Gwendolyn Bennett

"Texans feel they have a claim on her and that the beautiful and poignant lyrics she writes resulted partially from the impression of her early Texas surroundings. ~ J Mason Brewer, folklorist

To a Dark Girl

I love you for your brownness,
And the rounded darkness of your breast,
I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice
And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.
Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow's mate,
Keep all you have of queenliness,
Forgetting that you once were slave,
And let your full lips laugh at Fate!

Gwendolyn Bennett was born July 8, 1902 in Giddings, Texas between Austin and Houston. She spent her childhood on the Paiute Indian Reservation in Nevada where her parents taught for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in Washington DC, and in New York City. She graduated from both Columbia University and the Pratt Institute in 1924 and for one year taught design and crafts at Howard University. She attended the Academie Julian and Ecole du Pantheon in Paris.

The Pipes of Pan
by Gwendolyn Bennett

Bennett's first published work was in the NAACP's Crisis Magazine in November 1923. She later designed covers for the magazine. Her work also appeared in Opportunity, the magazine of the National Urban League, and she became its assistant editor in 1926. There, she wrote a column entitled "The Ebony Flute" showcasing artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and co-founded the literary journal Fire, where her best-known short story "Wedding Day" was published. She also started a support group for young writers such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. 

She married in 1927 and moved to Florida but returned to New York when she was widowed in 1936. She led the Harlem Community Art Center and was on the board of the Negro Playwrights Guild. She also helped develop the George Washington Carver Community School and worked for the Consumers Union during the later years of her life. She died in Pennsylvania on June 30, 1981.