Bishop Payne Divinity School
Named after Bishop Daniel A. Payne, a freeborn
minister in the African Methodist Episcopal
Church and the person who secured the financial
autonomy of WILBERFORCEUNIVERSITY. Located
in Virginia, the divinity school was the alma mater
of such figures as ROBERTW. BAGNALL, a high-
ranking NAACP official who combined a career in
the ministry with race work and a writing career
that saw several race-related essays published dur-
ing the Harlem Renaissance.
“Black” Nellie Rathborne Bright(1927)
A prizewinning essay in which NELLIERATHBORNE
BRIGHTdescribed and analyzed her travel experi-
ences in Europe. Bright noted the lack of European
anxiety about her color but provided ample proof
of pervasive racism. Her encounter with a Nigerian
who is traumatized by his experiences in America
prompts Bright to realize the multifaceted nature
of race and blackness.
Black and White (1932)
A Russian film project on American race relations,
sponsored by the MESCHRABPOMFILMCORPORA-
TION. The company invited several Harlem Re-
naissance writers to Russia to create and perform
in the production. The group of 22 who boarded
the ship Europaincluded writers, actresses, COM-
MUNIST PARTY members, social workers, and
teachers, among them LANGSTON HUGHES,
LOUISETHOMPSON, DOROTHYWEST, TEDPOS-
TON, Henry Moon, Allen McKenzie, TAYLOR
GORDON, Mollie Lewis, Sylvia Garner, Wayland
Rudd, Juanita Lewis, and Thurston Lewis. Shortly
after their arrival, the group discovered that the
project was not what they had thought, and they
disbanded after a few months.
Black and White Tangled Threads
Zara Wright(1920)
A novel by ZARAWRIGHTthat recalls Iola Leroy
or the Shadows Uplifted, the pioneering 1892
novel of racial awareness and uplift by Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper. Wright’s southern tale
about mixed-race heroines and their historically
kind, formerly slave-owning white neighbors, re-
vises the traditional racial uplift plot, however.
When Zoleeta discovers that she is not white,
she accepts her racial heritage but devotes her-
self not to improving the lot of African Ameri-
cans but to enlightening white southerners about
their prejudices.
Published eight years after the anonymously
authored AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANEX-COLOURED
MANand nine years before NELLALARSEN’s PASS-
ING,this work is part of the continuing tradition of
literature about the social upheaval and remedies
brought to bear on the American history of misce-
genation, interracial alliances, and mixed-race
identity.36 Bishop Payne Divinity School
Langston Hughes and Louise Thompson in 1933
aboard the Europaas they sail to Russia to participate
in Black and White,a film project sponsored by the
Meschrabpom Film Corporation (Yale Collection of
American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library)