The finding aid for the Walter Francis White and Poppy Cannon Papers has recently been revised and updated; the new finding aid to the collection is available online: Walter Francis White and Poppy Cannon Papers. Related materials in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection can be found by searching Yale’s Finding Aid Database and Orbis, Yale’s catalog for printed materials.

Walter White was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 1, 1893. He completed high school in 1912 and entered Atlanta University, from which he graduated in 1916. While an undergraduate he had a variety of part-time jobs and was at one time a hotel porter. He later became an insurance salesman for the black-owned, Atlanta-based Standard Life Insurance Company. White was an active and energetic member of the Atlanta branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.), which he served as secretary.

Through his work for that organization he became acquainted with James Weldon Johnson, then Field Secretary and National Organizer for the Association. It was on Johnson’s recommendation and at his urging that White consented to become one of the Associate Secretaries of the N.A.A.C.P. He served in this capacity from 1918 to 1929. White married one of the Association’s office secretaries, Leah Gladys Powell, in 1922. During the twenties White became famous for his first-hand investigations of lynching, which he conducted by posing as a white man. He also published two novels, Fire in the Flint (1924) and Flight (1926), and an exposé of lynching, Rope and Faggot, A Biography of Judge Lynch (1928).

When James Weldon Johnson left the N.A.A.C.P., Walter White was made acting Secretary. With Johnson’s final resignation, White succeeded to the permanent position in 1931. During his tenure as Secretary, from 1929 to 1955, White led the campaign against the confirmation of John J. Parker to the Supreme Court, directed the Association’s activities in the Scottsboro case, and directed activities designed to thwart communist influence in the organization. He also consolidated the powers of the Secretary by exercising strong personal control over the national staff. From 1943 to 1945 White served as a war correspondent for the New York Post. He visited most of the major war areas and as a result of his experiences wrote A Rising Wind (1945). Later he expanded his public writings by producing an editorial column for several newspapers, including the Chicago Defender. In 1948 he published his autobiography, A Man Called White.

During the years 1949 and 1950, White divorced Gladys Powell and married Poppy Cannon, a white woman. While on leave of absence from the N.A.A.C.P., White participated in the ‘Round the World Town Hall Meeting, and entered on an extensive lecture tour. During the last five years of his life White increased those of his activities not related to the N.A.A.C.P. and the field of race relations. He became particularly interested in Haiti and the Caribbean, and sometimes acted as an unofficial spokesman for the interests of that area. During the 1950’s White was in declining health as the result of a heart ailment. He died of a heart attack on March 21, 1955.

Poppy Cannon was born Lillian Gruskin in Cape Town, South Africa, on August 2, 1905, the eldest of four children of Robert and Henrietta Gruskin. She came with her parents to the United States in 1908 and settled in Kittening, Pennsylvania, where her father ran a store. She won a scholarship to Vassar College and eventually became a journalist, food editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, House Beautiful, Town and Country, and Mademoiselle, and the author of several cookbooks, including The Can Opener Cookbook, The Bride’s Cookbook, The Presidents’ Cookbook, Aromas and Flavors of the Past and Present (with Alice B. Toklas), and a memoir of her fourth husband, A Gentle Knight: My Husband Walter White. She first married Carl L. Cannon, who became Acquisitions Librarian at Yale in 1931, and bore a daughter Cynthia. Her second husband, the Norway-born Alf E. Askland, an investment counselor and the father of her only son, Jon Alf., died in 1939. In 1941 she married Charles Claudius Philippe, an executive at the Waldorf Hotel, whom she divorced in 1949 and with whom she had a daughter, Claudia.  She died in New York in April, 1975.

The Walter White and Poppy Cannon Papers document the careers and lives of Walter White and Poppy Cannon and span the dates 1910 to 1956. The Papers contain correspondence, writings, other papers, and photographs relating to Walter White’s career as the Secretary for the N.A.A.C.P. and as a writer and to Poppy Cannon’s career as an editor, writer, and publicity consultant. Walter White’s work for the N.A.A.C.P. and, more broadly, the development of the N.A.A.C.P. during his tenure, are recorded in the Papers. Walter White’s and Poppy Cannon’s professional and personal relationships with writers, publishers, friends and family are recorded in their correspondence. Correspondents include Josephine Baker, Mary McLeod Bethune, Dumarsais Estime, Oscar and Dorothy Hammerstein, William H. Hastie, John Haynes Holmes, James Weldon Johnson, Bill (”Bojangles”) Robinson, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Algernon Black, Norman Cousins, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, J. Waties Waring, and Roy Wilkins. In addition the Papers provide insight into White’s and Cannon’s personal relationship, including courtship and marriage, and their experience as an interracial couple.

H. Dean, Archivist, Beinecke Library

Images: Walter White, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1938; Walter White’s wallet.

The Van Vechten Paradox:
The Harlem Renaissance, A White Man, and His Black Story

a lecture by James Weldon Johnson Fellow Emily Bernard
Monday, June 1, 4:00PM
on the Beinecke mezzanine, 121 Wall Street, New Haven

Please join us for a final parting lecture given by Emily Bernard, the James Weldon Johnson Senior Research Fellow at the Beinecke Library.

