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 Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 3:15 am Post subject: R.I.P. Ellen Tarry, 101, in September ("Hezekiah Horton," 19 |
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According to Wikipedia and familysearch.org, she died on September
23rd, three days before her 102nd birthday.
(Check out the additions I made - this is based on her birthday post.
I updated the links.)
Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1906, she was raised a
Congregationalist but converted to Catholicism at age 16. She moved to
NYC in 1929.
Excerpt from the first chapter of her 1955 autobiography, "The Third
Door":
http://books.google.com/books?id=t-AssPSASRwC&dq=%22third+door%22+%22ellen+tarry%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=30q-Z_BzMx&sig=_wg7RwWLZTjhBWdlB7iCg8ZC2Xk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPP1,M1
(this is a 1995 edition, with an introduction by Nellie McKay)
http://www.archive.org/stream/thirddoor006585mbp/thirddoor006585mbp_djvu.txt
(this is the full text)
Page 1:
"If my family had lived in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, a casual
observer might have considered us an average American family. But
Birmingham, Alabama was our home, so we were not considered average -
or American. Anthropologists might have said that my father was a
mulatto and my mother an octoroon. I do not know what scientific names
they might have used to describe my sister and me. I do know a lot of
unscientific names that were used, but I was a young lady before I
really understood them. Mama once laughingly said we were a 'duke's
mixture'; to me, that seemed closer to the truth than anything
else...........
Pages 4-5:
".......Mama and Papa were married in one of the biggest weddings that
had ever taken place at Reverend Buckner's church. I must have heard a
great deal about it, because I once told a new neighbor all about the
wedding. I even described Mama's dress and the dresses her bridesmaids
wore. When the curious woman asked how I knew all this, I told her I
had to know, because I was sitting on the front seat all through the
ceremony.
"Mama was furious when she heard what I had said. Papa laughed.
" 'Maybe Ellen was on the front seat,' he said, 'because she was born
nine months and five days later.' "
(end of excerpts)
BTW, I read the above anecdote to my mother - and before that, she'd
had a glimpse of the back cover of the book, which was a first
edition. The photo (which I can't find right now - it's NOT the one in
the above link) didn't show Tarry's red hair, being in B&W, and my
mother only saw it from a side angle, so she thought it was Hedy
Lamarr! I told her it wasn't and asked her what she thought her
background was. She looked again and said: "Well, she looks pretty
Irish."
And, for all I know, maybe she was.
From Wikipedia:
"Tarry has published four picture books: 1940's Janie Belle
(illustrated by Myrtle Sheldon), 1942's Hezekiah Horton (illustrated
by Oliver Harrington), 1946's My Dog Rinty in collaboration with
Caldecott Medal winner Marie Hall Ets (photographs by Alexander and
Alexandra Alland), concerning a Harlem family and their mischievous
pet, and 1950's The Runaway Elephant (again illustrated by
Harrington), which continued the relationships started in Hezekiah
Horton."
http://www.pghcatholic.org/newsarticles_more.phtml?id=1616
("Pittsburgh Catholic" article on Tarry from February, 2006)
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/7a/da/0529eb6709a057235c6b0110._AA240_.L.jpg
(image of "Janie Belle," a true story in which an abandoned black baby
is adopted by a white nurse)
http://www.artextbooks.com/images/a16954.html
("Runaway Elephant" - though I'm pretty sure whoever wrote the notes
is confusing two cartoonists - namely, Oliver W. Harrington with
George Herriman)
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=oliver+harrington&btnG=Search
http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/harrington.html
( 2 links on political cartoonist Oliver W. Harrington)
About "My Dog Rinty" from Abebooks.com:
"The first pictoral book to represent Afro-americans in a bourgeois,
middle class setting. The photographs of Harlem family life in the
1940's capture a setting that is clean, domestic and aimed towards
education."
http://www.lab-curio.com/book/0505-2new/IMG_2406ss.jpg
(cover of "My Dog Rinty" - it's a photo)
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/tarry.htm
(Review of "The Other Toussaint")
http://www.nathanielturner.com/aphiliprandolph.htm
(excerpt from "The Third Door" about the proposed 1941 march on
Washington led by A. Philip Randolph, why it was canceled, and Tarry's
reaction, four years later, to Franklin Roosevelt's death)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_n1_v29/ai_17276650
(1995 review of the 1955 book "The Third Door: The Autobiography of an
American Negro Woman")
(Publisher's note: "Tarry was devoid of pronounced African-American
racial markings, and her interactions with white Americans were not
characterized by fear or distrust, but when her own brown daughter was
subjected to racial discrimination she wrote The Third Door in 1955 to
tell America about the plight of her people.")
Another excerpt from pages 207-208:
Frayser Lane, a portly brown man with a rare combination of
intelligence and common sense, handled himself with credit and
dignity, although some of the questions he had to answer must have
irked him. In a whisper, Father Hyland's friend commented on Mr.
Lane's poise and his ability to parry words, then told me that she had
a question she had always wanted to ask a Negro.
"Now's the time," I assured her. 'These youngsters will keep him
talking all night and I'm going to close the meeting in a few
minutes."
"Mr. Lane," I heard her say a few seconds later, "I have always
wondered why the American Negro did not fight like the Indian? Why
didn't your forebears band together and resist the indignities which
were heaped upon them?"
"Madame," Frayser Lane took a deep breath and cocked his head to one
side, "there is a saying which goes as follows: The American Indian
fought and fought and died. The American Negro laughed and laughed and
multiplied!"
