People, Locations, Episodes

Rudolph Fisher, Writer, and Gastroenterology Specialist born

Rudolph Fisher was born in Washington, DC on this date in 1897. He was an African American physician, roentgen logy specialist, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, musician, and orator.

Josephine Schuyler, Author born

*Josephine Schuyler was born on this date in 1897.  She was a white-American author and poet.   Josephine Cogdell was born into a wealthy family in Granbury, Hood County, Texas. She was the youngest of seven children of Daniel Calhoun Cogdell and Lucy Norfleet Duke. She was a white woman born to great wealth and privilege in […]

Edythe Mae Gordon, Writer and Poet born

*The birth of n is celebrated on this date in 1897.  She was a Black writer of short stories and poetry during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Edythe Mae Chapman was born in Washington, D.C., and raised by members of her mother’s family, surnamed Bicks. She was educated at M Street School and graduated in 1916. […]

George Dawson, Author, and Laborer born

George Dawson was born on this date in 1898. He was an African American author and laborer and one of the oldest men in America to learn to read and write a book.

The grandson of a slave, Dawson was born in a log cabin in Marshall, Texas, the oldest of five children. The family lived in a three-room cabin, with an outhouse out back and a small barn. He started working full time for his father when he was just four, hauling water from the well, working the cotton fields, hand-combing the cotton, and feeding the family’s few chickens and lone mule. School was not an option.

Melvin Tolson, Poet, and Educator born

Melvin Tolson was born on this date in 1898. He was an African American writer, educator, politician, and poet.

Marita Bonner, Author born

On this date in 1898, Marita Bonner was born. She was an African American writer closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

One of four children, Bonner was born in Boston to Joseph Andrew and Mary Anne (Noel) Bonner. She was raised and educated in Boston, attended Brookline School, where she received musical training and began mastering German. In 1918, she entered Radcliff College, and was absorbed in English and comparative literature.

Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish Author, born.

*Gunnar Myrdal was born on this date in 1898. He was a white Swedish economist, author, and sociologist. Myrdal’s writing used social economics to illuminate 20th-century American racism. Karl Gunnar Myrdal was born in Skattungbyn, Sweden, to Karl Adolf Pettersson, a building contractor, and his wife, Anna Sofia Karlsson. He took the name Myrdal in 1914 after […]

Eric Walrond, Journalist born.

*On this date, in 1898, Eric Walrond was born. He was an Afro Guyanese writer and journalist.  Eric Derwent Walrond was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, to a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father. When he was eight, his family moved to live with relatives in Barbados, where he attended St. Stephen’s Boys’ School, then Panama when the Panama Canal was being […]

Abram Harris, Economist born

Abram Harris, an African American economist, was born on the date in 1899 in Richmond, Virginia.

Arthur Fauset, Folklorist born

*Arthur Fauset was born on this date in 1899. He was a Black activist, anthropologist, folklorist, and educator. Born in Flemington, New Jersey, Arthur Huff Fauset grew up in Philadelphia. He was the middle child of three children in an interracial family. His father, Redmon Fauset, was a Black African minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and his white wife, Bella, […]

May Miller, Playwright, and Poet born

*On this date we celebrate the birth of May Miller in 1899. She was an African American playwright and poet associated with New York’s Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.

Born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of a Howard University sociologist, Miller grew up in an intellectual household in which W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were frequent guests. She graduated from Howard University in 1920, while there she earned an award for her one-act play Within the Shadows. Afterwards she taught secondary school and continued to write.

Pura Belpré, Afro Puerto Rican Writer born

*Pura Belpré was born on this date in 1899. She was an Afro Puerto Rican writer, folktale collector, and puppeteer. Belpré was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico.  She graduated from Central High School in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1919 and enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, where she originally planned on […]

Ethel Ray Nance, Writer born

*Ethel Ray Nance was born on this date in 1899. She was a Black writer, activist, and administrator.   Ethel Ray was born in Duluth, Minnesota. She was the youngest of four children born to William H. Ray, a Black man from North Carolina and a white-American Swedish mother. She was raised in Iowa by a […]

Lydia Cabrera, Afro Cuban Writer, and Activist born

Lydia Cabrera was born on this date in 1899. She was an Afro Cuban writer and literary activist.

Frank Horne, Poet, and Optometrist born

*Frank Horne was born on this date in 1899. He was an African American optometrist, administrator and poet.