Bennett, Gwendolyn Bennetta, and the Harlem Renaissance

A fine archive of mostly family correspondence, ca. 77 letters, cards, typescripts and manuscripts, 1918 – 1947, but including 4 typed poems inscribed to her and three letters signed by Langston Hughes.

Bennett (1902-1981) was the daughter of Joshua (d. 1926) and Mayme Bennett (later Pizarro), who at her parent’s divorce (1909) was taken by her father to live with her stepmother Marechal Neil in Brooklyn. She graduated from Girls High School in Brooklyn in 1921 and took art courses (1921-1923) at Columbia University and Pratt Institute (1924). During that period she founded a support group for Harlem writers. After graduation she was appointed instructor in design, watercolor and crafts at Howard University. She won a scholarship to go to Paris to study art and travelled there in June 1925, staying until September 1926, when she returned to Howard, while becoming assistant editor of Opportunity  magazine for which she wrote the influential “Ebony Flute” column expounding on the literary and cultural affairs in Harlem. She was also the co-founder of the literary journal Fire. She received a fellowship to study at the Barnes Foundation (in 1928?), and married her first husband Dr. Albert Joseph Jackson in April 1928, moving to Eustis, Florida, to teach in public school. When Dr. Jackson died in 1936 she returned to New York, and in 1940 married Richard Crosscup (d. 1980). In 1968 they retired to Kutztown, Pennsylvania to open an antique shop.



The archive deals most intensively with her family life, the ostracism she felt in her relations with white men, her father’s peccadillo with an acquaintance of hers, and her difficulties supporting herself as a writer in 1920s New York. A collection of inestimable value for the biography of one of great poets and commentators of the Harlem Renaissance. Other complementary collections of her papers are currently held at the Manuscripts Division and the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library, Harvard University, and the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.

See L.E. Roses & R.E. Randolph, Harlem Renaissance and Beyond (1990), pp. 11-15

Most items formerly folded, occasional fold-tears or marginal fraying, but generally very good condition.
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The collection includes:

Hughes, Langston. 4 typed poems inscribed to G.B.: Hotel Boy (New York, 13 September 1926 “For Gwendolyn, this Brass Spitoon, Sincerely, Langston Hughes”) — Stalingrad: 1942 (“Hy!”) — Goodmorning, Stalingrad (“To Dick and Gwennie — as revised at their house — Sincerely, Langston Hughes February 17, 1943” with accompanying stamped envelope sent from Yaddo, Saratoga, New York) — Give us our Peace (“Langston Hughes,” with accompanying envelope postmarked New York, 6 July 1945) — 1 ALS, 1 ½ pages (folio), Lincoln University, PA, 19 April 1928 with accompanying envelope, plans for taking Gwennie to his college prom — TLS (“Langston”), New York, 26 March 1938, 1 page (folio): “come see my Theatre Group in their first performance of Don’t you want to be Free. We are called the Harlem Suticase[sic] Theatre …” — Autograph postcard signed (“Langston”), “On Tour,” 12 February 1946, to Richard Crosscup, “Best to Gwennie.”

Bennett, Gwendolyn. 18 autograph or typed letters signed to her stepmother Marechal Neil Bennett, Washington D.C.; Paris, France; Philadelphia & New York, 5 January 1925 – 6 October 1947 (including several without dates or places but apparently in the late 1920s), ca. 69 pages.

16 autograph letters signed by Marechal or Joshua Bennett, Brooklyn, New York and Washington D.C., 1918-1926, ca. 44 pages, with some envelopes.

13 autograph letters signed by Mayme Pizarro (formerly Bennett), Philadelphia, 1926-1927, ca. 50 pages with envelopes.

4 typed poems by Gwendolyn Bennet, “Hatred,” “Heritage,” “Sonnet,” and “Sonnet 2”, mock-up of “The Ebony Flute” from Opportunity (1926) — typescript and manuscript of untitled story (23 pages) and another typescript untitled story (12 pages) — 5 typescripts of published articles and stories including “Toward a Permanent Bureau of Fine Arts,” review of Mary White Ovington Portraits in Color, “Tokens” (from Ebony and Topaz), “An Almost True Story” (published in Fire), and “The James Weldon Johnson Literary Awards.” — Plus ca. 14 miscellaneous Christmas cards, birthday cards, and letters from others.

An inventory of the Gwendolyn Bennett letters (only) is available on request.