Thus it was that another Friendship House meeting disbanded amid
laughter.
(end of excerpt)
And, on page 229, Tarry visits her white grandfather's grave and makes
it clear he would never have been buried separately from his black
wife had the law not mandated it.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_3_41/ai_n26672696/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
(11-page review of "The Third Door" from the Fall 2007 issue of
"African American Review")
http://www.catholicism.org/katherine-drexel.html
(an interesting article on St. Katherine Drexel - Tarry and her
biography of Drexel are mentioned in the bottom 6th or so.)
http://www.solidgroundministry.com/sg_photo_gallery/2006_pixs/DrEllenTarry.jpg
(photo of Tarry)
http://www.solidgroundministry.com/sg_photo_gallery/At%20the%20tomb.2.jpg
(this shows Tarry at Pierre Toussaint's tomb in St. Patrick's
Cathedral in NYC. "Dr. Ellen Tarry with Fr. Jim Goode, Fr. Al
McKnight, Deacon Bradley Seabrook, Fr. Tom Jackson and Fr. Chester P.
Smith.")
http://www.solidgroundministry.com/sg_photo_gallery/At%20the%20tomb.1.jpg
(closer photo, same setting)
http://www.bnkst.edu/ccl/inaugural.html
(Launch of the Bank Street Center for Children's Literature in Oct.
2007. Eric Carle was the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement
Award, and Tarry attended - you have to scroll down just a bit to get
to her paragraph)
From "Notable Black American Women":
(After some years as a journalist)......in 1929, Tarry moved to New
York. Here she worked as a waitress, a governess, an elevator
operator, and a nightclub attendant. Frequently these jobs were
terminated once her race was discovered; however, she was not trying
to pass; she just did not volunteer the information. She was able to
get an apartment in
a "swanky building" and wear "enough clothes" to be "dub[bed] the Mae
West of Sugar Hill" (Dannett, 250)......
Tarry served as the codirector for Friendship House on the South Side
of Chicago, and during the war she served as a USO worker in several
cities. In 1944 she became the regional director of the New York
National Catholic County Services (NCSS) Club, which was housed in the
Harlem Serviceman's Center....... For two years Tarry served as
director of the Public School Number Sixty-eight Community
Center. .........Tarry became the assistant to the Regional
Administrator for Equal Opportunity, Department of Housing and Urban
Development........
Two of her books, Hezekiah Horton and The Runaway Elephant, both
illustrated by Oliver Harrington, the black creator of the cartoon
"Bootsie," have "Mr. Ed" as a character. He is based on Edward
Doherty, a journalist who was to become the husband of Baroness
Catherine de Hueck, who was in charge of Friendship House. In an
attempt to gain a valid picture of Harlem, he sought and received the
help of Tarry. Because of his gratitude for her help, he threw a party
for the children of Friendship House. A part of this celebration was
to transport the children in his car to the party. Tarry says, "The
instant I saw tall, blond Eddie standing alongside a shiny red
convertible full of wiggling, giggling brown urchins my story was
started" (The Third Door, 174). The early concern for her elementary
students and the untold history of the black man is evident in her
juvenile literature.
Contemporary Authors:
She left the South for New York City. There she was accepted into a
group of journalists and creative writers that included Claude McKay,
James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. She also
worked at Friendship House, an interracial justice center in Harlem.
It was there that she began a story hour for the children in the
neighborhood, and using her young audiences to test out the stories
she was writing.....
(She) also wrote biographies of two notable black Catholics: St.
Martin de Porres, who lived in South America in the seventeenth
century; and Pierre Toussaint, a Haitian slave who was brought to New
York City by his owner around 1787. Toussaint eventually won his
freedom, became wealthy, and bought the freedom of many other slaves.
Known for his
good works and piety, he became a leading citizen of Old New York.
Tarry's research and writing on Toussaint were encouraged by a letter
of Pontifical Blessing from Pope Paul VI. (John Paul II declared
Toussaint "Venerable" in 1996.)
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
Janie Belle, illustrations by Myrtle Sheldon, Garden City Publishing
(New York, NY), 1940.
Hezekiah Horton, illustrations by Oliver Harrington, Viking (New York,
NY), 1942.
(With Marie Hall Ets) My Dog Rinty, illustrations by Alexander Alland
and Alexandra Alland, Viking, 1946.
The Runaway Elephant, illustrations by Harrington, Viking, 1950.
The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman, McKay
(New York, NY), 1955, reprinted, Negro Universities Press (Westport,
CT), 1971, new edition with introduction by Nellie Y. McKay,
University of Alabama Press (University), 1992.
Katharine Drexel: Friend of the Neglected, illustrations by Donald
Bolognese, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1958, revised edition as
Saint Katharine Drexel, Friend of the Oppressed, Pawling Books &
Media, 2000.
Martin de Porres: Saint of the New World, illustrations by James Fox,
Vision Books (Coos Bay, OR), 1963.
Young Jim: The Early Years of James Weldon Johnson, Dodd (New York
City), 1967.
The Other Toussaint: A Modern Biography of Pierre Toussaint, a Post-
Revolutionary Black, St. Paul Editions (Boston), 1981., Pauline Books
(Boston), 1998.
"Author of weekly column, "Negroes of Note," in the Birmingham Truth;
contributor to many Catholic periodicals."
Lenona. |
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