (he was the second-most decorated playwright of the Harlem Renaissance, after friend Eulalie Spence). Richardson was twice awarded The Amy Spingarn Prize in Literature and Art, once in 1925 for his play The Broken Banjo, and again in 1926 for his play Boot-Black Lover. In judging the 1925 contest, famed dramatist Eugene O’Neill  commented “I am glad to hear the judges all agreed on The Broken Banjo, and that the play was so successfully staged; Willis Richardson should certainly continue working in his field.” Subsequently, The Broken Banjo was also awarded the Edith Schwab Cup from Yale University. During his life, Richardson was invited to join the Dramatists’ Guild,  the Authors’ League of America, and the Harlem Cultural Council.

Seeing the need for Black children to know their history, Richardson edited two anthologies, Plays and Pageants from the Life of the Negro (1930), and Negro History in Thirteen Plays, with friend and colleague May Miller (1935). Little was heard from Richardson after 1940, except for a production of his one-act play Miss or Mrs., produced by the Bureau of Engraving’s Dramatic Club in Washington, D.C., on May 5th, 1941. This production is of some significance, as Richardson worked in this Federal bureau, and was presumably associated with the production.

Richardson died in 1977 in relative obscurity. He was posthumously honored with the “Outstanding Pioneer Award” from AUDELCO in 1977, announced merely a few days after his death.

Richardson’s home at 512 U St. in the Ledroit Park neighborhood of Washington D.C. has been designated a Historic Landmark, and hosts a sign from the African American Heritage Trail.

Eloise Bibb Thompson
(June 26, 1878 —  January. 8, 1928)

Early Life & Education

Thompson made her literary debut at the young age of seventeen with her collection Poems (1895), published by the Monthly Review Press in Boston, Massachusetts (coincidentally, that  same press would publish Dunbar Nelson’s first collection Violets and Other Tales later that same year). Poems is a small volume of just twenty-six pieces, each of high quality. A teenage Thompson interrogated epic subjects, inspired by history, classical mythology, and Judeo-Christian legend, rooting each entry in her deep awareness of space and race. The only poem that directly addresses Black history, aside from her affecting elegies, is “Eliza In Uncle Tom’s Cabin” which resolves the trauma of the sale of Eliza’s baby by reuniting them in heaven. Notably, Thompson dedicated one of the poems in this book, “To the Sweet Bard of the Women’s Club”, to longtime friend and fellow writer Alice Dunbar Nelson. The women’s club to which the title alludes was the Phyllis Wheatley Club of New Orleans, a prominent literary, civic, and social organization for ladies founded in 1894 by Mrs. Sylvanie Francoz Williams. Thompson dedicated the collection itself to Williams, writing “Dear Friend:— I affectionately dedicate to you, this my first volume of defective matter as a token of my strong regard and esteem for your estimable character. Though all the world censure, I shall be content if I have but pleased you, and feel myself rewarded should I see the light of your approving smile. Your humble admirer, Eloise Bibb.”

Teacher & Social Advocate

“The Colored Social Settlement of the District of Columbia, organized in 1902 in the heart of South Washington, was the first community house built expressly for the social improvement of colored people, both in the United States and probably the world. Social settlements are “associations of men and women of the educated classes who take up residence in the poorer quarter of great cities with the purpose of bringing culture, knowledge, harmless recreations and especially personal influence to bear upon the poor in order to better and brighten their lives. Practically the watchword of such settlements is personal service.”

In her capacity as Head Resident, Thompson worked to both enrich the lives of D.C.’s low-income Black citizens, while also combating the cyclical nature of poverty within the Black Community. The settlement provided free continuing-education resources, child-care, after school programs,  health classes, social organizations, and numerous other services to the community.

