and politics and the editorship of THECRISIS.Pub-
lished in BOSTONby the Stratford Company, Gift
of Black Folkwas the second of DuBois’s two histo-
ries. It appeared nine years after THE NEGRO
(1915), his first effort.
Gift of Black Folkdealt with a variety of sub-
jects including the history of black contributions
in art, politics, and education. As such, it was part
of an established African-American literary effort
to chronicle the often underestimated and over-
looked contributions of black Americans.
DuBois’s work recalled foundational 19th-century
American texts by early black historians and writ-
ers William Cooper Nell, William Wells Brown,
and others.
Biographer David Levering Lewis suggests that
with the Gift of Black Folk,DuBois was challenging
a growing post–world war investment in the “ideol-
ogy of whiteness.” The work was part of a con-
certed effort by black scholars to recuperate the
history of blacks in the postbellum and modern
age. DuBois’s work appeared just two years after
The Negro in Our Historyby CARTERG. WOOD-
SON, the founder of the ASSOCIATION FOR THE
STUDY OFNEGROLIFE ANDHISTORYand the edi-
tor of the JOURNAL OFNEGROHISTORY.In addition,
it preceded additional contemporary publications
on the centrality of black history in the newly es-
tablished Journal of Negro Historyas well as A Short
History of the American Negro(1927) by BENJAMIN
BRAWLEY.
Bibliography
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for
Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963.New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
Gilbert, Mercedes(1889–1952)
A talented writer and actress who completed her
first impressive works of drama and poems while
completing her nursing training. Like NELLA
LARSEN, Gilbert combined her professional train-
ing with her writing career.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Gilbert began
writing as a young child. She attended Edward
Waters College, a historically black college
founded by the African Methodist Episcopal
Church in 1866, in Jacksonville, and completed
her nurse’s training at the historic Brewster Hospi-
tal Nurses Training School. In 1901 the former
private Florida home became the first Florida hos-
pital for African Americans. In 1922 Gilbert mar-
ried Arthur Stevenson.
Shortly after she relocated to NEW YORK
CITYin 1916, Gilbert began what would become
a celebrated and accomplished career in the per-
forming arts. Undaunted by the lack of employ-
ment in nursing, she turned to songwriting. This
soon led to stage work on and off BROADWAY.Be-
fore immersing herself in Broadway productions,
Gilbert worked closely with Oscar Micheaux, the
novelist and independent film producer whose
works marked the beginning of the African-
American film tradition. Gilbert starred in Body
and Soul, a silent melodrama, opposite PAUL
ROBESON.
Gilbert made her Broadway debut in January
1927 at the New York City Forrest Theatre in the
musical Lace Petticoat.Subsequent performances
included the musical Bamboola (1929) and the
plays Lost(1927), How Come, Lawd?(1937), The
Searching Windby Lillian Hellman (1944), and
Tobacco Road(1950), based on the novel by Ersk-
ine Caldwell. Gilbert played Zipporah, the
Ethiopian wife of Moses, in MARCCONNELLY’s
GREENPASTURES,during the musical’s five-and-
a-half-year run on Broadway. When in 1935 she
joined the cast of MULATTO,the Broadway play
by LANGSTONHUGHESthat opened at the Van-
derbilt Theater in October 1924, the AMSTER-
DAM NEWS characterized her performance as
“epochal.”
In 1931, Gilbert produced SELECTEDGEMS OF
POETRY,COMEDY, AND DRAMA, published by
Christopher Publishing House, the same Boston
press that produced A GARLAND OFPOEMS(1926)
by CLARA ANN THOMPSON. She wrote three
plays: MAJOHNSON’SHARLEMROOMINGHOUSE,
In Greener Pastures,and ENVIRONMENT.To date,
Environment,a melancholy play about a woman
dealing with domestic upheaval, is the only extant
Gilbert play. In 1938 she published her first and
only novel, AUNTSARA’SWOODENGOD.
As the Harlem Renaissance came to a close,
she reasserted herself as a film actress, starring in
African-American productions such as Moon Over
Harlem(1939) with musician Sidney Bechet. In182 Gilbert, Mercedes