Carl Van Vechten was a best-selling novelist, consummate host, exhaustive archivist, prescient photographer, and negrophile bar none.  The chronicle of his catholic accomplishments is housed within the walls of the Beinecke library.  At the heart of this chronicle is a tale about blackness. Van Vechten was a promoter of black culture during the era known as the Harlem Renaissance, and beyond.  The Harlem Renaissance was a black movement, but it needed whiteness in order to thrive.  Carl Van Vechten embodied that necessary whiteness in ways that were multiple, fascinating, and contradictory.

Emily Bernard, Associate Professor of English and ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont, is the 2008-2009 James Weldon Johnson Fellow at the Beinecke Library. Professor Bernard has edited two books; Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (2001) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship (2004) was chosen by the New York Public Library for its Book for the Teen Age 2006 list. Her essays have appeared in Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Non-Fiction. During the 2008-09 academic year, Professor Bernard has been conducting research at the Beinecke Library for an upcoming book tentatively entitled, The Van Vechten Paradox:  Blackness, Whiteness, and the Harlem Renaissance. The book will cast new light on the dynamic between Van Vechten, a controversial white patron of African American arts communities, and his black friends and protégés during the 1920s and beyond, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nella Larsen. The Van Vechten Paradox is scheduled to be published by Yale University Press in 2009.

The annual James Weldon Johnson Fellowship in African American Studies was established in 2008. This fellowship is designed to permit outstanding scholars to devote a full academic year in residence at Yale University to research and writing in connection with the James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Beinecke Library.  For more information about this fellowship and the James Weldon Johnson collection, please check out these links:

James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection at Beinecke Library;
African American Studies at Yale;
Emily Bernard, UVM Faculty Page;
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/brbleduc/brblfellow_bernard08.html

Image: Carl Van Vechten with magnifying glass

As part of its ongoing commitment to improve research capabilities by increasing and preserving its collections, the Beinecke Library has created a state-of-the-art off-site shelving facility to house our growing manuscript and book collections. As a result, some collections now housed off-site must be paged at least 24 hours in advance for use in the Library’s reading room. Collections housed in the new shelving facility will be identified in Orbis, the Library’s catalog, with the following information “LSF-Request for Use at Beinecke Rare Book Library.” Requests must be made with the Beinecke Library Access Services Department by email to beinecke.library@yale.edu .  Please be sure to include the call number, author and title of the item(s) you wish to view and include in the subject line of your email, “LSF request.”  Contact the Access Services Desk for more information: 203-432-2972 or beinecke.library@yale.edu.

Image:  Photograph of Beinecke Library under construction. Additional photos of the Library’s construction can be viewed here: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Construction Photographs, 1961-1963.

New Reading Room Hours, Effective June 1, 2009
Mondays – Thursdays 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Fridays 9:00 a.m.– 5:00 p.m.

New Exhibition Gallery Hours, Effective June 1, 2009
Mondays – Thursdays 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Fridays 9:00 a.m.– 5:00 p.m.
Saturdays 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Image: David Plowden, Sidewalk Clock, 1963; from the David Plowden Papers (call number: WA Plowden)

Living Portraits: Carl Van Vechten’s Color Photographs of African Americans, 1939-1964 features some 140 never-before-exhibited color photographs by Carl Van Vechten. Van Vechten (1880-1964) had an artistic vision rooted in the centrality of the talented person. He cherished accomplishment, whether in music, dance, theater, fine art, literature, sport, or advocacy.

He began to make photographic portraits in 1932; in 1939 he discovered newly available color film. For a quarter century, he invited friends and acquaintances, well-known artists and fledgling entertainers to sit for him, often against backdrops reminiscent of the vivid colors and patterns of a Matisse painting. Among his subjects were a very young Diahann Carroll, Billie Holiday in tears, Paul Robeson as Othello, and a procession of opera stars, composers, authors, musicians, and others who made notable contributions to the cultural life of the country. The exhibition includes 140 full-sized portraits, digitally reformatted from Van Vechten’s original slides. [ca. 140 items]
Selected images from the Carl Van Vechten Photograph Collection

Living Portraits: Carl Van Vechten’s Color Photographs of African Americans, 1939-1964 is on view from April 30 through June 30, 2009. For more information: 203-432-2969

Images above: Diahann Carroll,  Paul Robeson , Billie Holiday, and Pearl Bailey photographed by Carl Van Vechten. Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust; the permission of the Trust is required to reprint or use Van Vechten photographs in any way. To contact the Trust email: Van Vechten Trust.

In honor of National Poetry Month, throughout April the Beinecke Library’s Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities will feature poetry-related collection materials from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters and the Yale Collection of American Literature. Stop by often–new posts will be added twice a week.

