Collecting area: Black women

Nina Yolande Du Bois (1900-1961), better known as Yolande Du Bois, was an American teacher best regarded for her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. Her father was sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and her mother was Nina (née Gomer) Du Bois. She was born on October 21, 1900, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She faced many health-related issues in her early childhood and also quarreled often with her parents. In her early adulthood, she enrolled at Fisk University in 1920 and graduated in 1924. While attending Fisk, she was in a relationship with Jimmie Lunceford, a prominent jazz musician. At her father’s insistence, she ended her relationship with Lunceford and would later go on to marry acclaimed Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen on April 9, 1928. Their highly-publicized wedding was the talk of many African-American socialites at the time, with every minor detail recorded by the press. However, Yolande and Countee soon grew distant in their marriage, resorting to counseling at first and then divorce following Countee’s coming out as gay to Yolande. With the divorce finalized in the spring of 1930, Yolande chose to pursue higher education and rewrite the course of her life.

After a period of illness, she began to teach English and history at Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland. There, she met Arnette Franklin Williams, whom she married in September 1931 and then later divorced in 1936. She had one daughter with Williams, Yolande Du Bois Irvin Williams, whom she took care of following the divorce. However, during this period, Yolande also moved to New York City with her mother, where she began to take courses at Columbia University’s Teachers College, eventually earning her master’s. She then continued to work as a teacher and to raise her daughter in Baltimore until her death in March 1961. She was survived by her father and her daughter.

Yolande’s scrapbooks, photo albums, and other personal artifacts from her youth (approximately 1915-1929) reflect her travels, undergraduate experiences at Fisk University, outings with her family and friends, artistic pursuits, and more. These scrapbooks showcase trips to England, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe, across Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, as well as other sites of importance in her life. These scrapbooks capture snapshots of her time at Fisk University, from breakups to athletic events, and from classical music concerts to Zeta Beta Phi rush week materials. Each scrapbook showcases a different aspect of Yolande’s late teenage life as well as her early adulthood, coupled with notes, sketches, and illustrations from friends, postcards and fliers from all over the United States and Europe, and her personal takes on the world around her.

Acclaimed writer, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and educator, Zelma (Zee) Inez Edgell was born in Belize City, Belize in 1940. Zee Edgell holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from Polytechnic-Regent Street (now the University of Westminster) and a Master’s in Liberal Studies from Kent State University. Edgell has published four novels and several short stories throughout her illustrious career. Her breakout novel, Beka Lamb, published in 1982, was the first book to be released in a newly independent Belize (formerly British Honduras) and would gain international notoriety going on to win the Fawcett Society Book Prize. Before becoming a celebrated novelist Edgell spent her early years working as a journalist, first for Jamaica’s The Daily Gleaner and then as founding editor of the Belize-based newspaper The Reporter. Edgell also served as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau, a position she held under two different administrations. As an educator, Edgell taught for many years at Belizes’ St. Catherine Academy, an all-girls catholic school she attended as a youth. She lectured at the University College of Belize as well. Edgell would spend the remainder of her teaching career as a tenured professor in the English department at Ohio’s Kent State University beginning in 1992. While at Kent State, Edgell taught courses in creative writing, fiction writing, and post-colonial literature. In 2009, Edgell received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of West Indies. That same year she retired from teaching and moved with her husband to St. Louis to be closer to her children and grandchildren until she died in 2020.

The Zee Edgell Papers features not only a deeper look into the author’s professional life but her personal life as well. The collection includes personal letters, postcards, and notes between Edgell and her loved ones; professional correspondence between and her publisher; drafts of her short stories and book chapters; newspaper articles; letters from her global travels with husband Alvin Edgell during his tenure with CARE; documents related to her time serving as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau; and literature on Belizean history. There are also materials related to her time as a faculty member in Kent State’s English Department.

Cheryl Evans singing at Medford High School, ca. 1962

A lifelong activist, performer, and educator, Cheryl Lorraine Evans was born in 1946 in west Medford, MA, the eldest of five. As a high school student, Evans attended the march on Washington in 1963, and was then the first in her family to attend college, in 1964 joining the largest class at UMass Amherst to date. She graduated four years later as a pivotal organizer of African American students across campus, the Five Colleges, and in the region – during the period when Black student groups, the Black Cultural Center, and the Black Studies department all had their origins at UMass. Evans was the first elected president of an African American student organization at UMass, and remains an organizer to this day, particularly as a key connector for Black alumni and through her UMass Black Pioneers Project.

Evans went on to work at UMass as an assistant area coordinator of Orchard Hill, an area housing the majority of the students of color and CCEBS students on campus at the time, and then for the Urban University Program at Rutgers University. She worked for over a decade in early childhood education, mostly in New Jersey and New York City, then while working for the State of Massachusetts received her MA in Communication from Emerson College, partially to help her public radio show, “Black Family Experience.” Evans was the first African American woman to run for City Council in Medford, and was appointed to the Massachusetts Area Planning Council by Governor Dukakis. She taught for five years at Northshore Community College, received her PhD from Old Dominion University in 1997, and ended her career at Bloomfield College, where she was a professor for 18 years until her retirement in 2016. A prolific singer as a child and young adult, Evans was, and continues to be, a performance artist, with several theater pieces focused on Black history, all in addition to her outreach, organizing, and workshops, many focused on increasing the number of Black graduate and doctoral students.

