by S.J. de Matteo
Marita Bonner
June 16, 1899 – December 7, 1971
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Marita Odette Bonner (Occomy) was an African American writer, essayist, and playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance Era. Other names she went by were Marita Occomy, Marita Odette Bonner, Marita Odette Bonner Occomy, Marita Bonner Occomy, and Joseph Maree Andrew. Bonner is perhaps most noteworthy for extending the cultural reach of the Harlem Renaissance to Washington D.C., and Chicago — as she herself was never a resident of Harlem. She published three plays, three essays, and seventeen short stories during her lifetime.
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Marita Bonner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Joseph and Anne Noel Bonner. Bonner was one of four children, brought up in Brookline — a middle-class community in Massachusetts. She attended Brookline High School, where she contributed to the school literary magazine, The Sagamore. She excelled in German and Musical Composition, and was also an accomplished pianist. After graduating high school, she enrolled in Radcliffe College in 1918. During her four years of study, Bonner was forced to commute to school from home, as African-American students were not permitted to board on campus. She excelled both academically and socially at Radcliffe — majoring in English and Comparative Literature, while continuing to study German and Composition.
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”.
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Throughout her career, Bonner served as a frequent contributor to The Crisis (the magazine of the NAACP) and Opportunity (the official publication of the National Urban League). She wrote three plays — The Pot Maker (1927), The Purple Flower – A Play (1928) and Exit, an Illusion (1929) — the most famous being The Purple Flower, which portrays black liberation. Many of Bonner’s written work dealt with poverty, poor housing, and colorism in the black communities. Bonner is one of the many frequently unrecognized black female writers of the Harlem Renaissance who resisted the universalizing, essentialist tendencies by focusing on atypical women rather than on an archetypal man. She regularly explored themes of poverty, familial relations, urban living, colorism, feminism, and racism in her works. Bonner was wholly opposed to generalizations of black experience, and wrote about several differing black experiences in her short stories and plays. She is thus remembered as an advocate for intersectionality and a documentarian of multicultural urban life.
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.
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The Purple Flower is a one-act play widely considered to be Bonner’s masterpiece. Not set in any specific place or time, the piece utilizes hyper-theatrical themes to paint a chilling allegory for racial injustice in the United States. The play’s text was well received, and won Bonner first prize in the 1927 Crisis Magazine Literary Awards. The play is credited as the first known experimental work by an American woman of color — foreshadowing avant-garde playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy and María Irene Fornés of the Off-Off Broadway movement in the 1960s.
A masterful mixing “biblical imagery and political allegory” the play seemed to “disrupt the thin skin of civilization.” The cast includes two sets of characters — “the Us’s”, who represent African Americans — and the White Devils. The White Devils live on the hill, located “Somewhere,” atop of which grows “the purple Flower-of-Life-at-Its-Fullest”. The stage is divided into two levels, separated by a thin board that Bonner calls the “thin-skin-of-civilization.” “The Us’s” occupy the upper level, which holds the dialogue and main action. The lower level is occupied by the “White Devils”, who have no dialogue but dance around and mimic the action on the upper level. The individual characters among” the Us’s” represent a variety of attitudes of the oppressed.
The Purple Flower was never produced during Bonner’s lifetime.
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Influence on the Harlem Renaissance
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Bonner’s career had a significant impact on the period, as her writings addressed the struggles of people who lived outside of Harlem. Her greatest involvement in the movement was her emphasis on claiming a proud racial and gender identity. She argued against sexism and racism and encouraged other black women to join her quest for understanding, knowledge, and truth as a means to combat the oppression of race and gender. She also encouraged African Americans to use the weapons of knowledge, teaching, and writing to overcome inequalities. Unlike most Renaissance writers, she focused her writings on issues in and around the city of Chicago. Several of Bonner’s short stories addressed the barriers that African-American women faced when they attempted to follow the Harlem Renaissance’s call for self-improvement through education and issues surrounding discrimination, religion, family, and poverty.
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.
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Bonner died tragically from smoke inhalation during an apartment fire on December 7th, 1971. Her daughter, Joyce, later found two unpublished stories her mother had written. She arranged to have all her mother’s collected works published in one volume.
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.
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Bibliography
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph. “Marita Bonner: In Search of Other Mothers’ Gardens.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 21, no. 1/2, 1987, pp. 165–182.
“Published writings, 1925-1941”. Papers of Marita Bonner, 1940–1986, SC 97, 5. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
“Marita Bonner .” Race, Gender, & Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne C{u28A5}Saire, Dorothy West, by Jennifer M. Wilks, Louisiana State University Press, 2008, pp. 74–75.
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. NetLibrary, Inc., 1999.
Kent, Alicia. “Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism“. Legacy. Vol. 28, no. 1, 2011, pp. 141–143.
Brown, Amy. “Marita Odette Bonner (1899-1971) .” •, Black Past, 3 June 2020, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/bonner-marita-odette-1899-1971/.
“Marita Bonner.” Marita Bonner: Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Winner, chicagoliteraryhof.org/inductees/profile/marita-bonner.
