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THE SLEEPER WAKES -- HARLEM RENAISSANCE STORIES BY WOMEN |
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES For some of the writers in this collection, biographical information was difficult to come by. Some of them did not write much other than one or two stories in The Crisis or Opportunity, and only rarely did the journals provide biographical headnotes. Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981) Educated as both an artist and a writer, Gwendolyn Bennett was born in Giddings, Texas and educated in both Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn, New York. The daughter of a lawyer and a teacher, she went on to study fine arts at Teachers College at Columbia University and graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1924. While studying at Pratt she wrote two class plays. In 1925 Bennett won a sorority scholarship from Delta Sigma Theta to study art in France. In France she found other artists and painters who supported her artistic endeavors. Upon returning to New York, she became assistant editor for Opportunity magazine, during which time she wrote her own column, "Ebony Flute," a review of current literary, artistic, and social news. Bennett also coedited the controversial publication Fire!!, in which her first short story, "Wedding Day," appeared. Later, Bennett taught water color, design, and crafts at Howard University. After her marriage she abandoned her artistic career, but continued to teach. In 1935, after her husband's death, Bennett returned to Harlem. Back in the artistic community, Bennett became the director of the Harlem Community Arts Center, a position that she held until 1940. She eventually married a second time and retired to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, where she and her husband owned and operated an antique store, until her death. Marita [Odette] Bonner [Occomy] (1899-1971) Marita Bonner was born and educated in Brookline, Massachusetts. She graduated from Radcliffe in 1922 with a degree in English and comparative literature. After graduation Bonner moved to Bluefield, Virginia, where she taught at the Bluefield Colored Institute. She then relocated to Washington, D.C., where she taught English at Armstrong High School. Bonner first gained acclaim for her writing when she won The Crisis literary contest in 1925 with her essay, "On Being Young -- A Woman and Colored." The following year she won a prize in The Crisis contest for her story "Drab Rambles." Bonner frequented Georgia Douglas Johnson's S Street Salon and became a member of the Krigwa Players through contacts made with Johnson. Johnson encouraged Bonner to become a playwright, and in 1927 her "Purple Flower" won the Crisis award for best play. When Bonner married William Occomy in 1930, she moved to Chicago, where she continued to teach (at Phillips High School and the Doolittle School for developmentally impaired children) and where her three children were born. The literary works that she produced while living in Chicago set the model for the next generation of African-American writers, including Richard Wright. Bonner's death was precipitated by a fire in her Chicago apartment. Anita Scott Coleman (1890-1960) Anita Scott Coleman was a poet, short story writer, and essayist. She was born in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico to a Cuban father who bought her mother as a slave and who later fought for the Union in the Civil War. Educated in Silver City, New Mexico, Coleman began teaching school in Los Angeles. Later she operated a boarding house for children and wrote stories for children as well. Although she sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Elizabeth Stapleton Stokes, stories and essays that she wrote under her own name were well received in the African-American literary community. In 1926, Coleman won second prize in the Opportunity literary contest for her nonfiction sketch "Dark Horse." That same year she won second prize in an Amy Spingarn contest in literature and art, sponsored by The Crisis, for her essay "Unfinished Masterpieces" and third prize for her short story "Three Dogs and a Rabbit" in The Crisis literary contest. Coleman published two books of poetry: Reason for Singing in 1948 and Singing Bells in 1961. Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) As is evident in much of her early short fiction, Alice Dunbar-Nelson grew up in New Orleans in a middle-class family. She studied at Straight College (now Dillard University) and graduated in 1892. Following graduation, Dunbar-Nelson began teaching in New Orleans, but she began to further her education in 1896 at Cornell University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Violets and Other Tales (1895), a collection of poetry and sketches, was her first published work; it was followed by her short story anthology The Goodness of St. Rocque in 1898. Her other published writings include Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence (1914) and The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer (1920). Poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar read some of her poetry in a Boston magazine and became steadfastly interested in her; they married in 1898. Her career as a political activist began when she became secretary of the National Association of Colored Women in 1897. Dunbar-Nelson's marriage to Paul Lawrence Dunbar was short-lived: they separated in 1902, and he died shortly thereafter in 1906. Dunbar- Nelson relocated once again, to Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught English at the all-black Howard High School. She remained there for eighteen years and eventually became head of the English department. While teaching and writing, she remained active in politics, and became the first African-American woman to be a member of the Delaware Republican State Committee, to which she was elected in 1920. She married journalist John Robert Nelson in 1916 and together they edited and published the Wilmington Advocate, a paper dedicated to the advancement of African Americans. Through her later work in education, she cofounded the Delaware Industrial School for Colored Girls and volunteered as a teacher and parole worker. She eventually succumbed to a heart ailment and died in Philadelphia in 1935. Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) Jessie Fauset was born in Camden County, New Jersey, the seventh child of an African Methodist Episcopal minister; she grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father remarried. Fauset was the only African-American student in her high school. After graduating, she tried to attend Bryn Mawr College but was rejected because of her race. She went on to study classical languages at Cornell University, from which she graduated in 1905, as one of the first African-American women to graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors. In her first attempt to teach after graduation, Fauset came once again face to face with racism in Philadelphia, so she moved to Baltimore and taught Latin and French at the all-black Douglas High School and later at M Street High School in Washington, D.C., which later became Dunbar High School. She decided to continue her education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with a master's degree, and also studied for one year at the Sorbonne in Paris. Eventually taking up residence in New York City, Fauset became literary editor of The Crisis magazine. Throughout her tenure there her short stories, novelettes, poetry, translations, reviews, critiques, and essays were published in the magazine. She simultaneously edited The Brownie's Book, a magazine for black children. During this period she also traveled abroad. In 1921, Fauset was sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta sorority to attend the second Pan-African Congress in Paris, and while in Europe she traveled to London and Brussels as well, where she lectured on the condition of African-American women in the United States. Fauset traveled to Africa for the first time in 1924; after this visit she returned to Paris again. The most prolific woman writer of the Harlem Renaissance, she wrote four novels in the space of a decade: There Is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), Chinaberry Tree (1931), and Comedy: American Style (1933). She eventually left The Crisis in 1926, over a skirmish with DuBois. She went back to teaching French at DeWitt Clinton High School in NewYork and married Herbert Harris in 1929. Together they eventually settled in Montclair, New Jersey. Fauset died in her home town of Philadelphia, of heart failure. Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958) The child of Archibald Grimke, a former slave, and Sarah Stanley, a wealthy white woman, Angelina Weld Grimke was born and brought up in Boston. Her mother left shortly after her birth, and Grimke was raised primarily by her father. Grimke's famous abolitionist and feminist aunts, Sarah Grimke and Angelina Grimke Weld, strongly influenced her as well. Throughout her education, Grimke was the only African-American student in the schools she attended. She graduated from Boston Normal School of Gymnastics in 1902 and moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught English at Dunbar High School. While teaching, she wrote poetry, short fiction, and plays for various periodicals. In 1916 she wrote the play Rachel, which was first produced at Myrtilla Miner Normal School the same year, and later produced elsewhere. Grimke was attracted to other women, especially to her contemporary poets, such as Clarissa Scott Delany, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Mary Burrill; much of her writing, especially her poetry, contains lesbian subject matter. When her father died in 1930, Grimke was devastated; she subsequently gave up teaching and moved to New York, where she lived in seclusion until her death in 1958. Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960) Zora Neale Hurston's home town, the all-black Eatonville, Florida, became the backdrop for her stories and novels, which are steeped in the African-American folklore of the South. Hurston grew up with seven siblings and went to school at Morgan Academy in Baltimore. She later attended Howard University and studied with Alain Locke. Hurston wrote her short story "John Redding Goes to Sea" for the Howard University campus magazine Stylus in 1921. While studying anthropology at Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1928, Hurston became involved with the literary community in Harlem and began to publish her short stories and folklore in African-American periodicals. Her short story "Spunk" won second prize in the 1925 Opportunity magazine literary contest. The following year her play "Color Struck" won second prize in the same contest. After graduating from Barnard, Hurston was awarded a fellowship from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to collect folklore throughout the South, but even while she conducted her anthropological research, she still involved herself in the literary world. With Gwendolyn Bettett, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, she became a cofounder and coeditor of Fire!! In 1934 she was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship to study anthropology and folklore; and in 1936 and 1937 two Guggenheim Fellowships to study magical practices. During and after the Renaissance, Hurston published several novels, including Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Mules and Men (1935), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948). Despite her success, she died obscure and penniless in her home state of Florida. Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886-1966) Georgia Douglas Johnson was born in Atlanta, Georgia but later came to call Washington, D.C. her home. She studied music and literature at Atlanta University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. Johnson became a teacher as well as a poet and playwright and later worked for the government. During her lifetime she published four volumes of poetry: The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze: A Book of Verse (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and Share My World: A Book of Poems (1962). Her "Plumes: Folk Tragedy" won the award for best play in Opportunity magazine's contest for 1927. Johnson made her home available to many other African-American writers during and after the Harlem Renaissance. Her S Street Salon in Washington, D.C. was a meeting ground where writers could share their work with each other. Johnson continued writing until her death in 1966. Nella Larsen [Imes] (1891-1963) Larsen was born in Chicago to a white Danish mother and a black West Indian father. When her father died, Larsen's mother decided to marry a white man. Brought up with this mixed-racial heritage, Larsen became preoccupied with the theme of marginality, and through her novels, Quicksand (1928), and Passing (1929), she explored what it means to belong simultaneously to the black and white communities. When she was sixteen, Larsen traveled through Denmark to discover her matrilineal heritage. She studied at both white and black institutions: first at Fisk University, then later at the University of Copenhagen, still later at the Lincoln Hospital Training Program in the Bronx, from which she graduated in 1915. Larsen then became a nurse at Tuskegee Hospital in Alabama. Still not satisfied with her work, Larsen moved to New York and entered the New York Public Library Training School and became a children's librarian at the 135th Street branch library in Harlem from 1922 to 1929. While working at this library, Larsen made many contacts and found a community that encouraged her writing career. She married physicist Elmer Imes in 1919, but divorced him in 1933. Her novel Quicksand won the bronze medal from the Harmon Foundation in 1929. In 1930 Larsen became the first African-American woman to win a Guggenheim for creative writing. It was intended to assist her in writing her third novel, but this novel never became a reality, because of the scandal over her story "Sanctuary." Even though Larsen successfully refuted the charge of plagiarism, she felt impelled to disappear from the literary scene. For a short time she worked as assistant secretary for the Writers League Against Lynching, a racially mixed organization combating murder and violence. She spent most of her later life as a nurse at Bethel Hospital in Brooklyn, New York and died in obscurity of heart failure. Eloise Bibb Thompson (1878-1928) Poet, short story writer, journalist, and playwright, Eloise Bibb Thompson resembled Alice Dunbar-Nelson not only in the diversity of her writing abilities but also in her middle-class upbringing and place of birth, New Orleans. In 1895, when she was only seventeen, her first book, Poems, was published by Boston's Monthly Review Press, who published Dunbar- Nelson's first book that same year. Thompson attended Oberlin College's Preparatory Academy from 1899 to 1901 and subsequently taught for two years in New Orleans. She eventually graduated from Howard University's Teacher's College and became head resident of the Social Settlement House at Howard from 1908 to 1911. In 1911 she married Noah Davis Thompson and together they moved to Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles, Thompson wrote for the Los Angeles Tribune and the Morning Sun. She wrote three plays -- Caught, Africans, and Cooped Up -- all of which were produced. She moved to New York City in 1927 when Noah became the business manager for Opportunity. The following year she died, ending a short but brilliant career. Dorothy West (1912- ) Dorothy West was the only child of Isaac Christopher West, an ex-slave, and Rachel Pease Benson. She grew up in Boston and attended Girls Latin High School and, later, Boston University and the Columbia School of Journalism. At eighteen, West won second place in the Opportunity literary contest with her first short story, "The Typewriter." In 1927, to help support her writing, West auditioned for and landed a small part in the original stage production of Porgy. When the show went to London in 1929, West accompanied the cast and crew for its short three-months run. She became a member of Boston's Saturday Evening Quill Club and wrote short stories for their magazine of the same name. (This group of African-American writers financed the magazine themselves in order to publish their work.) West joined a group of Harlem Renaissance artists, including Langston Hughes, who went traveling to Russia to make a propaganda film about African Americans, entitled Black and White, but it was never filmed. As one of the youngest of the Harlem Renaissance writers, she continued writing after the 'Renaissance, as a social and cultural phenomenon had ended, and, with money left over from the film venture, became editor of Challenge magazine in her efforts to keep African Americans still writing and publishing. She managed to get Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen, as well as other writers, to contribute to her magazine. West was initially the sale editor and financial backer for the magazine; when the name changed to New Challenge, Richard Wright and Marian Minos joined the editorial board. She wrote under the pseudonym Mary Christopher in some of the issues of Challenge. In 1948 West published her novel The Living Is Easy, which has made an important contribution to the African-American literary tradition. Currently, she lives in Martha's Vineyard and continues to write short stories as well as a column, "Oak Bluffs," for the Martha's Vineyard Gazette.
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