People, Locations, Episodes

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 shed light on 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 […]

Eric Walrond, Journalist born.

*On this date, in 1898, Eric Walrond was born.  He was an Afro Caribbean 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 to Panama when the Panama Canal was being constructed.  Here, […]

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, was Jewish-American. Bringing […]

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, collector of folktales, 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 […]

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 German […]

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.

Marcus B. Christian, Poet, and Teacher born

*Marcus B. Christian was born on this date in 1900. He was an African American poet, and educator.

From Mechanicsville (Houma), LA, he was the son of Emanuel and Rebbecca (Harris) Christian, Sr. Marcus Bruce Christian was educated at Houma Academy in New Orleans, from 1906-1913. He and his family moved to New Orleans in 1919. Christian also started Bluebird Cleaners in 1926. From 1932-1976, his writing career began and flourished with the Louisiana Weekly, New Orleans, as poetry editor and as a special feature writer.

Wilhemina Crosson, Educator, Writer, and Administrator born

*Wilhelmina Crosson was born on this date in 1900. She was a Black educator and school administrator known for her innovative teaching methods. Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, to Charles Tasker Crosson and Sallie Alice Davis Crosson. She was the fourth of nine children. In 1906 Crosson moved with her family […]

The Colored American Magazine is Published

*May 19, 1900 celebrates the first publication of the Colored American Magazine (CAM). This was one of the first monthly magazines created for the national African American consumer.

Lewis Alexander, Writer born

*Lewis Alexander was born on this date in 1900. He was and African American writer and actor.

Cyril Lionel James, Journalist born

Cyril Lionel Robert James was born on this date in 1901. He was an Afro Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist, and writer.

James was born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony. The son of a schoolteacher from Tunapuna, Trinidad, he was strongly influenced by his mother who was an avid reader.

Sterling Brown, Professor, and Poet born

Sterling Allen Brown was born on this date in 1901. He was an African American English professor and literary critic whose poetry was rooted in folklore sources and Black dialect.

He was born in Washington, D. C., the son of a professor at Howard University. His father, Reverend Sterling Nelson Brown, had been born a slave but after the Civil War, he managed to attend Fisk University and Oberlin College, became a pastor, and later a professor of religion at Howard. His mother was also a graduate of Fisk University.