“Intimate Circles: Marita Bonner.” Intimate Circles | Marita Bonner, brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/awia/gallery/bonner.html.
by S.J. de Matteo & Aviva Helena Neff
Mary P. Burrill
(August. 28, 1881 — March. 13, 1946)
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Mary P. Burrill was a Black playwright, educator, and activist whose work was prominent before and during the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Washington D.C. in the 1880s, Burrill was educated at Dunbar High School, and was the first known Black graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. She became the second Black woman produced on Broadway when her play Aftermath competed against Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, and J.M. Barrie in the 1928 Little Theater Tournament at The Frolic Theatre. Burrill is remembered for her complex and politically disruptive plays that chronicled the Black Experience and women’s reproductive rights in early 20th century America.
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Mary P. Burrill was born in Washington, D.C. to John H. Burrill and Clara E. Burrill. She was educated at M Street High School (later renamed Dunbar High School) for Black students, renowned for its academic excellence, high-quality faculty, and progressive ideology. There she developed an interest in literature and theatre. Upon graduating from high school in 1901, she moved with her family to Boston, where she enrolled at Emerson College and became the first Black student to graduate from the school in 1904. During Burrill’s adolescence and early adulthood, she had a romantic relationship with Angelina Weld Grimké, later a famous poet, educator, and playwright. Letters between the two date back to 1896, when Mary and Angelina were 15 years old.
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.”
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After graduating from Emerson in 1904, Burrill returned to Washington D.C in 1905 to teach at Armstrong Manual High School. In 1907 she became the Director of the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression, and later returned to her alma-mater, Dunbar High School, where she remained until her retirement in 1944. She was much loved as a teacher of English, Speech, and Drama, and encouraged many of her students to write plays. These students included Willis Richardson (the first Black playwright produced on Broadway) and May Miller (the most published playwright of the Harlem Renaissance). During her early years of teaching, she wrote The Other Wise Man, a monologue she presented to high school and community audiences every Christmas season.
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.
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Burrill’s most remembered play, Aftermath, was first published in April of 1919 in an edition of Liberator, a white, left-wing periodical edited by the socialist Max Eastman. The play is noteworthy for anticipating the events of the Red Summer of 1919 when white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the United States. The play tells the story of the Thornton family as they eagerly prepare the return of John Thornton, who has been fighting overseas in WWI. John has just been awarded the French War Cross for single-handedly fighting off twenty German soldiers and saving the lives of his entire company. As the plot unravels, it is revealed that while John was abroad his father was lynched by white mob, and his sister Millie has chosen not to tell him. The play ends with John, having returned home and learned the truth, loading his service revolver and leaving home to settle the score. The play was met with critical praise upon its publication, but was not performed professionally until nine years later when staged by the Krigwa Players in 1928.
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.
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Relationship with Lucy Diggs Slowe
Burrill’s partner of twenty-five years, Lucy Diggs Slowe, was also a woman of remarkable achievement. Slowe received her BA from Howard University, where she was one of the nine original founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the first sorority founded by Black women. She was instrumental in drafting the sorority’s constitution, and served as the chapter’s first president. After graduating in 1908, Slowe returned to Baltimore to teach English in high school. During the summers, she started studying at Columbia University in New York, where she earned her Masters of Arts degree in 1915. Slowe was also a tennis champion, winning the national title of the American Tennis Association’s first tournament in 1917, making her the first Black woman to win a major American sports title. In 1922, Slowe was appointed the first Dean of Women at Howard University, the first Black woman to serve as Dean of Women at any American university.
Burrill met Slowe in 1912 — three years later Slowe moved to DC to teach at Armstrong Manual Training Academy, and the two women began a relationship. Close friends of the couple, most of whom were other Black women writers and educators, treated them as a couple. Slowe and Burrill decided to buy a house at 1256 Kearney Street in nearby Brookland, then a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood in Northeast Washington. They lived together on Kearney Street for over fifteen years. Their home became an important gathering place, as Burrill and Stowe would host parties and intellectual gatherings attended by female Howard students and prominent writers and artists, including Jean Toomer and Georgia Douglas Johnson. According to Robert Malesky, “That Kearny Street home became a refuge for Howard’s female students, and Slowe regularly hosted get-togethers there to talk, counsel and encourage her young charges, often meeting beneath the trees in her back yard or gathered around an open fire in the living room. The women also received many other guests there, mostly educators such as Mary McLeod Bethune, but also politicians and activists from around the country.” Burrill left Kearney Street in 1937 when Slowe passed from kidney disease.
The Slowe-Burrill house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 for “its significance to African American and LGBT history.”
Mary P. Burrill and Lucy Diggs Slowe in the backyard of their DC home
(courtesy of the Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University)
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Shattered by the death of Slowe, Burrill moved out of their house and into an apartment near Howard. She retired from Dunbar High School in 1944 and moved to New York City, where she died two years later on March 13, 1946. She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
In 2019 Washington D.C. City Council member Kenyan McDuffie introduced a bill to the D.C. Council to build eight new statues depicting “accomplished women and people of color who were born and raised in D.C.” The bill identifies four names, including Mary P. Burrill.
A sign on the African American Heritage Trail in Washington D.C. commemorates Burrill for writing “the first feminist play by a Black woman.” |
Bibliography
- Cobb, Elizabeth. “Biographical Sketch of Mary P. Burrill | Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company“. Dearborn, MI; University of Michigan, Dearborn. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
- Perkins (Ed.), Kathy A. (1990). Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950 (First Midland Book ed.). Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press. pp. 53–56
- Perkins (Ed.), Kathy A. (1990). Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950 (First Midland Book ed.). Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press. pp. 67–74
- Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex & Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 1987.