Image: Langston Hughes: The Weary Blues, JWJ Zan H874 926w

The Beinecke Library has acquired the papers of R. A. Adams, an evangelistic minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and writer, lecturer, and publisher of pamphlets on topics relating to race, religion, contraception, interpersonal relations, and socioeconomics. The collection consists of writings, sheet music, scrapbooks, photographs, and other papers, stemming from R. A. Adams’s activities. The collection documents aspects of African American religion and culture, especially in the South, in the early 20th century, and in particular the evangelistic, educational, and literary activities of one African American Methodist minister. A complete description of the collection and its contents can be found here: R. A. Adams Papers JWJ MSS 48.

R. A. Adams was born on 28 February 1869 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He attended Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio, and served as a Methodist minister in Clarksdale, Brookhaven, Jackson, and Natchez, Mississippi. According to his own biographical statement, Adams entered the ministry, presumably of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, on 23 August 1891 and worked in the pastorate until 1910, after which time he traveled around the South and parts of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions as an evangelist and lecturer. He wrote and lectured on the topics of religion, theology, philosophy, race, eugenics, prophylactics, and social behavior. As president and presumably founder of The Progress Publishing Co. in Wichita, Kansas, he collaborated on and published pamphlets on the same topics, including his own Highlights of Negro History, Psychoanalysis and Racial Affinity, and Syphilis, The Black Plague.

In addition to sermons and lectures, Adams also wrote novels, critical essays, poetry, and music, most, if not all, of which were never published. His novels include Babylon, described by Adams as “Religious – Sociological – Interracial – Stresses Gospel as Panacea for all Social Ills”, Deacon Simpson, “Story of Negro Church Life – Contrasting Old, Unlettered Ministers with Modern Products – Evolution in Negro Church Life”, and The Great Cathedral, “Exposure of Graft, Corruption, Autocracy, and Ecclesiastical Misfeasance – Predicting Revolution and Reformation of the Negro Church”. His critical essays likewise explore the Negro Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in addition to other topics, and include works such as “The Negro and His Church” and “The Negro Church – What Ails It?”.

Writings by Adams comprise the bulk of the collection and include typescripts, some of which are corrected, and manuscripts of addresses, sermons, and critical essays, as well as typescripts and manuscripts of creative works such as poetry, novels, and a play. Also included are typescripts of writings by others, on which Adams collaborated or which he seems to have published as president of The Progress Publishing Co.; as well as typescripts of musical programs and sheet music for songs by Adams; scrapbooks containing correspondence, letters of introduction, resolutions, testimonials, and clippings, documenting Adams’s evangelistic activities from 1910 to 1921; photographs of Adams and his family; and printed material and other loose papers.

–Jennifer Meehan, Archivist

Images: Page from scrapbook (Box 13, Folders 316-317: Scrapbooks);
Photograph of R. A. Adams and unidentifed woman (Box 13, Folder 318).

The January issue of Poetry Magazine includes poems by Langston Hughes, recently discovered in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The poems were uncovered by Penny Welbourne, a rare book cataloger at the Beinecke Library, where the Langston Hughes Papers are housed.The poems are written in pencil on the flyleaves of Hughes’s copy of An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry. Welbourne easily recognized Hughes’s distinctive handwriting, which is well known to the staff at the Beinecke where his archive is among the most frequently consulted modern collections.

The poems’  appearance in Poetry Magazine is their first known publication. Please visit poetryfoundation.org to see a facsimile slideshow of the original.

Images from the Beinecke Digital Library: Your and Your Whole race, by Langston Hughes; An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry; Images form the Langston Hughes Papers

From Poetry Magazine:

Introduction: On Newly Discovered Langston Hughes Poems, by Arnold Rampersad
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=182642

The text of the poems is available online at the Poetry Foundation website:

You and Your Whole Race
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182643

I Look at the World
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182644

Remember
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182645

More information about Langston Hughes on the Poetry Foundation Website:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3340

Images: Your and Your Whole race, by Langston Hughes; photograph of Langston Hughes

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Looking for Richard Wright, a new Beinecke Library podcast,  is now available; you can listen to and download this podcast free via the Beinecke’s Blogs & Podcasts page and through Yale’s iTunesU web site.

In Looking for Richard Wright, Caryl Phillips, Professor of English at Yale University and the author of eight novels, two anthologies, and three works of non-fiction, describes his process of writing the introduction to the Vintage Books, British edition of Richard Wright’s landmark text, Native Son.

This is the second podcast to mark the centenary celebration of Richard Wright’s writing and life. The first, Professor Jonathan Holloway’s Richard Wright, Native Son, and the Beiencke Library: Being Brought to My Sences, is also available via the Beinecke’s Blogs & Podcasts page and through Yale’s iTunesU web site.

The Richard Wright Papers are held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; information about the Wright archive and related collections can be found online by searching the Library’s Finding Aid Database. Images from the archive are available through the Beinecke’s Digital Library.

Images from the Richard Wright Papers:  Richard Wright as Bigger Thomas in film version of Native Son; draft page of Native Son .

Eartha Kitt (January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008), photographed by Carl Van Vechten on October 19, 1954.

Additional images of Eartha Kitt are available in the Beinecke’s Digital Collections. Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust; the permission of the Trust is required to reprint or use Van Vechten photographs in any way. To contact the Trust email: Van Vechten Trust.