The Cheryl Evans Papers document over 60 years of the life of the educator and activist, including childhood report cards and essays, clippings from the civil rights movement she followed and joined as a high school student, undergraduate records and ephemera, documentation of Black UMass alumni events, and records from her careers in public advocacy, education, and the theater. Evan’s time at UMass is especially well documented, including schoolwork, numerous photographs of student life on campus, social and political organization records, including contact lists of and correspondence with Black students, and the original protest demands from the 1970 Mills House protest and march to Whitmore.

The Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive (BFA) is an archival home for Black women and their allies. Founded by Dr. Irma McClaurin, Black feminist anthropologist, academic administrator, award-winning poet and author, past president of Shaw University and leader in higher education, the BFA seeks to identify Black women from all walks of life who are artists, activists, and academics but may not be well known, and document their wide array of contributions at many levels: community, state, national, and global. In addition to being an ongoing resource for academic and community researchers, the BFA also aims to be a training center, where Black archivists can actively participate in their own history and uplift and protect the endangered legacy of Black women. Articles about Dr. McClaurin and the BFA have appeared in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, UMass Magazine and on the the Black Presence website. Her article, “Black Women, Visible and Heard,” published in UMass Magazine was highlighted when the publication received the Gold level CASE award in 2022.

The BFA is an umbrella collection, made up of a growing and diverse group of collections documenting Black women, allies, movements, and organizations. Highlights include the papers of renown anthropologists Sheila Walker and Carolyn Martin Shaw; Belizean writer Zee Edgell; activist and educator Cheryl Evans, who founded the Black Pioneers Project documenting the experience of Black students at UMass Amherst during the late 1960s; Lawrence (Larry) Paros, a UMass alum and forerunner of the Alternative Education movement in America, past director of the 1968 Yale Summer High School (YSHS); and the papers of Dr. Irma McClaurin, BFA founder, which include her photographs of iconic Black figures. The development of the BFA has been supported by two grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation: The Historical Archive Grant and The Global Initiative Grant (GIG) for “The Black Feminist Archive Pandemic Preservation Project of Black Women Practicing Anthropologists” project

Collections include:

• Zee Edgell Papers
• Cheryl Evans Papers
• Irma McClaurin Collection
• Lawrence Paros Papers
• Carolyn Martin Shaw Papers
• Audrey Smedley Papers
• Sheila Walker Papers
• Mae Upperman Collection
• Deborah Johnson-Simon Papers
• Roderick and Melanie Bush Papers
• Edith Renfrow Smith Papers

Dr. Deborah Johnson-Simon, PhD, is a museum anthropologist dedicated to advancing social justice and fostering community engagement through cultural heritage projects. She focuses on attracting and maintaining African American audiences and works extensively on museum outreach and development. Dr. Johnson-Simon is the co-editor of The Second Generation of African American Pioneers in Anthropology, a work that highlights significant contributions in the field.

She is the founder and CEO of the African Diaspora Museology Institute (ADMI), formerly known as the Center for the Study of African and African Diaspora Museums and Communities (CFSAADMC). The institute is committed to conducting and distributing research on the history and culture of African and African Diaspora museums and communities, furthering the understanding of their impact and significance. Dr. Johnson-Simon’s research interests center on these communities’ cultural and historical narratives, emphasizing their role in museum studies and broader cultural heritage.

Dr. Johnson-Simon received her BA from Rollins College in 1997 and her MA from Arizona State University with a certification in Museum Studies. She earned her PhD in 2007 from the University of Florida in 2007.

The Deborah Johnson-Simon Papers document Dr. Johnson-Simon’s research, travels, and professional engagements. The collection includes photographs from her research in Arizona, culminating in Culture Keepers Arizona, as well as ephemera from her time at Rollins College in Florida and her research and teaching at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida. It also highlights her extensive work with and on Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian and the C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute. Additionally, the collection contains an extensive collection of cards from individuals she met at conferences, during research, and while traveling. Notably, it includes her work with industrial designer Charles “Chuck” Harrison, who revolutionized the View-Master, along with a View-Master and more than 80 accompanying slides.

Dr. Irma McClaurin is the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is an award-winning author, poet, activist, anthropologist, HipHop Mom and mentor, and CEO of Irma McClaurin Solutions. A woman of many talents, Dr. Irma is a past president of Shaw University and a former Program Officer for Education and Scholarship at the Ford Foundation. She was also the founding executive director of the University of Minnesota’s first Urban Research Outreach-Engagement Center, including a 21,000 sf renovation, and an Associate Vice President with tenure in the Anthropology Dept. Dr. Irma was also the first Black faculty member to be tenured in anthropology through the ranks at the University of Florida, where she was an affiliate of African Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, Afro-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. After serving as Deputy Provost at Fisk University, while on leave from UF, she became the inaugural Mott Distinguished Chair in Women’s Studies at Bennett College for Women. She founded its Africana Women’s Studies Program. Dr. Irma also was a Senior faculty and coach at the US government’s Federal Executive Institute and was Chief Diversity Officer at Teach For America. An acclaimed Zora Neale Hurston scholar, she appears in the PBS documentary “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space.” Dr. Irma has an MFA in English and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2023, her alma mater, Grinnell College, awarded her the Honorary Doctorate of Social Studies.

