Era Bell Thompson: Chicago Renaissance writer.

摘要

This dissertation examines and elevates the life and work of Era Bell Thompson, an obscure 20th century black American writer and journalist. Significant research in the archives of Chicago's Carter G. Woodson Regional Library's Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection unveiled the Era Bell Thompson papers. After spending years retrieving and examining over 100 boxes of material in the archives, the contributions of this important writer and intellectual to American women's literature and history will finally be fully recognized.An integral part of the Chicago Renaissance movement (1930-1960s), Thompson differed culturally from the collective group of African American migrants from the South. She also worked in a traditionally male profession. Both circumstances contributed to her obscurity, but they also enhanced her point of view. Thompson, raised in North Dakota at the beginning of the century by her ex-slave father, offers a unique perspective as one who speaks from both inside and outside the American mainstream. As the first and only woman editor and writer at Johnson Publishing Company, she established a writing career as a foreign correspondent for Ebony magazine at a time when women and blacks were not traditionally found in such positions. A textual analysis of her autobiography, American Daughter (1946), travel narrative, Africa, Land of My Fathers (1954) that includes a comparison to Richard Wright's Black Power (1954), and various articles published in Ebony and Negro Digest between 1947 and 1974 found Thompson to be a significant African American woman writer, comparable to Zora Neale Hurston.Era Bell Thompson is best known for her use of humor and understatement as a way to critique many issues, including sexism, racism, and class-ism. She also uses humor as a radical means to shift the language of thinking about race. This is evident in her national and international writing, as Thompson framed African Americans worldwide positively, and provided readers with a broader perspective.