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large and fine collection of imbecilities.” To which Morgan
replies, “I reluctantly confirm that we ought to have the Ten-
nyson idiocies.”
Greene ran the Morgan Library the rest of her life, not only
organizing and constantly enlarging the collection but also
directing its exhibitions and lecture programs. Her late
employer had left her $50,000—today, $1.27 million. That lar-
gess enabled her to buy and combine two apartments into a
residence for herself and her mother on 40th Street in Man-
hattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood, a few blocks from the
Morgan Library. The inheritance and her library salary helped
her and her family navigate Depression-era America.
All but one of Greene’s four siblings remained close by in
New York. Nephew Robert—son of younger sister Theodora
Genevieve, known as “Teddy”—had joined Belle’s household
after his mother married for a second time in 1921. Belle
became the youth’s legal guardian. Serving in the European
theater during World War II, Robert committed suicide. That
same year, Greene faced another crisis when Jack Morgan
died unexpectedly of a stroke. She feared for the library’s
future but her second patron had planned for his father’s cre-
ation to continue as a public institution, and Greene oversaw
its shift in status and the appointment of her successor.
Over her 40-year career, Belle Greene achieved celebrity
without revealing herself. Richard Greener, who never shied
from revealing himself, passed nearly unnoticed into history.
Long after leaving the Palmetto State, Richard Greener
referred to himself as a “South Carolinian in exile,” suggest-
ing how he must have thrilled to the freedom and possibility
of his years there before bigotry renewed itself. Back in
Washington, DC, with his wife and their children, Greener
worked as a lawyer and dean of Howard University Law
School. In 1881, he collaborated on legal appeals by the first
two West Point cadets of African descent, Henry Ossian
Flipper and Johnson Chesnut Whittaker—high-profile cases
that involved false accusations of embezzlement and
self-mutilation shot through with racism and expressive of
the limits of legal redress then available to African Ameri-
cans. Upon Ulysses Grant’s death in 1885, a commission
formed to build a monument to the hero and former presi-
dent. That body, whose membership included J. P. Morgan,
invited Greener to become the commission’s only Afri-
can-American participant and to manage day-to-day opera-
tions. The Greeners moved to New York City.
Greener was prominent enough in the black community to
draw criticism for the comfort he displayed interacting with
white elites; similarly, the ease with which Genevieve Greener
and their children mingled with Caucasians had tongues
wagging. Richard Greener did not shy from the spotlight
aimed at black activists. He was paid for speaking engage-
ments, including debates with Frederick Douglass, who was
much his senior. Greener endorsed racial pride.
“The Negro in America was not to lose his identity by
absorbing with the dominant race, but to endeavor to do
something as a Negro,” Greener said in 1877. He wrote tren-
chantly on the topic. In “The White Problem,” an 1894 essay in
the Cleveland Gazette, an African-American newspaper, he
argued that blacks had established a decisive record of
accomplishment and service, only to find their way barred by
Possible Inspiration
Greene may have taken her middle name from Flemish artist Simon Bening’s
15th century work, “Da Costa Hours,” an illuminated monthly calendar.