- Abramson, Doris. “Angelina Weld Grimké, Mary T. Burrill, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Marita O. Bonner: An Analysis of Their Plays – ProQuest“. Atlanta, Ga. Vol. 2, Iss. 1, (Spring 1985). Retrieved 2019-05-06.
- Hebel, Udo J. (1996). “Early African American Women Playwrights (1916-1930) and the Remapping of Twentieth-Century American Drama”. AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik. 21 (2): 267–286.
- McNealey, Earnestine G. (2006). Pearls of Service: The Legacy of America’s First Black Sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. Chicago: Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. p. 43.
- Verongos, Helen T. “Overlooked No More: Lucy Diggs Slowe, Scholar Who Persisted Against Racism and Sexism,“ The New York Times, October 1, 2020.
- Perkins, Linda M. “Lucy Diggs Slowe: Champion of the Self-Determination of African-American Women in Higher Education.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 81, No. 1/4, Vindicating the Race: Contributions to African-American Intellectual History. (Winter – Autumn, 1996), pp. 89-104.
by S.J. de Matteo & Aviva Helena Neff
Regina M. Anderson
(May. 21, 1901 — February. 5, 1993)
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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.
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Regina M. Anderson was born in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, to Margaret Simons Anderson and William Grant “Habeas Corpus” Anderson. Her parents’ collective ancestry included African, Native American, East Indian, and European descent. Her mother was a ceramics artist, and her father was an esteemed attorney. Due to her parents’ success in their prospective careers, Anderson grew up in a well-respected, upper middle class family. After her parents’ divorce she was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Normal, Illinois. After a few years she journeyed back to Chicago and graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1919. She studied at the Historically Black College Wilberforce University, where she cultivated a love for literature, and worked as an assistant librarian in the university’s Carnegie Library. After one year at Wilberforce she returned home to Chicago and was hired as a junior library assistant at the Chicago Public Library, while also taking classes at the University of Chicago.Anderson traveled to New York City in 1923 on vacation, but decided to stay after falling in love with the city. Once settled in New York she took a job at the Womrath Rental Library, later applying for a position at the New York Public Library. The NYPL hiring process demonstrates the complex topography of historic socio-cultural dynamics. When asked to give her race on the application, Anderson simply wrote, “I’m American.” Three or four days after completing her application, Anderson received a request to return to “discuss” her answers. When questioned again about her racial identification, she reaffirmed that she was an American, but Anderson was told “You’re not an American. You’re not white.” Her interviewer eventually informed her that she was hired, but added, “we’ll have to send you to Harlem,” due to her skin color.
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Librarian at the New York Public Library
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Anderson was assigned to the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, where she worked under legendary activist Ernestine Rose, a trusted white ally who became an outspoken advocate for local Black Americans served by the branch. Anderson enthusiastically supported Rose in her community outreach activities, including co-curating the North Harlem Community Forum, which hosted famous speakers such as Franz Boas and W.E.B Du Bois (who had been a friend and client of Anderson’s father while in Chicago). Lectures covered a wide range of radical topics including “philosophy, war, peace, journalism, labor, psychology, sociology, economics, militarism, literary, poetry, theatre, race-relations, and more.” In her first year at the library Anderson notably invited Joseph Freeman, an early proponent of Marxism and Communism, to deliver a lecture regarding the legacy of American imperialism, and the French literary figure Anatole France, whose books had been banned by the Roman Catholic Church. Anderson also sought out University of Pennsylvania professor Scott Nearing, who had been fired for speaking against WWI.Anderson’s radical programming efforts received much attention, and in 1924 she was invited to grace the cover of a special issue of Messenger magazine, that featured “Negro women who are unique, accomplished, beautiful, intelligent, industrious, talented, and successful.” The accompanying article by Theophilus Lewis celebrated her work at the library, stating that “The credit for a great deal of the success achieved this season is due to Miss Regina M. Anderson, who has largely directed and executed the difficult tasks of publicity and finance.” Anderson continued her successful public programming efforts, organizing lectures by influential figures such as famed Black Socialist Hubert Harrison, and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. Anderson began attending City College in 1926, graduating in 1929. She later received a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Library Services. She eventually published an influential dissertation entitled, “A Public Library Assists in Improving Race Relations.”
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Anderson with patrons at the 135th Street Branch. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY/PUBLIC DOMAIN
The Harlem West Side Literary Salon
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Soon after Anderson began her tenure at the 135th Street branch, she relocated to a fifth-floor apartment at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue with two other women, Ethel Ray Nance and Louella Tucker, both of whom worked for Opportunity Magazine, the official journal of the National Urban League. The apartment was spacious, and had a beautiful view, leading the three roommates to playfully refer to it as “Dream Haven.” Thanks to her roommates’ connections, “Dream Haven” became publicly known as the “West Harlem Literary Salon,” functioning as a salon and frequent gathering place for artists and intellectuals of the period (much like Georgia Douglas Johnson’s famed S Street Salon in Washington, D.C.). Anderson quickly immersed herself in Harlem’s burgeoning community of artists, and would soon form close bonds with writers Zora Neal Hurston, Jessie Redmond Fauset, and James Weldon Johnson; poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes; and arts patron A’Lelia Walker (the daughter Madame C.J. Walker).In 1924, Zora Neale Hurston ended up moving in with the roommates for a brief period, staying on their couch. Later the same year, Anderson and Nance were enlisted to co-organize the March 21st, 1924 Civic Club dinner that united dozens of Black intellectuals, an event that would later be hailed as the birthplace of the Harlem Renaissance. Afterwards, many of the attendees returned to Dream Haven with Anderson and Nance, to celebrate and “eat bacon and eggs.” After three years in the apartment Anderson moved out of Dream Haven upon marrying Bill Andrews, a lawyer for the NAACP, and future New York State Assemblyman.
