of new writers and strengthened the reputations of
others, including Dorothy West, HELENEJOHNSON,
and FLORENCEHARMON. Although its membership
was open, it was an all-black group. Its membership
included Florida Ruffin Ridley, the daughter of the
prominent women’s club leader Josephine St. Pierre
Ruffin, EDYTHEMAEGORDON, the wife of the club
president, and Helene Johnson.
Boston Transcript, The
A Boston newspaper for which WILLIAMSTANLEY
BRAITHWAITEserved as a literary critic and book
review editor.
Boston University
The Boston-born writer DOROTHYWESTand the
poet HELENEJOHNSONattended this private, co-
educational university in Boston that was also the
alma mater of Martin Luther King, Jr. Established
in 1839 in Vermont and then relocated to Boston
and renamed in 1867, this was one of the first
schools to accept African-American students and
women.
Bottomland Clarence Williams and Eva Taylor
(1927)
A play by Clarence Williams and Eva Taylor, two
popular radio personalities, about a young woman
who journeys north to locate her lost sister in a
HARLEMcabaret. Its depictions of the entertain-
ment world contribute to other narratives, such as
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Sport of the Gods,in which
these Harlem venues are associated with seduc-
tion, moral corruption, and danger.
Bottom of the Cup John Tucker Battle
and William Perlman(1924)
A play by JOHNTUCKERBATTLEand WILLIAM
PERLMAN in which the protagonist, Charles
Thompson, returns home from school in the North
and makes plans to establish a school for African
Americans in his southern hometown. He never
realizes his dream; he offers himself up as a victim
to a lynch mob in order to protect his family. Writ-
ten by white playwrights, this play was another
Renaissance-era production that profiled the social
chaos and devastating impact that LYNCHINGhad
on American society in general and on African-
American families in particular.’Bout Culled FolksesLucy Mae Turner
(1938)
A volume of poetry by LUCYMAETURNER, who
was a granddaughter of Nat Turner, the leader of
the historic 1831 slave rebellion in Southampton,
Virginia. In the modest collection of 38 poems,
Turner uses African-American dialect, standard
English prose, and a variety of poetical forms.
The poems include lively depictions of African-
American laborers and portraits of meditative
women. Her accounts of washerwomen, hotel em-
ployees, and other working-class African Ameri-
cans are sprightly. They humanize and give voice
to these essential but often silenced figures.
Turner creates self-confident, optimistic women,
and through them she delivers insightful commen-
tary on the politics of domesticity, the nature of
white privilege, and African-American survival
strategies. Turner pays tribute to her grandfather
in the final poem, a tightly framed four-line poem
in which she celebrates his decision to die rather
than live in a world in which human beings were
bought and sold.Bibliography
Reardon, Joanne, and Kristine Thorsen. Poetry by Ameri-
can Women, 1900–1975: A Bibliography.Metuchen,
N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979.Bowman, Laura(ca. 1881–1957)
One of the cast members of the historic May
1923 Broadway production of THE CHIP
WOMAN’S FORTUNE, the work by WILLIS
RICHARDSON that was the first play by an
African-American writer to appear on BROAD-
WAY. Bowman also participated in plays produced
by the Negro Theatre Guild and the ETHIOPIAN
ARTPLAYERS. She branched out into film, and
her career included parts in two Oscar Micheaux
films, Lem Hawkins’ Confession(1935) and God’s
Stepchildren(1938).60 Boston Transcript, The