This project came to me as I was reading FIRE! At first, I was more interested with the works by the artists and writers featured in the the magazine, as I think most people are. But then my eye lingered on the names of those persons listed as patrons, and I wondered who THOSE people were.
I assume that what is meant by “patron” is that these people made FIRE! financially feasible, as is likely the case with Carl Van Vechten and E. B. Taylor who appears to be a businessman from Baltimore. If they all could not contribute financially, it is possible that some of these patrons served in editorial roles, or helped FIRE! through the production process. Any of these skills are just as “patronly” as financial support.
Whatever the case was, I wondered who these people were and what I might find out about them. Some of them seem lost to history and I could find no record of them, like Arthur P. Moor. With others, there is very little information to be found, but what is found suggests a full engagement with the social issues of the time – like Maurine Boie. Other names, Like Nellie Bright or Arthur Faucet, are names that should be as familiar as many of the artist in the pages of FIRE! itself, and perhaps they are to some, though they were not known to me. Bright and Faucet were as active in the regional manifestations of the Harlem Renaissance as their NYC based counterparts were in theirs.
Maurine Boie
One of the problem that I encounter in these “biographies” is actually verifying if the information is IN FACT about the same person listed as a sponsor of FIRE!. With that said, I have little doubt that the Maurine Boie I have found online is, in fact, the same one here. There is very little about Maurine available, but what there is is consistent with her being from Minneapolis, and in particular, the clear evidence that the Maurine I found online was very much connected to racial justice.
Maurine Boie wrote a Masters thesis in 1932 titled “A Study of Conflict and Accommodation in Negro-White Relations in the Twin Cities–based on Documentary Sources,” for the University of Minnesota. This masters thesis clearly had an impact because it is cited in a number of sources I found online, and is still quoted today.
The first reference I found regarding Maurine Boie was in a footnote in transcripted interviews from the “Twentieth Century Radicalism in Minnesota Oral History Project.”(Note: this link will download a PDF.)
FOOTNOTE: 14. The Birth of a Nation (Epoch Film Corporation, 1914,) was still playing around the country in the early 1930s. For an account of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s attempt to prevent its showing in Minneapolis, see Maureen Boie, A Study in Conflict and Accommodation in Negro-White Relations in the Twin Cities , (master’s thesis, University of Minnesota,) 1932, pp .78-79 .
Quotations from Maurine Boie’s Masters thesis make up most of the text that is in the catalog below. The catalog is to an exhibition at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.
About the exhibition
“In August 1931, Arthur and Edith Lee, a young African-American couple, purchased a home at 4600 Columbus Avenue South, Minneapolis, in what many considered a “white neighborhood”. A Right to Establish a Home examines the protests that followed in the context of race and housing in Minneapolis, racism in Minnesota, and the individuals and organizations that defended the Lees, including the NAACP and the distinguished attorney Lena Olive Smith.”
Quotations from Maurine Boie's Masters thesis in the catalog
“I never saw anything like it. Here were five or six thousand people, men, women and children, both on the curbs and sidewalks, just standing and waiting as near as they could get to this little, dark house, soundless, voiceless, tragic. Six thousand white people waiting to see that house burned!”
—Member of the crowd, quoted in Maurine Boie, “A Study of Conflict and Accommodation in Negro-White Relations in the Twin Cities,”
Master’s Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1932
“One of the neighbors got up and said, “You all know me; if there is going to be any burning, I am going to be in on it; if there is going to be any stringing up, I am going to be in on it, but I think we had better let the police manage it.”
—Member of the crowd, quoted in Maurine Boie, “A Study of Conflict and Accommodation in Negro-White Relations in the Twin Cities,”
Master’s Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1932
“I had wandered about in the rear of the crowd when one of the negroes appeared. He was jostled about for a few moments until police surrounded the group, extricated the negro and put him in a car. Many names were hurled at the negro, and the common cry was “lynch him,” plus many unmentionable names. I called to the negro to keep a stiff upper lip. A gentleman ahead of me immediately turned around and demanded to know what I meant. I had no sooner assured him that I meant what I said when he proceeded to punch my nose.”
—Member of the crowd, quoted in Maurine Boie, “A Study of Conflict and Accommodation in Negro-White Relations in the Twin Cities,”
Master’s Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1932
“When I first came here, I went down on ___ Avenue to a little restaurant. We sat upon the stools. There was a lady waitress. She didn’t wait on us. The manager came by and said, “We don’t particularly cater to colored people here; there is a colored restaurant down the street; if you don’t mind we would like to have you go there.” He was apologetic; I felt if I had forced my way I could have got service.”
—Maurine Boie, “A Study of Conflict and Accommodation in Negro-White Relations in the Twin Cities,”
Master’s Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1932
Nellie R. Bright
Members at 1921 national convention, hosted by Gamma Chapter (l to r): front, Virginia Margaret Alexander, Julia Mae Polk, Sadie Tanner Mossell; row 2, Anna R. Johnson, Nellie Rathbone Bright, Pauline Alice Young
There is an archive titled “Nellie Rathbone Bright Family Papers” housed at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
This short biography is from that archive homepage: Nellie Rathbone Bright spent her early years in Savannah, Georgia, where she was born on March 28, 1898 . . . Shortly after arriving in Philadelphia, Nellie Rathbone Bright earned her eighth grade graduation diploma in 1910 from Stanton Public School. She then obtained a diploma as a grade school teacher, with a special certificate in sewing, from William Penn High, Normal Teacher Training School, in 1916. Bright continued her education in 1919 when she entered the University of Pennsylvania, where she became a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English in 1923. Bright also pursued research at the Sorbonne and Oxford, as well as art studies at the University of Vermont and the Berkshire School of Art in Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts.