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.
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A party on the roof of Regina Anderson’s home, at 580 St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem. From left to right, attendees included Ethel Ray (Nance), Langston Hughes, Helen Lanning, Pearl Fisher, Regina Anderson (Andrews), Rudolf Fisher, Luella Tucker, Clarissa Scott (Delany), Esther Popel, Hubert Delany, Jessie Fauset, Marie Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier. SCHOMBURG CENTER/NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Climbing Jacob’s Ladder & Other Plays
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In total, we know of four plays written by Anderson, Climbing Jacob’s Ladder (1931), Underground (1932), Matilda (n.d.), and The Man Who Passed (n.d.). In 1931 the Harlem Experimental Theatre produced Climbing Jacob’s Ladder. The title of the play was derived from the Black American spiritual, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” and tells the story of a lynching through a community gathering in a church. Anderson’s dramaturgy was unique amongst her peers, as her play was set outside of the home, and featured children. It is also noteworthy that Anderson’s children lacked all innocence, keenly aware of the violence they will face due to the color of their skin. Upon viewing the play, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote to Anderson, saying “Your play was thrilling. I enjoyed it immensely, and it gripped the audience.” The play was historic for being one of the first professionally produced lynching plays written by a Black woman.
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.
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The Krigwa Players & The Harlem Experimental Theatre
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In 1925 Anderson and W.E.B. Du Bois co-founded The Krigwa Players, with Du Bois serving as the company’s Chairman. The Krigawa Players were a new kind of theatre company devoted to advancing the careers of Black playwrights and actors. Revolutionary in every sense, the players achieved great commercial success in ticket sales, and received critical acclaim from both Black and white critics during the late 1920’s. Much of the company’s success was due to their ongoing creative collaborations with playwright Eulalie Spence. When the Krigwa players disbanded around 1928 (after W.E.B. Du Bois had disastrous disputes with Eulalie Spence and Mary. P. Burrill), Anderson and other members of the Harlem community decided to organize the Harlem Experimental Theatre. Anderson later recalled:“When Dorothy Peterson, Harold Jackman, and one or two others sat with me and discussed how we could recreate the little theatre Dr. Du Bois had established with Krigwa, we met in the 135th Street Library… What do we want to do? What is our goal? What are we going to achieve? These were the questions…. And so, the Harlem Experimental Theatre was born.”
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.
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Scene from the Harlem Experimental Theatre production of Climbing Jacob’s Ladder by Regina M. Anderson
In 1938, Anderson was named the head of a New York Public Library branch on 115th Street, the first ever African-American to hold this distinguished title. She would later lead the Washington Heights branch, where she continued to welcome speakers, encourage community use of the library, and host theatrical groups. Anderson was honored at the 1939 World Fair in New York City by the Women’s service league of Brooklyn for her work with the NYPL and cultural programming. She was one of just 10 Black women recognized, alongside icons like Jessie Redmon Fauset (literature), Dorothy Height (religion), Augusta Savage (sculpture), Phillippa Schyler (piano) and Ethel Waters (the stage).
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.
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Outliving virtually all of her friends and fellow artists of the Harlem renaissance, Anderson died on February 5th, 1993, at Bethel Nursing Home in Ossining, New York. She was 91.
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.
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Bibliography
- Whitmire, Ethelene. Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian. University of Illinois Press, 2015.
- Whitmire, Ethelene. “Breaking the Color Barrier: Regina Andrews and the New York Public Library,” Libraries & the Cultural Record , Vol. 42, No. 4 2007. University of Texas Press. Accessed January 28th, 2020.
- Giaimo, Cara. “The Librarian at the Nexus of the Harlem Renaissance.” Atlas Obscura, 21 March 2018. Accessed January 28th, 2020.
- Perkins, Kathy A., and Judith L. Stephens. Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women. Indiana University Press, 1998.
- Boyd, Herb. “Regina Anderson Andrews, Librarian, Playwright and Patron of the Arts.” New York Amsterdam News: The New Black View,
- Peterson, Bernard L. Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers. Greenwood Press, 1990.
by S.J. de Matteo & Aviva Helena Neff
Willis Richardson
(November. 5, 1889 — November. 7, 1977)
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Willis Richardson was a pioneering Black playwright who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. In the words of eminent Black Theatre scholar Darwin Turner, “Willis Richardson… was not the first Afro-American to write a play, but he was the first significantly productive Afro-American playwright.” He made history in 1923 when his play The Chip Woman’s Fortune ran at the Frazee Theatre, making him the first Black playwright produced on Broadway. By the end of his life he had published two anthologies of Black plays, which contained the works of other playwrights as well as his own, a collection children’s plays, and 48 individual plays, 20 of which have been published; and most of the rest have been preserved at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Hatch-Billops Archives in New York City. To this day, Richardson is remembered as one of the most prolific American playwrights of the twentieth century.
