opera singer at the new Metropolitan Opera House.
Her grandmother and mother, in the audience, are
able to share in the achievement that has been
made possible by their own sacrifices and struggles.
Lissa’s life in New York is made more steady by the
Reverend Thomas Grayson, a northern mulatto
minister who failed to secure a southern church but
leads a church in Harlem.
The novel was a financial success but received
mixed reviews. White southerners tended to criti-
cize the suggestions of racial equality in the novel.
Others praised Heyward’s efforts to portray the
multifaceted nature of African-American experi-
ences and characters. Mamba’s Daughterswas seri-
alized in the Woman’s Home Companionand in
1929 was chosen as a selection by the Literary
Guild.
DuBose Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, col-
laborated to produce a dramatic script of Mamba’s
Daughters.The play debuted in 1939 and starred
Ethel Waters. Her casting in the role of Hagar
made her the first African-American actress ever
to appear in a Broadway play in a dramatic role.
Bibliography
Durham, Frank. DuBose Heyward’s Use of Folklore in His
Negro Fiction.Charleston, S.C.: The Citadel, 1961.
Heyward, DuBose. Mamba’s Daughters: A Novel of
Charleston.1929, reprint, Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1995.
Hutchisson, James. DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gen-
tleman and the World of Porgy and Bess.Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
Slavick, William. DuBose Heyward.Boston: Twayne Pub-
lishers, 1981.
“Mammy” Dorothy West(1940)
A purposeful story by DOROTHYWESTabout social
welfare, PASSING, and unexpected family secrets.
The story about a woman and her biracial daughter
and granddaughter was inspired by West’s own
work as welfare investigator in NEWYORKCITY.
The protagonist is a young welfare investiga-
tor who bears the brunt of segregation even
though she is a city worker. She hears the case of
an older woman living in a Harlem boardinghouse
and prepares to approve her petition for welfare
relief. Before doing so, however, she travels to the
Central Park West home of the woman’s employer.
There, she meets a white woman who relates
Mammy’s integral role in the home and her un-
matched nursing of the ailing daughter. Satisfied
that she can persuade the older lady to return,
the welfare worker returns to Harlem. She breaks
the news that she is denying the claim and, to the
lady’s dismay, begins to pack up the items in
the room. As she does, the older lady, who has
cursed her employer, reveals that the woman is
not her employer but her daughter. The welfare
investigator is stunned by the revelation and the
intense deception that she has witnessed in the
Central Park apartment. Yet, she adheres strictly
to the policies of her agency and insists that the
older woman return.
West’s story is powerful for its subtle critique
of passing and its exploration of the complicated
realities of black migration from the South to the
North.Bibliography
Jones, Sharon. Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race,
Class, and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora
Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West.Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 2002.
West, Dorothy. The Richer, the Poorer: Stories, Sketches,
and Reminiscences.New York: Doubleday, 1995.Mandrake, Ethel Belle
One of two pseudonyms that the writer, editor, and
playwright WALLACETHURMANused during his
literary career.Manhattan Civic Club
The site in which CHARLESS. JOHNSON, editor of
OPPORTUNITY, hosted a groundbreaking celebra-
tion of African-American writers and artists on 21
March 1924. REGINAANDREWS, a dynamic librar-
ian at the 135th Street Branch of the NEWYORK
PUBLICLIBRARY, encouraged Johnson to organize
the party at the venue located on Twelfth Street
near FIFTHAVENUE. The event was intended origi-
nally as a celebration of JESSIEFAUSET, author of
the newly published novel THEREISCONFUSION.
The Civic Club gathering, which many schol-
ars regard as the auspicious launch of the NEW330 “Mammy”