Caroline Bond Day, and EVADYKES, one of the first
women of color to earn a Ph.D. in an American in-
stitution. MARIONCUTHBERT, Eugene Gordon, He-
lene Johnson, GERTRUDEMCBROWN, and Dorothy
West attended BOSTONUNIVERSITY.MARY BUR-
RILL and McBrown attended Emerson College.
WARINGCUNEY, poet, attended the Boston Conser-
vatory of Music. Wellesley College graduates in-
cluded ETHELCAUTION-DAVIS,CLARISSASCOTT
DELANY, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1923,
and BRENDA RAY MORYCK. Charlotte Hawkins
Brown, who attended the elite women’s college for
one year, was later granted honorary membership in
the college’s alumnae association.
The state also has an impressive literary and
journalistic history. It was in Boston in 1857 that the
ATLANTICMONTHLYwas founded. Writers such as
Braithwaite wrote for local newspapers such as the
Boston Transcript.Other well-known newspapers in-
cluded the Boston Globe,the Boston Guardian,a
paper edited by the fiery Harvard University Phi
Beta Kappa graduate WILLIAMMONROETROTTER,
and the Boston Post,which included Eugene Gordon
on its staff. Boston had an established publishing
history. Companies included B. J. Brimmer, which
worked with the poets Braithwaite and GEORGIA
DOUGLAS JOHNSON. The Christopher Publishing
House produced works by CLARAANNTHOMPSON
and MERCEDESGILBERT. Also in the city were the
Cornhill Press, which published SARAHLEEBROWN
FLEMING, and the Stratford Company, which pub-
lished early works by W. E. B. DuBois.
Bibliography
Brown, Richard. Massachusetts: A Concise History.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Cromwell, Adelaide. The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black
Upper Class, 1750–1950.Fayetteville, University of
Arkansas Press, 1994.
Hayden, Robert. African-Americans in Boston: More Than
350 Years.Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of
the City of Boston, 1991.
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of A
Race.New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993.
Saunders, James Robert, and Renaie Nadine Shack-
elford, eds. Dorothy West’s Martha’s Vineyard: Stories,
Essays and Reminiscences by Dorothy West Writing in
the Vineyard Gazette.Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,
2001.
Matheus, John Frederick(1887–1983)
A professor of modern languages, dramatist, and
author who published some 50 works during his
career. Born in Keyser, West Virginia, in September
1887, he was the son of John and Mary Brown
Matheus. His father was a bank messenger and
tanner. Matheus married Maude Roberts of Gal-
lipolis, Ohio, in 1909. In 1973, eight years after his
wife’s death, the 86-year-old widower married
Ellen Turner Gordon.
Matheus attended Western Reserve Univer-
sity, known now as Case Western Reserve. He
graduated cum laude in 1910. He resumed his edu-
cation a decade later, graduating with a master’s
degree from COLUMBIAUNIVERSITYin 1921. In
the mid-1920s, he completed graduate courses at
the SORBONNE in Paris and in 1927 attended
courses at the UNIVERSITY OFCHICAGO. He joined
the faculty at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical
College as a professor of foreign languages and of
Latin in 1911. In 1913, he relocated to West Vir-
ginia and began his lengthy tenure at West Virginia
State College. He became chair of the modern lan-
guages department in 1922 and held the position
until 1953. Matheus later held academic positions
at Dillard University, Morris Brown College, Texas
Southern University, Hampton Institute, and Ken-
tucky State College.
Matheus emerged as a dynamic new voice
when he won first prize for his short story “FOG”
in the 1924–1925 OPPORTUNITYliterary contest.
The second- and third-place winners were ZORA
NEALEHURSTON and ERIC WALROND, respec-
tively. A year later, in 1926, Matheus was one of
the most highly recognized writers in the Opportu-
nityliterary contest. He placed in four of the five
literary categories. His short stories “CLAY” and
“General Drums” and the poems “Lethe” and
“The Frost” were awarded honorable mentions. A
panel of three judges, which included EUGENE
KINCKLEJONES, awarded first place to “Sand,”
Matheus’s entry in the Personal Experience
Sketches division. The play C’RUITERwas selected
over dramas by Zora Neale Hurston, MAYMILLER
SULLIVAN, and GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON.
Judges David Belasco, T. MONTGOMERYGREGORY,
PAUL ROBESON, and Stark Young awarded
Matheus second prize in the play division. In 1926
he won first place in the short story division of336 Matheus, John Frederick