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Born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1889, Willis Richardson’s early life is shrouded in uncertainty. Not much is definitively known about Richardson’s parents, largely due to questions raised by his surviving family regarding elements of his personal autobiography. His mother, Agnes Ann Harper Richardson was a housewife who is remembered as “wholeheartedly devoted to raising her son”, although his family believes that Agnes was in fact his grandmother, and Richardson’s biological mother was Julia, his much older “sister.” In his autobiography, Richardson names Willis Wilder as his father and recalls that he was a well-read bricklayer who heavily involved himself in Wilmington’s local Black politics. This was significant because Wilmington was one of the few cities nationwide that had a community of Black Americans who occupied prominent social positions including elected offices and law enforcement.
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.
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“The Hope of a Negro Drama”
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Inspired by Angelina Weld Grimké’s play Rachel (1916) Richardson wrote a pioneering article for The Crisis entitled “The Hope of a Negro Drama”, in which he outlined the values he wanted to dramatize in his own plays;
“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.
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From 1916 to 1918, Richardson took correspondence courses in poetry and drama, and once he considered himself sufficiently prepared, he began to write plays, submitting them mainly to The Crisis, where his work came to the attention of the Editor, W.E.B Du Bois. In early 1920, Du Bois published four of Richardson’s children’s plays in The Brownie Book, a magazine for Black children that Du Bois himself edited. Richardson’s first adult one-act play, The Deacon’s Awakening, was published in The Crisis in November of 1920. The play was produced the following year by an amateur theatre troupe in St. Paul, Minnesota.The Deacon’s Awakening is a brief but dynamic play that explores the patriarchal power structures that exist within the Black church. A “suffrage drama” in nature, the play tells the story of a church deacon who, upon learning of a suffrage group in his congregation, plans to bring all the would-be women voters before the Church Board for disciplinary action; that is, until he learns that his own wife and daughter are active members of said group. Richardson is noteworthy for being the first male dramatist to critically engage with the complex nuances of sexism in the Black community.
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.
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In the early 1920s the Ethiopian Players of Chicago wanted to produce a Black play, but didn’t know any Black playwrights. The Player’s Artistic Director reached out to W.E.B Du Bois, who put him in touch with Richardson. This connection resulted in the Players producing Richardson’s new play The Chip Woman’s Fortune, on January 29th, 1923. Described as a “folk drama in one-act,” The Chip Woman’s Fortune tells the story of a store porter in a small southern community who is about to lose his job because of an unpaid debt of purchase. The porter attempts to get money from an elderly woman who is rooming with his family, although she struggles to financially support herself by picking up chips of wood and bits of coal in the street. What unfolds is an intimate tale of community, economic survival, and second chances.
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.
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Following his triumph on Broadway, Howard University agreed to produce Richardson’s play Mortgaged, and according to the playwright, “this was the first play by one of our people to be staged there.” The play was met with thunderous acclaim, and was staged by numerous high schools and universities throughout the 1930’s following its publication in Readings From Negro Authors, edited by Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo Dow Turner, and Eva Dykes. In fact, many of Richardson’s 40 completed plays would go on to enjoy dozens of professional, academic, and amateur productions across the United States. From 1925 – 1940, professional productions of Richardson’s plays were mounted by the Gilpin Players in Cleveland, Ohio, the Negro Art Players in New York City, the Krigawa Players in New York City, the Krigawa Players in Washington, D.C., the Howard Players in Washington, D.C., the Ethiopian Players in Chicago, Illinois, and the Playground Athletic League in Baltimore, Maryland.
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.
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Later Life, Death, & Legacy
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Richardson continued to work as a clerk in the Bureau of Engraving until his retirement in 1954. Two years later, he published his third a final collection, comprised of five children’s plays, The King’s Dilemma and Other Plays for Children.
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.
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by S.J. de Matteo & Aviva Helena Neff
Eloise Bibb Thompson
(June 26, 1878 — January. 8, 1928)
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Eloise Alberta Veronica Bibb Thompson (June 26, 1878 — January 8, 1928), was a prominent Black screenwriter, poet, journalist, social advocate, short-story writer, and playwright. One of the most distinguished Black playwrights of the 1920s, Thompson enjoyed great success in US theatre, penning multiple critically acclaimed productions in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. Perhaps most notably, she became the first Black screenwriter to sell a screenplay in the Old Hollywood studio system when legendary film producer Thomas H. Ince purchased her piece In Response to the Clansman in 1915. A lifelong devotee of higher education, Thompson studied at Dillard University, Oberlin College, Howard University, Columbia University, USC, and NYU. According to her obituary in The New York Age, Thompson was a “nationally known author and playwright” at the time of her premature death in 1928.
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Eloise Alberta Veronica Bibb was born on June 26th, 1878, to Catherine Adele Bibb (née Brian) and Charles H. Bibb, a well-to-do federal employee. Raised in the socio-politically complex world of New Orleans’ Creole elite, Thompson became close childhood friends with fellow writer Alice Dunbar Nelson.
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.”
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Teacher & Social Advocate
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Like most Black college educated women of her day, Thompson initially pursued a career as a teacher. She graduated from New Orleans University (now the distinguished HBCU, Dillard University) in 1899 and subsequently attended a two-year program at Oberlin College in Ohio. She returned to New Orleans in 1901, where she spent several years as a teacher at the McDonogh No. 24 School, one of the best public schools in the city. She relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1905 to attend Howard University’s prestigious Teacher’s College, which she graduated from in 1907, and subsequently moved to New York City to take special classes at the New York School of Philanthropy (now Columbia University’s School of Social Work). After completing her studies at Columbia, Thompson returned to D.C. to begin a career in social work. She proceeded to spend the next three years (1908 – 1911) as Head Resident of Howard University’s Social Settlement House.. According to the Social Work Archives of Howard University:
“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.