In addition to her nonfiction and poetry, Eloise published two short stories during this period in Opportunity, the official magazine of the National Urban League. Thompson’s fiction documented the experience of the Black Creole society in New Orleans. Her short stories “Masks” and “Mademoiselle Tasie – A Story” are nuanced mixtures of cultural examination and traditional dialogue. In both stories, Thompson interrogates the history of Blacks in Creole society, emphasizing the politics of “passing for white” and layered history of colorism that existed among darker and lighter skinned creole people. “Masks” was a finalist for the prestigious Van Vechten Award.

Additionally, the Thompsons established themselves as leaders in various religious communities of Los Angeles, as they themselves were devout Catholics. Eloise even delivered an address on faith and Blackness to the Catholic Women’s Clubs of Los Angeles, which newspapers covering the event praised. With the California Eagle writing “Well known literary genius, Mrs. Eloise Bibb Thompson, had the distinguished honor of addressing the (Woman’s Catholic Club) at their club room last Wednesday. Mrs. Thompson merits the recognition which has been hers from time to time, and her great work for the general uplift of humanity wherever she has lived has shined with luster. The club editor from ‘The Daily Tribune’ spoke of her address with the highest compliments.” Eloise was also an active contributor to Tidings, the annual magazine of the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles, where she published the noteworthy essay, “The Church and the Negro.”

Thompson’s screenplay, and its accompanying stage version, were quickly sold to legendary Hollywood producer Thomas H. Ince in 1915 for $500 (roughly $13,000 today), an unprecedented sum for the time. Unfortunately,  not long after their prestigious deal was inked,  Ince severed his ties with the Triangle Motion Picture Company and was no longer at liberty to produce any “special features.” The screenplay then fell into “development hell” as Ince jumped from studio to studio until his untimely death in 1924. Thompson was forced to hire an attorney and undergo a significant legal battle to regain ownership of her screenplay. Shortly thereafter it was submitted to D.W. Griffith himself, who surprisingly, was very enthusiastic about the piece, expressing his desire to bankroll the project for up to $500,000. Griffith’s colleagues (and prominent Hollywood screenwriters) Frank E. Woods, Gerrit J. Lloyd, and Myron M. Stearns also held the screenplay in high esteem, calling it “an exceptional story of great possibilities,” “material of remarkable caliber,” and “an excellent piece of work.” However, Griffith’s financial team was  influenced by racial bias, and convinced him that there were “too many formidable obstacles in the way of successful production,” causing him to ultimately pass on the project.

Unyielding in her fight to see her work produced on stage or screen, Thompson continued sending her piece to industry professionals in Los Angeles and New York City. One of her greatest champions was Henry Christeen Warnack, a prominent filmmaker and drama critic for the Los Angeles Times. Warnack wrote to Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century Fox) on Thompson’s behalf, stating; “It is a strong story in answer to Dixon’s ‘Clansman’. It is not a retort but good drama and a strong box office attraction.” Prominent drama critic Monroe Lathrop also advocated for the project, calling the screenplay “a historical masterpiece.” Eventually, the screenplay made it into the hands of legendary filmmaker Cecil B. De Mille. De Mille would later write to Thompson, stating that she would have a hard time getting the picture made, and that he didn’t feel the general public would “be in the mood” for its overt racial themes. However, De Mille praised Thompsons talent, calling the piece “a sincere and equitable treatment of an important subject. The story itself and the characterization make the script profoundly interesting.”

Over time, Thompson’s efforts lost momentum and the project was abandoned. In Response to the Clansman remains un-produced to this day. The screenplay has been lost.

Eloise Alberta Veronica Bibb Thompson died on January 8th, 1928 at the Edgecomb Sanitarium in New York. Thompson had spent her final months the way she spent most of her adult life, in school, enjoying courses in the arts at NYU. She was 49 years old. Her obituary in The New York Age read “Eloise Bibb Thompson, nationally known author and playwright, died on Sunday…”

Thompson’s funeral was held at Saint Mark’s Catholic Church on West 138th Street. The famed Jesuit priest and Editor of America, Fr. John LaFarge, presided over the mass. Thompson’s pallbearers included Dr. E.P. Roberts (one of the first Black doctors licensed to practice medicine in New York) Eugene Kinckle Jones (co-founder of the National Urban League & a senior advisor to President Roosevelt), Dr. Charles S. Johnson (renowned sociologist and President of Fisk University), New York City Councilman Fred R. Moore, and Arthur A. Schomburg (the namesake of  The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).

