Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance

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gathered outside the chapel to celebrate the dy-
namic and outgoing authoress.
West died in August 1998. Scholar Henry
Louis Gates remembered her as one who “[t]o her
death... maintained that the only truthful way to
write about black Americans was as a diversity of
colors, of classes, and of sensibilities—united only
by a common history and, at times, a common
enemy. As a twentieth-century writer, she knew
that depicting the lives of colored people with un-
sparing intimacy, and without ideology or argu-
ment, might just be the most revolutionary thing
she could do” (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Edu-
cation,31 October 1998, 109). West’s passing sig-
naled for some the end of the Harlem Renaissance,
but the ways in which the period remained so vi-
brant in her mind also reminded many that the pe-
riod remains an incredibly rich and evocative
period in American literary history.


Bibliography
Allen, Joan H. “Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy
West celebrates her 90th birthday.” New York Ams-
terdam News,11 September 1997, 23.
Beech, Wendy. “Dorothy West: A Lone Voice Survives.”
Philadelphia Tribune,24 November 1995, 16.
Boyle, Sheila Tully, and Andrew Buni. Paul Robeson: The
Years of Promise and Achievement.Amherst: Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Cardwell, Diane. “Last Leaf on the Tree.” New York
Times,3 January 1999, SM 47.
Dorothy West Papers, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston
University; James Weldon Johnson Memorial Col-
lection, Yale University.
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.
Kaplan, Carla. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.New
York: Doubleday, 2002.
Saunders, James Robert, and Renae Shackelford. The
Dorothy West Martha’s Vineyard: Stories, Essays, and
Reminiscences by Dorothy West Writing in the Vineyard
Gazette.Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001.
West, Dorothy. The Living Is Easy.1948, reprint, Lon-
don: Virago, 1987.
———. The Richer, the Poorer: Stories, Sketches, and Rem-
iniscences.New York: Doubleday, 1995.
———. The Wedding.New York: Doubleday, 1995.


Yarrow, Andrew. “Dorothy West, a Harlem Renaissance
Writer, Dies at 91.” New York Times,19 August
1998, A29.

Wetmore, Judson Douglass(unknown)
A close friend of writer JAMESWELDONJOHNSON
whose experiences as a light-skinned African
American who could pass informed the AUTOBI-
OGRAPHY OF ANEX-COLOUREDMAN,Johnson’s
pioneering 1912 novel. Wetmore, who met John-
son in ATLANTA, attended the University of
Michigan Law School as a white man.

Wexley, John(1907–1985)
A white playwright and screenwriter who was in-
spired to create a political play based on the plight
and trial of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young men
falsely accused and imprisoned on charges of rape.
Wexley’s play, They Shall Not Die, opened on
BROADWAY in February 1934. It was his third
Broadway play and was preceded by The Last Mile
(1930) and Steel(1931).

Whipping, TheEulalie Spence(1933)
A three-act play by EULALIE SPENCE that she
adapted from the novel of the same name by Ray
Flanagan. The play, which was never published,
was scheduled to open in Connecticut, but that
did not occur. The play, the only work that
Spence claimed to have made money from, was
later optioned by Paramount Pictures. Unfortu-
nately, the company never produced the film ver-
sion of the work.

Bibliography
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.

White, Newman Ivey(1892–1948)
One of the two editors who produced the 1924
collection entitled ANANTHOLOGY OFVERSE BY
AMERICANNEGROES.At the time, White was an
English professor and chairman of the department

White, Newman Ivey 561
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