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Marriage & Writing Career
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Thompson’s father passed away on February 8th of 1911. Being his only child, Thompson was the sole heir of a vast estate worth $75,000 (over two million dollars today). Later the same year she traveled to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to visit the famed Black educator and author, Dr. Booker T. Washington. While visiting she met Washington’s assistant, a young writer named Noah D. Thompson and after a whirl-wind romance, the pair were married. The newlyweds stopped for a short visit in Los Angeles while en-route to their honeymoon in Hawaii. The couple fell in love with the city and decided to settle there. The Thompson quickly immersed themselves into LA’s Black elite, and became prominent in social, religious, and literary circles. Noah established a lucrative real estate business while also working on the editorial staff of the Liberator, Evening Express, and the Morning Tribune, where he frequently contributed regular op-ed pieces examining race. Eloise also made her mark as a rising nonfiction writer, becoming a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Tribune, Out West, and the Morning Sun.
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.”
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In Response to The Clansman
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Eloise Bibb Thompson’s interest in playwriting grew rapidly in 1915. Enraged by the disturbing and horrific depiction of white supremacy in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, she penned a dramatic response to the now infamous film. Griffith’s film, which was the first motion picture screened at the White House, was based on the novel The Clansman (1905) by Thomas Dixon Jr. Birth of a Nation has been decried by contemporary critics for its contributions to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, due to its positive representation of the Klan and defense of anti-Black violence. Thompson answered the vile portrayal of Black Americans in Griffith’s work with her own searing work: In Response to the Clansman.
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.
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Success as a Playwright
Refusing to be discouraged, Thompson turned her efforts towards the stage. In 1920 her play Caught was produced to great acclaim by The Play-Crafters, a prominent organization of actors and playwrights, at Hollywood’s Gamut Club. The play was later re-staged by the Ethiopian Art Players in Chicago. In 1922 her play Africanus, about the life of Marcus Garvey, was purchased by theatrical producer Frank Egan. Egan staged a much acclaimed production of the play, directed by silent film star Olga Gray, at the Grand Theatre, a popular playhouse in downtown LA. The play was praised by Broadway composer J. Rosamond Johnson, who later wrote to Thompson saying “I have read and re-read your story with keen interest — and brought the same to the attention of several prominent theatrical managers. The general opinion is that your play is an excellent piece of work.” Later that year the famed Opera composer, Charles Wakefield Cadman would get his hands on a copy of Thompson’s next play, A Friend to Democracy. Seeing potential for a “grand operatic adaptation,” Cadman submitted the script to Nelle Richmond Eberhart and Alice Leal Pollock of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Both women ultimately passed on the play and the opera was never finished.
Thompson made her much anticipated New York stage debut in October of 1924 when the National Ethiopian Art Theater produced her play Cooped Up at the Lafayette Theatre. According to a 1925 edition of Opportunity, a “prominent magazine editor and critic” was quoted saying;
“I saw ‘Cooped Up’ last night. It is an amazingly realistic play compounded from humor and pathos in such delicate proportions as to carry over without the least suggestion of labored workmanship. You know your Creole New Orleans. I did not know you could talk their slang. The atmosphere with which you enshroud their petulant emotions, their simple life… the sturdy structure of idealism which ran through it is inescapable and carries a conviction off reality. You have a truly remarkable story — something that comes closer to the warmth and intimacy of Negro life than anything of the sort which I have seen on the stage or read. I see the possibility in this play of romanticizing Negro life with all of its sparkling color and deep emotional agonies. It should by all means find its way to Broadway.”
Echoing these sentiments, the producers of Cooped Up wrote to Thompson saying, “Your play made a wonderful hit last night. You can well be proud of ‘Cooped Up’. It is a forceful, interesting, and most effective play. You should be happy with the hit it made. The pressmen and theatrical people who were present all agree your play should be on broadway.” These warm notices led to the play being re-staged by the Ethiopian Art Players in Chicago. Cooped Up was also named a 1925 honorable mention in Opportunity’s annual Drama competition. The Intercollegiate Association staged a production at the Imperial Elks Auditorium in Harlem 1926, and the Lincoln Theatre featured Cooped Up in their 1928 season. Based on all of this positive momentum, Cooped Up very well might have moved to Broadway. However, Thompson developed serious health problems in the 1920s, and tragically succumbed to eye cancer in 1928. A eulogy in the February 1928 issue of Opportunity praised her unique literary talents and lamented “all of the rich promise of a career in letters only half-fulfilled.”
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The Thompsons relocated to New York City in January of 1927, as Noah had been hired as the new business manager for Opportunity. The move to New York also allowed Eloise to receive world class medical treatment. The Los Angeles Black community lamented the departure of the couple with a front-page article in the California Eagle saying, “Mr. Thompson and his talented wife Eloise were most highly appreciated at their home in this city and will be sorely missed.”
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.
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Bibliography
- “Eloise Bibb Thompson.” Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933: an Anthology and Critical Guide, by Ann Allen Shockley, New American Library, 1989, pp. 233–235.
- “Eloise Bibb Thompson.” Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900-1945, by Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 317–320.
