Kicha's photos with the keyword: Harlem Renaissance

A 1927 portrait of Krigwa Prize (annual literary contest The Crisis ran accepting submissions for fiction, essays, verse, and plays) winner Mae V. Cowdery at age 19. Image comes from W.E.B. DuBois' January 1928 edition of The Crisis Magazine. Born in Philadelphia on January 10, 1909, Mae Virginia Cowdery was the only child of a social worker mother, who was an assistant director of the Bureau for Colored Children, and a postal worker/caterer father, Lemuel Cowdery. She attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls. While she was onlya high school senior in 1927, she published three poems in Black Opals, a Philadelphia journal, and won first prize in a poetry contest run by The Crisis for “Longings.” That same year, she won the Krigwa Prize for “Lamps.” After graduation, Cowdery came to New York in 1927 to attend the Pratt Institute, although the school records show no evidence of her attendance until 1931. She frequented the cabarets of Harlem and Greenwich Village, where she lived. A photograph of her published by The Crisis in 1928 reveals a young woman of unusual beauty, style, and originality, with a bow tie, tailored jacket, and very short hair. Widely published in the late 1920s in The Crisis, Cowdery was one of the few women of the Harlem Renaissance to bring out a volume of her own work, We Lift Our Voices and Other Poems (1936), with a glowing foreword by William Stanley Braithwaite, who termed her “a fugitive poet.” Cowdery’s poetry was said to be inspired by Edna St. Vincent Millay, whom she may have known during her years in the Village, and much of it recalls the imagism of Angelina Weld Grimké and other Modernist poets of her day. Above all, Cowdery’s poems are sensual, erotic, and openly lustful, with several written to female lovers. Although her poetry from the mid-thirties suggests Cowdery had a daughter, no mention is made of a marriage or children in the scanty biographical material about her. In spite of winning honors at an early age and receiving encouragement from Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Benjamin Brawley, and others, Cowdery fell into obscurity after 1936. Poet Jessie Fauset’s brother, Arthur Huff Fauset, who knew her in Philadelphia, called her “a flame that burned out rapidly . . . a flash in the pan with great potential who just wouldn’t settle down.” Critic Richard Long, who met her in the early 1950s, observed, “She seemed a bright intelligence made bored and restless by her surroundings.” In 1953 Mae Cowdery committed suicide in New York City at the age of 44. Shadowed Dreams Mae V. Cowdery (1909–1953) Rutgers University Press | 2006 Source: Vincent Jubilee, “Philadelphia’s Afro-American Literary Circle and the Harlem Renaissance” [PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980]

Elzy broadcasting over the NBC network in 1940. Radio brought Elzy’s voice to millions of listeners across America. Photo courtesy of the C.C. McCracken family. She was one of the first inductees to the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame. The role of Serena in the original production of Porgy and Bess was created by her. She starred as Dolly in the feature film The Emperor Jones. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance and sang on stage of the Apollo Theatre. She did more in her thirty-five years than many performers do in a lifetime. Yet, you may not know her name -- Ruby Elzy. Abandoned by her father at age five, Ruby Elzy (1908 - 1943), was raised by strong women -- her mother and grandmother. Ruby's first public performance was at age four when she sang at church in Pontotoc, Mississippi. Even then her voice was beautiful and strong. Already with a dream to sing on stage, Ruby Elzy moved steadily toward that goal. While at Rust College in Mississippi, Ruby was discovered by a visiting professor who arranged for her to study music at Ohio State University. The OSU experience was strong in preparing Ruby to meet the world on stage and to hone her skills of people management. Ruby Elzy attended Julliard School in New York City on a Rosenwald Fellowship. There, she was able to meet the top black performers of that day as the Harlem Renaissance was opening doors for black artists. Without going to Europe for easy acceptance, Ruby remained in America winning audiences on radio, in Hollywood and on stage. She performed the role of Serena in Porgy and Bess more than 800 times. Serena's aria "My Man's Gone Now" became Ruby Elzy's signature song. Her last performance was a week before her death, when she had plans to sing grand opera in the lead role of Verdi's Aida. Ruby Elzy died during a routine operation to remove a benign tumor. As outstanding as her career history was and is, the person who Ruby Elzy was is probably more remarkable and outstanding. Her voice opened doors for her, but it was her personality that won over a society that was closed to black artists for the most part. Ruby Elzy used her southern charm, talent, and work ethic to change contemporary attitudes with a smile. At the time of her death she was becoming more active in social change and would have been an powerful beacon in the Civil Rights Movement. Sources: Black Diva of the Thirties: The Life of Ruby Elzy; by David E. Weaver