dapper con man who is already married. It turns
out that Mavis has played the lottery for her friend
and admirer Steve who has traveled to Philadel-
phia. Mrs. Reed informs Mavis that the number
won the lottery and that Steve’s 50-cent bet now
totals $500. Bert Jackson, whom Mavis has known
for only four weeks, arrives on the scene. He sug-
gests that he only placed a 10-cent bet and that
the winnings are therefore much less than Mavis
expects. As she deals with the disappointment and
the prospect of telling her friend Steve that she
failed to do what he asked, Steve appears at the
door with a mystery woman in tow. He has re-
turned with Mrs. Bert Jackson, the wife of Mavis’s
fiancé. In the confrontation that ensues, Steve re-
covers his money and defends Mavis’s honor. She
considers the shame of being left at the altar and
succumbing to the treachery of a city man. Her
steady friend refuses to abandon her, and the play
closes as the two venture out on the town, and the
hero’s behavior suggests that Mavis will find true
love in him eventually.
The Hunchwas published in the May 1927
special issue of Carolina Magazineedited by LEWIS
ALEXANDER. Its publication coincided with the
Broadway production of Spence’s play THEFOOL’S
ERRAND.Other writers featured in the journal de-
voted to African-American literature included
ARNA BONTEMPS,CARRIE CLIFFORD,WARING
CUNEY,ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ,LANGSTON
HUGHES, and HELENEJOHNSON.
Bibliography
Burton, Jennifer, ed. Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence,
Marita Bonner, and Others: The Prize Plays and Other
One-Acts Published in Periodicals.New York: G. K.
Hall, 1996.
Hunter, Jane Edna (Harris)(1882–1971)
The child of sharecroppers, Jane Edna Harris
Hunter was a woman committed to social justice
and racial uplift.
She was born in South Carolina to Edward
Harris and his wife Harriet Millner Harris. Her fa-
ther passed away when Jane was 10 years old, and
she was sent to live with a relative in order to alle-
viate the financial burdens on the family. She soon
began working as a domestic servant, but the abuse
she suffered at the hands of her employer resulted
in a collective effort by her neighbors to find her
another place of employment. Her second position
was much more stable, and it was with this second
family that Hunter began to advance her educa-
tion. At age 14, she began classes at the Ferguson
Academy in Abbeville, South Carolina. She gradu-
ated from that school, known now as Ferguson-
Williams College, in 1900. She continued her
studies at Hampton Institute in Virginia. Hunter
began a career in nursing while in Charleston,
South Carolina, a profession that further enabled
her to improve the quality of life and health of the
working women with whom she came in contact
during her years as a settlement house leader. An
excellent student, Hunter pursued studies in law at
the Baldwin Wallace College Law School and the
Marshall Law School in Cleveland. She passed the
Ohio bar exam in 1925.
Jane Harris married Edward Hunter, a man 40
years her senior, but the marriage was over less
than a year and a half later. She never remarried.
In 1911, Hunter made her first pioneering
contributions in the field of social work and in the
history of American settlement houses. She estab-
lished the Working Girls Association in Cleve-
land, an organization that was renamed the Phillis
Wheatley Association shortly thereafter. The or-
ganization offered much-needed housing and ser-
vices to young and working women of color in the
urban center of Cleveland. The need was so great
that Hunter had to relocate the mission several
times in order to accommodate the women resi-
dents. In addition to housing, the Phillis Wheatley
Association provided some vocational training
and education.
A nominee for the 1927 SPINGARNMEDAL
awarded by the NATIONALASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OFCOLOREDPEOPLE, Hunter was
nationally recognized for her community and race
leadership. She was awarded honorary degrees by
several institutions, including FISK UNIVERSITY
and TUSKEGEEINSTITUTE. An officer in the NA-
TIONALASSOCIATION OFCOLOREDWOMEN,she
embodied the organization’s motto “Lifting As We
Climb.”
Hunter published her autobiography, A
NICKEL AND APRAYER,in 1940, the same year in
which the autobiography THE BIG SEA byHunter, Jane Edna (Harris) 259