book while abroad in France on a GUGGENHEIM
FELLOWSHIP. White was solicited to contribute
works to major Harlem Renaissance–era collec-
tions, including ALAINLOCKE’s 1925 NEWNEGRO
anthology. He was a well-known figure in literary
circles and was especially supportive of COUNTEE
CULLENand CLAUDEMCKAY. He also opened his
home to “hungry literati,” notes scholar Cary
Wintz, and helped to facilitate CARL VAN
VECHTEN’s interactions with African-American
writers of the day. White continued to write in the
years following the Harlem Renaissance. His auto-
biography, A Man Called White,appeared in 1948.
Funeral services for Walter White, who died in
March 1955, were held at Saint Martin’s Episcopal
Church in Harlem.
Bibliography
Cannon, Poppy. A Gentle Knight: My Husband, Walter
White.New York: Rinehart, 1956.
Janken, Kenneth. White: The Biography of Walter White,
Mr. NAACP.New York: New Press, 2003.
Waldron, Edward. Walter White and the Harlem Renais-
sance.Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978.
White, Walter. A Man Called White.New York: Viking,
1948.
Wilson, Sondra, ed. In Search of Democracy: The
NAACP Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Walter
White, and Roy Wilkins (1920–1977).New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
“Who Gives Himself” Eunice Hunton Carter
(1924)
One of two short stories that EUNICEHUNTON
CARTERpublished in OPPORTUNITYduring 1924.
“Who Gives Himself” appeared alongside
“DRENCHED INLIGHT” (1924) by ZORANEALE
HURSTON, and articles by EUGENE GORDON,
ANGELINAGRIMKÉ,PAULROBESON, and RENÉ
MARAN.
The account of Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day begins with a dismayed narrator who is “ma-
rooned in a boarding school in the far South in
Louisiana.” The pithy first-person account of
Christmas tracks the narrator’s growing apprecia-
tion of the season, despite the fact that she finds
herself in a land where the weather defies her tradi-
tional notions of the holiday. The narrator is re-
sponsible for overseeing the distribution of holiday
baskets that also are accompanied by modest gifts
of 50 cents. She eventually rouses herself from sleep
and dreams of “sugar cane stalks, muddy roads,
draughty cabins and Christmas baskets chasing
each other.” She is humbled by the earnest and
beautiful carols that prompt her to rise and to greet
the day. The story ends as the narrator and the
other students involved in the distribution mission
make their first call and experience a stirring en-
counter with an impoverished, grateful new mother.
The woman, described as “gaunt” and dressed in a
“drab and faded gingham dress” accepts the “gifts
regally but her thanks [are] broken and breathless.”
Just before the group leaves, one of the young stu-
dents asks to hold the woman’s newborn baby. The
mother “surrender[s]” her child and then plucks a
white rose from the bush that is blooming near her
front door. After peeling off its thorns, she offers it
to the narrator, who accepts it humbly as part of
her holiday corsage. The gesture prompts the narra-
tor to note that “[i]t was Christmas morning and
the mother of a new born babe had given me a
rose.” The story ends as the narrator contemplates
the significance of the encounter and realizes that
seemingly contrary environments cannot diminish
the rich symbolism of meaningful religious holidays
and interactions with earnest folk.
“Who Gives Himself” reflects Carter’s interest
in dispelling myths about the South as a place
alienated from tradition or the past. Like “Replica”
(1924), this short story encourages readers to con-
sider the powerful nature of human interaction
and the uplifting bonds that African Americans
can share in an often oppressive and seemingly dis-
empowering environment.Wiggins, Bernice Love(1897–unknown)
A Texas native who was part of the small, ambi-
tious circle of African-American women writing in
the Southwest during the Harlem Renaissance.
Wiggins graduated from public schools in El
Paso and appears to have begun writing without
any formal training. According to biographers Lor-
raine Roses and Ruth Randolph, Wiggins pub-
lished regularly in Texas newspapers such as the El
Paso Heraldand in northern publications such as
the CHICAGODEFENDER.Wiggins, Bernice Love 563