From a childhood spent in a tenement in Norfolk, Va., Carolyn Martin Shaw went on to enjoy a distinguished career as a pioneer in Black Feminist anthropology. Educated in segregated schools, she was an outstanding student, winning scholarship funding to Michigan State University, where she received both her BS (1966) and PhD (1975). Shaw’s dissertation on Kikuyu kinship morality marked several themes that she developed through subsequent research projects in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Based in the Department of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz throughout her career, she was a productive scholar, publishing dozens of articles and chapters, and two important monographs, Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Class and Sex in Kenya (1995) and Women and Power in Zimbabwe: Promises of Feminism (2015), and she filled a variety of administrative posts, including department chair, Provost of the Kresge residential college, and Chair of the UC system-wide Committee on Privilege and Tenure. She has received numerous awards in her career, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Zimbabwe in 1983-1984, a Danforth Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and a McHenry Award for Service to the Academic Senate at UCSC. Shaw retired from UCSC in 2010.

Documenting her work in Black feminist anthropology, the Carolyn Martin Shaw collection includes published and unpublished writing, correspondence, and a wealth of information on her research in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Along with her fieldnotes, research data, and photographs, the collection also includes records of her faculty service at USCS, and awards received for teaching and university service.

Born in Detroit in 1930, Audrey Smedley was the oldest daughter of Ulysses and Mattie Smedley. After attending Detroit Public School, Smedley earned a B.A. in the history, letters, and law program (1954) and a M.A. in anthropology with a concentration in history (1957) from the University of Michigan. Smedley pursued her Ph.D. at the University of Manchester (1967) where she investigated the social and economic structure of the Birom in Northern Nigeria. Known for her research into the history of “race,” a concept she argued emerged in the Americas to justify slavery, Smedley published widely on the topic including her award-winning book Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (1993). She began her teaching career at Wayne State University and Oakland University, went on to teach at Binghampton University, retiring in 1995, before becoming a professor of anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she retired a second time in 2002. Smedley was the co-founder of the Museum of Afro-American History in Detroit and the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a fellow of the American Association of Science and winner of the Delta Award for Excellence in Afro-American History and Anthropology. Smedley died on October 14, 2020, in Beltsville, Maryland at the age of 90.

The Audrey Smedley Papers features an extensive collection of research materials and notes, drafts of articles and books, professional correspondence, and teaching files. Smedley’s filed notes related to her work in Birom are included as are drafts of her award-winning book, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview.

Born in Grinnell, Iowa on July 14, 1914, to Eva Craig and Lee Augustus Renfrow, Edith Renfrow Smith was the first African American woman to graduate from Grinnell College in 1937. She moved to Chicago after graduation where she worked first at the YMCA and later at the University of Chicago. In 1940, Edith married Henry T. Smith; the couple welcomed two daughters: Virginia and Alice. After earning her teaching license, she taught in the Chicago school system for twenty-one years before retiring in 1976. Smith continued to serve as a volunteer well into her nineties. She is the recipient of numerous honors highlighting her activities and contributions later in life, including admittance into the Chicago Senior Citizen Hall of Fame, selection as a “superager” in a Northwestern University study, induction into the Iowa African American Hall of Fame,  and several distinctions awarded by Grinnell College: an honorary degree, the naming of the Smith Gallery in Joe Rosenfield Campus Center, and the naming of a new residential hall building on campus.  An illustrated biography of her life, No One is Better than You: Edith Renfrow Smith and the Power of a Mother’s Words, was published in January 2024.

While the physical materials that comprise the Edith Renfrow Smith Papers are small in number, including an award, photographs, and a family tree, the collection is enhanced by nearly 150 digitized photographs scanned and posted online by Grinnell College.

Born in 1937, Mae Upperman grew up Asbury Park, New Jersey, a town segregated by race and wealth. She was educated at Tufts University, receiving a B.A. in adult education and physical therapy, and Boston University, receiving a Master’s degree in education. Her career features work in several fields, each one with a focus on improving lives of vulnerable individuals in society. These contributions include: working as a physical therapist for the Visiting Nurses Association of Boston; working at the Action for Boston Community Development, a non-profit dedicated to helping Boston residents out of poverty; researching new initiatives in Head Start; and developing and managing a center-based early intervention program for children with developmental disabilities. Alongside Upperman’s professional achievements, she is also an artist, poet, and book collector.

The Mae Upperman Collection consists of more than 200 books by Black women authors and Upperman’s artwork, much of which depicts abstract Black figures. An article about Upperman and her collection appeared in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian in 2023.