Wenonah Bond Logan
*Wenonah Bond Logan was born on December 18, 1906. She was a Black scholar and sociologist.
From Atlanta, GA., she and her brother John were two children born to Georgia Faigan and John Bond, an interracial couple. Her family moved to Washington, DC, when she was a teenager. As a young girl, she was an avid reader who imagined a world outside Jim Crow America. Bond studied sociology at Atlanta University, Boston University, and the New York School of Social Work.
Bond had a dark-olive complexion, with coarse dark hair slightly straighter and lighter than her brother's. The family was included in a Harvard sociology study of Negro-White families in the United States. A lock of Wenonah's hair remains at the Harvard Peabody Archive as a part of the study conducted in 1927. In April 1930, she studied international sociology at the International People's College in Denmark. Curious International People's College students often asked Bond about racial segregation in America.
In May 1930, Bond Logan wrote to W.E.B. DuBois asking him to send materials to help her evidence the experiences of Blacks in the United States. Following her five-month study in Denmark, Bond spent a year studying in England. She served as the Girl Reserve Secretary for the Y.W.C.A. of West 137th in Brooklyn. She continued this position after her study abroad trips. In 1931, Bond became a member of the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild.
On January 5, 1934, Wenonah married Arthur C. Logan at St. Martin's Church in New York City, followed by the birth of their daughter, Adele Bond. Wenonah Bond Logan died on September 11, 1993, at 86. Bond Logan is the grandmother of American poet and essayist Elizabeth Alexander and is the inspiration for Alexander's chapter "My Grandmother's Hair" from her work Power and Possibility.
