evocative of the vivid cultural imagery found in
works by CLAUDEMCKAYand Countee Cullen.
Hayford was a writer who paid attention to details
and had a recognizable talent for creating vivid
scenes of daily life and culture.
Hayford’s poems provided her with the oppor-
tunity to enter at least two prestigious American
schools. On one occasion, she sent samples of her
work to COLUMBIAUNIVERSITY. The institution
promptly offered her a place. Although she began
her travels to NEWYORKCITYfor school, money
troubles caused her to detour. She became a mem-
ber of a Berlin-based jazz troupe instead. Some
years later, her mother Adelaide solicited a friend
at RADCLIFFE, the prestigious women’s college in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and asked her to evalu-
ate some of her daughter’s poems. The friend
promptly sent the works on to the editor of The
Atlantic Monthly,who published them immediately.
That publishing triumph prompted the college to
offer Gladys admission. In her reminiscences of her
daughter, Adelaide Hayford noted that “through
my dear daughter’s own action, another splendid
opportunity was lost.”
From 1926 through 1928, Hayford published
in the well-known monthly magazines The Messen-
gerand Opportunity.In the spring and summer of
1926, “Creation,” “A Poem,” and “Mammy” ap-
peared in The Messenger. Hayford’s poems ap-
peared twice in Opportunity,the official journal of
the NATIONALURBANLEAGUE. In January 1927
she published “Nativity” under the pseudonym
Aquah LaLuah. Later that year, in October, her
poem “Rainy Season Love Song,” attributed to
Gladys Casely Hayford, appeared alongside fiction
by EUGENEGORDONand “Ebony Flute,” the regu-
lar GWENDOLYNBENNETTcommentary. In Febru-
ary 1930 her poem “The Palm Wine Seller”
appeared in The Journal of Negro Life.
Hayford, who also published her works under
the pseudonym Aquah LaLuah, saw her poems an-
thologized in Robert Kerlin’s Negro Poets and Their
Poems(1923), COUNTEECULLEN’s Caroling Dusk:
Poetry by American Negro Poets(1927), and ARNA
BONTEMPS’s Golden Slippers(1941).
Bibliography
Casely-Hayford, Adelaide, and Gladys Casely-Hayford.
Mother and Daughter: Memoirs and Poems,edited by
Lucilda Hunter. Freetown: Sierra Leone University
Press, 1983.
Cromwell, Adelaide. An African Victorian Feminist: The
Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford,
1868–1960.London: F. Cass, 1986.
Cullen, Countee. Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by
Negro Poets.New York: Harper and Brothers, 1927.
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.
———. Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900–1950.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.Hazzard, Alvira(1899–1953)
A writer, teacher, and member of the SATURDAY
EVENINGQUILLCLUB, the active New England lit-
erary group that shared and published work in its
publication, the SATURDAYEVENINGQUILL.Haz-
zard, who never married, was the daughter of John
and Rosella Hazzard, of North Brookfield, Mas-
sachusetts. Hazzard relocated to BOSTON, where
she became a public school teacher and established
relationships in the city’s thriving black literary
community. She later became a Boston City Hospi-
tal clerk. She died of leukemia in January 1953.
Hazzard published primarily in the local jour-
nal, the Saturday Evening Quill,and the majority of
her works appeared in 1928 and 1929. She was a
multitalented writer who wrote plays, fiction, and
some poetry. Her biographical note in the Quill
noted that she “has seen a number of her plays
acted by amateurs” and that she published several
short stories in the Boston Post,the newspaper
where Quill Club president EUGENE GORDON
worked as editor. Hazzard’s first published work,
MOTHERLIKEDIT,was published in the April 1928
issue of the Quill.Her second play, LITTLEHEADS,
was published in the Quillexactly one year later.
Both works probed the persistence of racial stereo-
type and the kind of social value and devaluation
that the practice causes.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., 1990.228 Hazzard, Alvira