Brenda Ray Moryck
Brenda Ray Moryck | |
---|---|
Born | 1894 Newark, New Jersey, US |
Died | 1949 Washington, D.C. |
Other names | Brenda Moryck Francke (after 1930) |
Occupation(s) | Writer, teacher |
Relatives | Cordelia Ray (great-aunt); Charlotte E. Ray (great-aunt); Charles Bennett Ray (great-great-grandfather) |
Brenda Ray Moryck (June 1894 – 1949) was an American writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
Early life and education
Brenda Ray Moryck was born in Newark, New Jersey,[1] the daughter of John W. Moryck and Sarah Rose Ray Moryck. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was an educator and clubwoman[2][3]. Though Brenda wrote that her great-grandfather was Charles Bennet Ray , her mother's death record gives Adam Ray and Sarah Closson as Brenda's maternal grandparents[3][4][5]. Multple records for Adam Ray state that his father was Adam Ray Sr., not Charles Ray [6][7][8].
Moryck completed a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1916, the only black graduate in her class.[9] She earned a master's degree in English literature from Howard University in 1926.[10]
Career
Moryck worked for the Newark Bureau of Charities after college, and taught physical culture at a technical school in Bordentown.[11][12] She taught English and drama at Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, D.C. during the 1920s.[13] She wrote essays and stories published in The Crisis, Opportunity, and other national periodicals and newspapers.[14][15][16] She was also a drama critic for the New York Age,[17] and wrote at least one play, The Christmas Spirit, performed at Armstrong high school in 1927. She was active in the National Urban League, the Harlem YWCA,[18] and the NAACP in New York.[10] She was also an avid golfer.[19]
Moryck's writings are associated with the Harlem Renaissance[20][21] and have been included in several recent anthologies, among them The new Negro: Readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938 (2007), edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Gene Andrew Garrett,[22] Double-take: A revisionist Harlem Renaissance anthology (2001), edited by Venetria K. Patton and Maureen Honey, Harlem's Glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950 (1996), edited by Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph,[23] and Speech & power: The African-American essay and its cultural content, from polemics to pulpit (1992). edited by Gerald Early.[24] She had an unpublished novel in manuscript at the time of her death.
Personal life
Moryck married twice. Her first husband was Lucius Lee Jordan; they married in 1917 and he died before their first anniversary. She married Robert Beale Francke in 1930. She had a daughter, Elizabeth (Betty) Osborne Francke,[2][25] and a foster daughter, Julia Wormley[26][27]. She died in 1945, in Massachusetts., at age 40[1][28][29]. She had been scheduled to meet up with her daughter who was in boarding school in Albany, New York[28].
References
- ^ a b Williams, Noelle Lorraine (2020-09-14). "The Incredible Legacy of Newark's Black Women Activists". Zócalo Public Square. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
- ^ a b "Mrs. John W. Moryck Dies Here in 80th Year; Of Old Family". The New York Age. 1942-01-24. p. 4. Retrieved 2021-03-01 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Our Prize Winners and What they Say of Themselves". Opportunity. 4: 189. June 1926.
- ^ ""New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch".
- ^ "D-M-1942-0001580". Historical Vital Records The New York City Municipal Archives.
- ^ "Adam Ray Jr". New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949.
- ^ "New Jersey, Marriages, 1670-1980". FamilySearch.
- ^ "New Jersey Marriages, 1678-1985". FamilySearch.
- ^ "Our Graduates". The Crisis: 121. July 1916.
- ^ a b "Wellesley Celebrates the Legacy of Some of Its Earliest Black Students During Black History Month". Wellesley College. February 28, 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-09-26. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
- ^ "Bordentown Industrial". The New York Age. 1917-06-07. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-03-01 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "12 Graduate from Industrial School". Trenton Evening Times. 1917-06-01. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-03-02 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "School Orators Reach Semi-Finals". Evening Star. 1927-03-15. p. 45. Retrieved 2021-03-01 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Judith Musser, ed. (2011). "Girl, colored" and other stories : a complete short fiction anthology of African American women writers in the Crisis magazine, 1910-2010. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-4606-3. OCLC 630498177.
- ^ Sondra K. Wilson, National Urban League, ed. (1999). Opportunity reader : stories, poetry, and essays from the Urban League's Opportunity magazine. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75379-6. OCLC 41889049.
- ^ Austin, Addell P. (1988). "The "Opportunity" and "Crisis" Literary Contests, 1924-27". CLA Journal. 32 (2): 235–246. ISSN 0007-8549. JSTOR 44322018.
- ^ "Harlem Experimental Theatre Gives 3 Plays". The New York Age. 1931-05-02. p. 6. Retrieved 2021-03-02 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Rabbi Lyons to Speak at Brooklyn Y.W.C.A." The New York Age. 1929-03-16. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-03-01 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ McDaniel, Pete (2000). Uneven Lies: The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf. American Golfer. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-888531-36-7.
- ^ Black women of the Harlem Renaissance era. Lean'tin L. Bracks, Jessie Carney Smith. Lanham. 2014. ISBN 978-0-8108-8543-1. OCLC 894554745.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Caughie, Pamela L. (September 2012). ""The best people": The Making of the Black Bourgeoisie in Writings of the Negro Renaissance". Modernism/Modernity. 20 (3): 519–537. doi:10.1353/mod.2013.0064. S2CID 144761198.
- ^ Gates, Henry Louis; Jarrett, Gene Andrew (2007). The new Negro: readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. OCLC 608490813.
- ^ Roses, Lorraine Elena; Randolph, Ruth Elizabeth (1996). Harlem's glory : Black women writing, 1900-1950. Internet Archive. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-37269-6.
- ^ Speech & power : the African-American essay and its cultural content, from polemics to pulpit. Internet Archive. Hopewell, NJ : Ecco Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-88001-264-5.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Letter from Brenda Moryck Francke to W. E. B. Du Bois, October 14, 1941, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
- ^ "C. C. S. Girls Meet in Staten Island". The New York Age. 1930-04-12. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-03-02 – via Newspapers.com.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch.
- ^ a b "Summer Resident of Stockbridge Dies in Hospital". The Berkshire County Eagle. 1945-12-12. p. 24. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
- ^ "Records of Evergreen Cemetery (by email correspondence to Noelle Lorraine Williams)". Evergreen Cemetery | Hillside, New Jersey 07205. 2020-03-28. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
External links
- "Johnsons, John B. Nail, John E. Nail, Grayce Fairfax Nail, Brenda Moryck, Bertha Randolph, Clara Wood, Great Barrington, Massachusetts", a photograph of Moryck and others taken in 1928, from the James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson papers, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.
- 1894 births
- 1949 deaths
- 20th-century American writers
- 20th-century American women writers
- 20th-century African-American women writers
- 20th-century African-American educators
- 20th-century American educators
- 20th-century American women educators
- African-American women educators
- Wellesley College alumni
- Writers from Newark, New Jersey
- 20th-century African-American writers