Gooden, Lauretta Holman(unknown)
A native of Sulphur Springs, Texas, Holman early
demonstrated her love of writing and poetry while
growing up in Texas. The mineral springs of her
hometown on the Colorado River attracted a well-
known health resort in the 1880s. The small, yet
thriving factory town, which had a population of
2,500 in the 1880s, had an African-American pop-
ulation large enough to support two African-
American churches. During the Civil War, the
county in which Sulphur Springs was located sup-
ported secession and eventually gave rise to strong
KUKLUXKLANactivity. While the African-Ameri-
can population in the county rose to almost 15
percent of the county’s population, Holden’s family
was part of the migration from Sulphur Springs
that led to a steady decrease in the African-Ameri-
can population during the 1920s and 1930s.
Shortly after Holman’s birth, her family moved
to Texarkana, Texas, the town in which the
renowned musician and composer Scott Joplin was
raised. Following her marriage to John Gooden,
she moved to Dallas and worked alongside her
husband in their grocery shop.
In 1936, John Brewer Mason, an accom-
plished folk historian, writer, teacher, and fellow
Texan, published five of Holman’s poems in
Heralding Dawn: An Anthology of Verse,a pioneer-
ing anthology of works by Texas poets of color.
Mason, who began teaching and then collecting
African-American folk materials in the mid-1920s,
was an aspiring poet as well and later would be-
come the first African-American member of the
Texas Folklore Society. His extensive work to pre-
serve black traditions, dialects, and history merited
comparisons to ZORANEALEHURSTON. Mason’s
editorial notes on Holman’s poems called attention
to her “well placed phraseology.”
Bibliography
Brewer, John Mason. Heralding Dawn. Dallas: June
Thomason Printing, 1936.
Grider, Sylvia Ann and Lou Halsell Rodenberger. Texas
Women Writers: A Tradition of Their Own.College
Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1997.
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.
Gordon, Edythe Mae Chapman
(ca. 1890–unknown)
A writer, poet, intellectual, and officer of the SAT-
URDAYEVENINGQUILLCLUB, a dynamic literary
arts group in 1920s BOSTON. Born in WASHING-
TON, D.C., she attended the M Street or DUNBAR
HIGHSCHOOLwhose accomplished faculty during
her enrollment from 1912 through 1916 included
the feminist philosopher ANNAJULIACOOPER, the
writer and Harlem Renaissance mentor JESSIE
FAUSET, and the influential historian CARTER G.
WOODSON. In 1916 she married EUGENEGORDON,
whom she may have met in Washington, D.C., dur-
ing his enrollment at the Howard University
Academy and College.
By 1926 the Gordons were living in Boston.
Eugene began a successful career as a local news-
paper reporter, and the couple enrolled in special
courses at BOSTON UNIVERSITY. Edythe com-
pleted nondegree course work at HARVARDUNI-
VERSITY, undergraduate studies, and a master’s
program at Boston University. Following her 1934
graduation with a B.Sc. in Religious Education
and Social Services, she enrolled in the School of
Social Services and earned a master’s degree in
the summer of 1935. Biographer Lorraine Elena
Roses notes that little is known of Gordon’s expe-
riences at Boston University; there is, however,
one photograph of Gordon and other religious ed-
ucation seniors in the 1934 school yearbook. Gor-
don’s master’s thesis was entitled “The Status of
the Negro Woman in the United States from
1619–1865.” In the preface, Gordon asserts her
hope that the work will “stimulate further study in
this neglected field of Negro history.” She also re-
veals her efforts to create “a vivid picture of the
struggles, cruelties, inhumanities and injustices to
which the Negro woman was a victim under the
system of chattel slavery which lasted for nearly
three hundred years” and to “suggest the present
day situation of the Negro woman, and intimate a
remedy.” Gordon’s preface confirmed the depths
of her intellectual commitment to creating a revi-
sionist and more inclusive American history. The
work also reflects her interest in providing rich
historical context for the continued social work
and racial uplift efforts of her day.
Gordon was a published poet and writer of
short fiction during the 1920s and 1930s. SheGordon, Edythe Mae Chapman 189