- “Eloise Bibb Thompson.” Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950, by Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 530–531.
- “Los Angeles .” The Negro Trail Blazers of California: a Compilation of Records from the California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, in Berkeley …, by Delilah Leontium Beasley, Chadwyck-Healey, 1987, pp. 254–255.
- “Eloise Bibb Thompson .” Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, by Aberjhani and Sandra L. West, Facts On File, 2003, pp. 326–328.
- “A Playwright.” Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life, Feb. 1925, pp. 63–64.
by S.J. de Matteo & Aviva Helena Neff
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
(July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935)
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Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935) was an acclaimed Black playwright, poet, journalist, educator, political activist, and public speaker. She was among the first generation of Black Americans to be born free in the South after the Civil War and went on to become one of the most prominent Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Her work was complex; encompassing the study of literature, behavioral health, and African American history and culture, as well as public school and reformatory education. She played a vital role in the Black women’s club movement, organized for women’s suffrage, and worked to expand social justice, all while establishing herself as an accomplished writer and journalist who published a newspaper and wrote short stories, novels, poetry, syndicated newspaper columns, and critical scholarship. Perhaps best known during her life as a public speaker, Dunbar-Nelson traveled the country on a lecture circuit that brought her work into the national sphere.
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Dunbar-Nelson was born Alice Ruth Moore in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 19th, 1875. Dunbar-Nelson’s father, Joseph Moore, was most likely a merchant marine by trade, some sources identify him as white and others as Creole. Dunbar-Nelson’s mother, Patricia “Patsy” Moore, worked tirelessly as a seamstress to support her children and provide them with elite educational opportunities. Patsy was born into slavery in Opelousas, Louisiana, around 1850. Described as “strict yet loving, and incredibly supportive,” Patsy built a middle-class upbringing for her children, who existed socially within the city’s multiracial Creole community. As a young woman, Dunbar-Nelson studied art and music, exhibiting talent as a pianist, violinist, and composer. From an early age she was close childhood friends with fellow future-writer Eloise Bibb Thompson. Throughout their teens, both women were active in The Phyllis Wheatley Club of New Orleans, a prominent literary, civic, and social organization for young women.
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.
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Social Worker & First Marriage
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In 1897 Dunbar-Nelson moved to New York City, where she worked with writer and activist Victoria Earle Matthews at the White Rose Mission, a now legendary settlement home for working-class Black girls on East Eighty-Sixth Street. The Mission, co-founded by Dunbar-Nelson, sought to offer food and shelter to low-income migrant Black women who had recently moved to the city. The Mission also developed a job placement system that ensured their domestic workers were placed in safe environments (as the conditions for most job opportunities for Black female workers in New York City were deplorable.) Over time, the Mission evolved and began to provide social services that were previously unavailable to Black Women in New York City, such as personal enrichment classes, child-rearing instructions, and financial literacy courses. The Mission also maintained a library of works relevant to the history and accomplishments of “African and African American people.” Notably, this Library housed a copy of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) by Phylis Wheatley, America’s first published Black poet. The mission played a pivotal role in the lives of these women (and their families) until it closed in 1984, and it would not have existed—or succeeded—without the work of Dunbar-Nelson.
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.
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Further Education & Relationship with Edwina B. Kruse
Like many college educated Black women of the early 20th century, Dunbar-Nelson pursued a career in education after her separation. She moved to Wilmington, Delaware in 1902 to work at Howard High School, where she would teach English and Drama for the next eighteen years. During this time, Dunbar-Nelson would intermittently take time off from teaching to pursue post-graduate studies. She completed a master’s degree at Cornell University in 1908, and took additional courses at Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of study included English Literature, Writing, English Education Measurements, and Psychology. At Cornell she produced a thesis on the influence of Milton on Wordsworth that so well received that a portion of her research was published in Johns Hopkins University’s academic journal, Modern Language Notes. Her inclusion in the journal was remarkable considering Johns Hopkins did not start accepting Black students until 1945, and did not start accepting women until 1970.
During her first year at Howard Dunbar-Nelson began an intimate relationship with the school’s principal, a Puerto-Rican American educator named Edwina B. Kruse, despite a 27 year age difference. This was the first of several important romantic relationships with women Dunbar-Nelson would have throughout her adult life. The two women would remain romantically involved for fourteen years, all the while keeping their relationship out of the public eye. Whenever Dunbar-Nelson’s studies would took her away from Kruse, the women would write to each other. In 1920, Dunbar-Nelson and Kruse had a falling out that created a divide in their relationship, but this tension between the two did not stop Dunbar-Nelson from celebrating and honoring Kruse after her passing in 1930. Dunbar-Nelson continued to work at Howard after Kruse retired, until she was dismissed by the school’s new principal in 1920 for her radical politics. |
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Teaching & Subsequent Marriages
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For Dunbar-Nelson, teaching was both a creative outlet and a form of political engagement. She wrote plays for her students to perform as she believed in the importance of Black children learning stories that centered Black characters. She laments in her essay “Negro Literature for Negro Pupils” that “for two generations we have given brown and black children a blonde ideal of beauty to worship, a milk-white literature to assimilate, and a pearly Paradise to anticipate, in which their dark faces would be hopelessly out of place.” She shared these ideals with her second husband, Henry A. Callis, a fellow schoolteacher. The pair married in secret in 1910 and divorced less than a year later.
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.
