both WILBERFORCEUNIVERSITYand the UNIVER-
SITY OFCHICAGO. She earned her master’s in li-
brary science from the Library School of COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY. In 1936 Andrews became the first
African-American supervising librarian at the
NYPL 135th Street Branch.
Andrews was known for hosting gatherings for
artists and writers in the SUGARHILLapartment
that she shared with Louella Tucker and Ethel
Nance, secretary to OPPORTUNITYeditor CHARLES
S. JOHNSON. Andrews also was one of the visionary
leaders in the African-American theater movement
that flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. She
collaborated with CRISISeditor W. E. B. DUBOIS
and the writer and artist Gwendolyn Bennett to
found the Crigwa Players. This group, which later
became the HARLEMEXPERIMENTALTHEATRE, was
based in the basement of the NYPL branch in
which Andrews worked. The troupe staged two of
her plays during the early 1930s.
Andrews was also an accomplished playwright
and scholar. She wrote several plays, a children’s
book, library-related articles, and was the coeditor
of a historical chronology of African Americans in
New York City. Like NELLALARSENand MARITA
BONNER, Andrews used a pseudonym when she
pursued her creative goals. She wrote plays under
the name of URSULATRELLING. Her 1931 work,
CLIMBINGJACOB’SLADDER,was inspired by the
tireless antilynching activist IDAB. WELLSBAR-
NETT. W. E. B. DuBois encouraged Andrews to pol-
ish the piece and when presented with the revised
version, he declared that the play was “thrilling.”
She based her 1933 play Undergroundon the ante-
bellum Underground Railroad, the extensive aboli-
tionist network that helped enslaved African
Americans escape to freedom. The Drama Com-
mittee of the New York Public Library also pro-
duced the play. These and other works such as The
Man Who Passedand Matildadisplayed Andrews’s10 Andrews, Regina M. Anderson
A May 1925 photograph of (left to right) Langston Hughes, Charles Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher, and
Hubert Delany taken at the Sugar Hill apartment of Regina Andrews and her apartment mates Louella Tucker and
Ethel Nance (Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)