In the 1920s Nellie R. Bright co-edited the literary magazine Black Opals with Arthur Fauset, below.
THE BLACK OPALS
“A small group of young black intellectuals and creative writers in
Philadelphia published three issues of the literary journal Black Opals
between the spring of 1927 and June 1928. Though it was only a short
series, not a true magazine, it was part of a continuing discourse about
what was considered the proper direction for blacks’ writings.”
SOURCE: Wintz, C. D., & Finkelman, P. (Eds.). (2004). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Arthur Huff Faucet
“Arthur Huff Fauset was born on 20 January 1899, in Flemington, New Jersey. He was the son of Redmon Fauset, a minister of the A.M.E. Church, and Bella White, who was the daughter of white, Jewish parents. Jessie Redmon Fauset was his half-sister.
Fauset was educated in the Philadelphia public school system and graduated from Boys Central High in 1916 and the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy in 1918. After a brief career as a teacher, he was appointed principal of the Joseph Singerly School in North Philadelphia. In the meantime, he had entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he received an A.B. in 1921, an M.A. in anthropology in 1924, and a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1942.
It was Alain Locke who encouraged Fauset in the 1920s to write. The young principal’s first published work preceded the formally recognized years of the Harlem Renaissance. Fauset’s short story, “Tales of the North Carolina Words,” was written while he was a student of folklore at the University of Pennsylvania and appeared in The Crisis of January, 1922.”
SOURCE: The Arthur Huff Fauset papers, 1855-1983 page at the University of Pennsylvania.
Books by Arthur Huff Faucet
Dorothy Hunt Harris
Dorothy Harris Hunt was involved with FIRE! from the very beginning, as evidenced by these pages from “Wallace Thurman’s Harlem Renaissance, Volume 93, By Eleonore van Notten.”
The telegram and letter, pictured below, show that Dorothy Harris was good friends with Zora Neale Hurston. Based on the evidence of these, they traveled together and Hurston stayed with Harris’ parents when she was financial difficulties.
FURTHER READING: Dorothy makes a brief appearance in “When Zora and Langston Took a Road Trip,” which can be read here.
Arthur P. Moor
🙁
Dorothy R. Peterson
Dorothy R. Peterson is one of the people that I have had trouble tracking down with certainty. I will say that the two references I have found that use this name seem to suggest the person that would be involved with a publication like FIRE!, but, again, I can’t verify yet. Additionally, there is a “Dorothy Peterson” that shows up in some place (as shown below) but whether this is the same person is an open question. Certainly “both Dorothy’s” were in Harlem at the same time, so maybe one used the middle initial “R.” to distinguish herself. It’s hard to say.
But she is how I found EBONY AND TOPAZ which I think is kind of cool.
Ebony and Topaz (1927), a large single-issue anthology edited by Charles S. Johnson, was published by Opportunity under the aegis of the National Urban League.”
“There are some parallels between Ebony and Topaz and Fire!! — for one thing, they had many of the same contributors. Still, their differences seem more significant. Ebony and Topaz lacked the edginess and independence of Fire!! and was perceived by critics as simply art for art’s sake, but it tried to maintain realism, in which Fire!! was deficient. Retrospectively, Ebony and Topaz seems to have more in common with Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life (1928), Thurman’s successor to Fire!!”
SOURCE: Wintz, C. D., & Finkelman, P. (Eds.). (2004). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
ABOVE SCREENSHOTS FROM: Rereading Modernism: New Directions in Feminist Criticism, edited by Lisa Rado
I cannot confirm if the "Dorothy Peterson" below is that same as "Dorothy R. Peterson."
“Regina Anderson and Dorothy Peterson founded the Negro Experimental Theater in 1929, on the same principle — as theater by, for, about, and near blacks.”
“Gatherings and events at “580” [Regina’s apartment] — and a similar salon in Harlem’s East End, that of Dorothy Peterson and her brother Jerome Bowers Peterson — were reflected in Carl Van Vechten’s fifth novel, Nigger Heaven (1926).” – Notice the similarity in this text to what is said about Dorothy Hunt Harris above in Wallace Thurman’s book.
SOURCE: Wintz, C. D., & Finkelman, P. (Eds.). (2004). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Created from ccny-ebooks on 2020-05-18 19:50:06.
Mr. and Mrs. John Peterson
🙁
E.B. Taylor
So, what do we have here? Well, we have an Edmund Bernard Taylor, who started as a dishwasher and, well, became a very successful businessman, eventually incorporating as E.B. Taylor, who is not only the president of (his own?) bank, but is apparently supportive of the arts and lives in Baltimore, Maryland – same as the FIRE! sponsor. I think we have our guy.
Source: Who’s who of the Colored Race: A General Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of African Descent. United States, n.p, 1915.
Source: “The Crisis,” August 1921, Vol. 22, No. 4, 48 pages
Carl Van Vechten
Yea, hi Carl!
Other Projects
LINER NOTES
The songs on this album form the basis of archival work to create “liner notes” for this record by Audra McDonald.
Schomburg Twitter
A tweet by the Schomburg Center is the basis for open-ended archival research. Sort of “Six Degrees of the Schomburg Center.”