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Mine Eyes Have Seen
During World War I Dunbar-Nelson shifted her focus to playwriting, authoring at least four known plays. Her greatest dramatic triumph, Mine Eyes Have Seen, was published in The Crisis during the last months of the war. The play sought to interrogate the steadfast loyalty Black Americans held for a country that offered no loyalty in return. This was a subject that W.E.B Du Bois had previously addressed in The Crisis; “out of this war will rise … an American Negro, with the right to vote and the right to work and the right to live without insult.” He and his supporters were threatened with suppression of their publication and possible imprisonment. Undaunted by these threats, Dunbar-Nelson, a close friend of Du Bois who shared his view that theatre should serve as “propaganda,” wrote a play addressing the psychological effects the draft placed on Black servicemen. Mine Eyes Have Seen also contributed to the anti-lynching movement, as it depicted the broken Black home and the ramifications of inter-generational trauma.
At the top of the play we learn that three siblings had to flee their home in the south after their father was lynched due to the white neighbors who were envious of his success. Shortly after arriving up North, the three siblings Dan, Chris, and Lucy lost their mother to “pneumonia and heartbreak.” Dan, the eldest child, was crippled while working in a factory and Lucy lives in constant fear due to their transition. The play opens with Dan and Lucy in the kitchen of their less than desirable apartment waiting to eat lunch due to the anticipated arrival of their brother from work. The siblings are dependent on their brother due to the circumstances of their father’s death. Chris arrives home with the news that he has been drafted into the U.S. Military. Chris struggles with the requirements being made of him as a U.S. citizen, when justice was blind to the murder of his father. The other characters try to persuade him to reconsider. Mrs. O’Neill, who was left a widow when her husband went off to war, informs Chris of the honor and valor of the service. Jake – a Jewish neighbor – interjects with his own wish for said honor. Lucy even succumbs to the great idea and urges Chris to accept for the purpose of making “a good name for their race.” Ultimately Chris decides to follow the promise of the patriotic sacrifice to one’s country and becomes a soldier. His family cheers, and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is heard intensifying in volume as the curtain closes.
The ending of the play is left up to audience interpretation. The play was written and published during the conclusion of WWI, just before the return of a record number Black servicemen who had been fighting overseas for their country. Mine Eyes Have Seen is noteworthy for predating Mary P. Burrill’s play Aftermath, and the events of the Red Summer of 1919 when white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the United States.
The full play can be read HERE.
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The Harlem Renaissance
In the 1920s, the cultural and political explosion of the Harlem Renaissance swept Dunbar-Nelson up in its trail, even though she had not lived in New York for many years. Her poetry, much of it written earlier, was rediscovered through its appearance in journals and collections like The Crisis, Opportunity, and the 1927 collection Ebony and Topaz. She maintained a close friendship with prominent poet and playwright Georgia Douglas Johnson throughout the 1920s, frequently visiting her home in Washington, D.C. During these visits, Dunbar-Nelson was an active participant in Johnson’s famed “S Street Salon,” socializing and writing alongside other prominent Black women writers of the period. She spent much of the 1920s and 1930s writing reviews and essays for newspapers, magazines and academic journals. She also continued to write stories, poems, plays and novels.
Dunbar-Nelson’s political involvement did not wane during this period, despite her re-immersion into literary circles. She battled lynching, challenged the Ku Klux Klan, organized for enfranchisement and women’s voting rights, lobbied for Black history in the K–12 public school curriculum, fostered improvements in international race relations, and sought better benefits for Black veterans. She also traveled cross country and spoke to audiences about issues ranging from women in the workforce to violence in the Jim Crow south. In 1920 Dunbar-Nelson became the first Black woman elected to the State Republican Committee of Delaware. In September of 1921 she was part of a small delegation who met with President Warren G. Harding in wake of the Houston Riot of 1917. She sought clemency for 63 Black soldiers who had been unjustly sentenced to harsh prison terms in wake of the riot. Her petition was ultimately denied. Then in 1922 when Delaware Republicans failed to back antilynching legislation in Congress, a frustrated Dunbar-Nelson moved to the Democratic side of the aisle. From 1926 – 1931 she worked for the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee. In recognition of her activism and for her contributions to American Arts & Letters, the Smithsonian commissioned a portrait of Dunbar-Nelson for the National Portrait Gallery in 1927. Her portrait remains on display to this day. |
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Death & Posthumous Legacy
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Dunbar-Nelson moved from Delaware to Philadelphia in 1932, when her husband joined the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. During this time, her health declined. She died from a heart ailment on September 18, 1935, at the age of 60. She was cremated in Philadelphia, and posthumously made an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. After her death, her life’s work was collected by the University of Delaware, which currently houses the The Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers.
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.
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Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson
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In the early 1980s Dr. Akasha Gloria Hull compiled a decade’s worth of Dunbar-Nelson’s diaries in Give Us Each Day (1986). This groundbreaking collection was only the second published diary by a Black woman in the United States. The diary contains many accounts of Dunbar-Nelson’s frustration with gender politics which kept her in supporting roles rather than leading the conversation about matters of importance. She also documented many accounts with her female lovers, which were never written as shame-ridden confessions, but as casually as the details of other quotidian happenings. In a rave review from The New York Times, Brent Staples called Give Us Each Day “A valuable contribution to women’s letters, this diary documents Dunbar-Nelson’s survival and periodic flourishing amid forces that crushed many Black women of her generation.”
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.
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