Thompson is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens. Her dramatic works remain lost.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson
(July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935)

Early Life & Education

At a time when less than one percent of Americans attended college, Dunbar-Nelson graduated from the teaching program at Straight University (now Dillard University) in 1892, and worked as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans at Old Marigny Elementary. She assumed a prominent place in New Orleans Black and Creole society, especially in musical and literary circles. She was President of the Whittier Club of her A.M.E. church, and frequently starred in the dramas they presented. She made her literary debut at the age of twenty with her collection Violets and Other Tales (1895), a multi-genre collection of poetry, stories, sketches, and essays rooted in New Orleans Creole society.  It was published by the Monthly Review Press in Boston, Massachusetts (coincidentally, that same press would publish Bibb Thompson’s first collection  Poems (1895) later that same year). Violets and Other Tales was well received, and Dunbar-Nelson used the money she received from publication to move to New York City the following year.

Social Worker & First Marriage

By the late 1890s, Dunbar-Nelson’s poems and short-stories were being published regularly throughout the United States. She soon caught the interest of famed poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The two corresponded for two years before finally meeting in 1898, at which time the couple eloped and moved to Washington, D.C. Paul was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1900 and was prescribed whiskey to deal with the pain. As a result, he developed a severe case of alcoholism and would often fly into fits of drunken range. During these episodes, Alice was subject to frequent emotional and physical abuse. After one particularly violent episode in 1902 which nearly cost Alice her life, the two officially separated, just four years before Paul’s death. A survivor of intimate partner violence, Alice Dunbar-Nelson went on to publish acclaimed short stories, poems, plays, essays, and pieces of critical scholarship, eventually becoming one of the most revered literary voices of her generation.

Dunbar-Nelsom continued to write, working on an unpublished collection of stories about the new community in which she found herself. She was a clubwoman, the main arena for Black women’s activism at the time, and leading figure of women’s suffrage within the Black community. In 1916 she met fellow poet and civil rights activist, Robert J. Nelson. The two were married later that same year. While Dunbar-Nelson had been working with social and cultural organizations since her youth in New Orleans, her marriage to Robert J. Nelson seemed to encourage greater involvement in the public arena. She became active in Delaware and regional politics, and during World War I she served as a field representative of the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense.

Death & Posthumous Legacy

Brief though it was, Dunbar-Nelson’s marriage to Paul Lawrence Dunbar has tended to overshadow her achievements as a writer, even though she outlived him by three decades and married twice more. For many years, according to Katherine Adams, Sandra A. Zagarell, and Caroline Gebhard, the editors of Recovering Alice Dunbar-Nelson for the Twenty-First Century, a 2016 special issue of the women’s literature journal Legacy, her marriage was “the only thing making her visible and the primary thing obscuring her from view.” That ironic combination, a spotlight partially covered, is a fate she shares with many talented wives of famous men. In fact, until the intervention of acclaimed Poet and Black Women’s Studies professor,
Dr. Akasha Gloria Hull in the 1980s, Dunbar-Nelson’s writings were out of print and almost entirely forgotten.

Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Twenty-First century academics have described Dunbar-Nelson as a “New Woman,” and “a proto-feminist figure who dominated American culture at the turn of the twentieth century.” She was a nuanced and complex writer, whose work was deeply influenced by both early traumas, as well secret love affairs with other women. Contemporary critics have tried to pin her down to one identity, one genre, or one set of beliefs about race or gender. However this is impossible — appreciating the variety of her work requires a nuanced attention to the many layers of her life. As a writer, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was and is a trailblazer in the fields of American poetry, drama, and non-fiction. She was forced to both suppress and hide many of the key aspects of her identity during most of her literary career. Now, almost a century later, it is time for her story to be known.