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.One of the most fascinating figures of the Harlem Renaissance, LouiseThompson deserves a biography of her own, and it is not untoward toinclude its outlines here, since the role of the white patron is perhaps moreclearly defined through her than through the better known Hughes andHurston.Louise Thompson brought to the movement an awareness ofracism in its various disguises that strongly influenced her later life as well asthe lives of many of the young black artists and writers with whom she camein contact.Reared in several states as her rover stepfather moved from job to job,Louise Thompson was often the only black child in a town, so that firstexposure to racism was an awareness of isolation.Then at Berkeley, sheencountered it in the form of indifference from her fellow students, white ofcourse, until, awakened to her own potential when W.E.B.Du Bois lecturedthere, she took a teaching job in Arkansas.Her students were barely able toread, in a community where isolation and indifference were too easilyreplaced by racial violence, and her memories of its terrors were still clearsixty years later.In the mid-twenties, she went on to the Hampton Instituteto teach business administration and there encountered another form ofracism, somehow more invidious.A refined racism, as she later called it,hid comfortably behind the mask of white patronage.At the height of the Harlem Renaissance, she was denied the right toany social exchange with her students; black and white faculty memberscould neither publicly nor privately fraternize; and the predominately whiteadministration demanded strict enforcement of social rules from anotherage.At a time when on white campuses F.Scott Fitzgerald coeds rouged theirknees and their male counterparts carried hip flasks, Hampton s blackstudents were not allowed to date.Even weekend movies in the collegechapel required a faculty member as chaperone for every four students.Atthat juncture, Louise Thompson accepted a National Urban Leaguescholarship in New York and began to come in contact with many youngblack intellectuals, among them Wallace Thurman, editor of the notoriousFire!!, spokesman for the movement, and scandalous bon vivant.Theymarried after a brief courtship and separated six months later.It was at thattime that she came under the influence of Charlotte Mason who employedher as secretary to Hughes and Hurston.Long afterward, Louise Thompson 59White Patronage in the Harlem Renaissancesaid she might have known on her first visit what lay ahead when, nervousand trying to please, she exclaimed at the extravagant bouquet of flowers onthe dining table. Which color do you prefer, my child? she rememberedMrs.Mason asking.When she said she thought the red ones were especiallypretty, Mrs.Mason withered her with a smile: Yes, of course, you wouldprefer red. 9 Godmother, who tried to disguise her suffocating hold onyoung black writers with largesse, only convinced Thompson to break herties, and, she later declared, she convinced Langston Hughes to do the same.But Hughes was a long time in recovering his emotional equilibrium, whileThompson was not.To complete this capsule biography of an extraordinarywoman, she went on to conduct seminars all over the South for theCongregational Education Society; she organized that group of young blackintellectuals who went to Russia to make a movie in Moscow about life inAmerica (which never got made, incidentally); she was deeply involved in theScottsboro Case and the National Committee for Political Prisoners; and sheserved for fifteen years in the International Workers Order.WallaceThurman died in 1934, and in 1940 she married William Patterson who hadbeen lawyer for the Scottsboro boys.But Charlotte Mason had leftpermanent scars, as she had on many of her protégés, and LouiseThompson s bitterness over the disturbing contradiction in patronage thatcould so subtly transform itself into patronizing left her with some disturbingsuspicions about the role of the white supporter [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.One of the most fascinating figures of the Harlem Renaissance, LouiseThompson deserves a biography of her own, and it is not untoward toinclude its outlines here, since the role of the white patron is perhaps moreclearly defined through her than through the better known Hughes andHurston.Louise Thompson brought to the movement an awareness ofracism in its various disguises that strongly influenced her later life as well asthe lives of many of the young black artists and writers with whom she camein contact.Reared in several states as her rover stepfather moved from job to job,Louise Thompson was often the only black child in a town, so that firstexposure to racism was an awareness of isolation.Then at Berkeley, sheencountered it in the form of indifference from her fellow students, white ofcourse, until, awakened to her own potential when W.E.B.Du Bois lecturedthere, she took a teaching job in Arkansas.Her students were barely able toread, in a community where isolation and indifference were too easilyreplaced by racial violence, and her memories of its terrors were still clearsixty years later.In the mid-twenties, she went on to the Hampton Instituteto teach business administration and there encountered another form ofracism, somehow more invidious.A refined racism, as she later called it,hid comfortably behind the mask of white patronage.At the height of the Harlem Renaissance, she was denied the right toany social exchange with her students; black and white faculty memberscould neither publicly nor privately fraternize; and the predominately whiteadministration demanded strict enforcement of social rules from anotherage.At a time when on white campuses F.Scott Fitzgerald coeds rouged theirknees and their male counterparts carried hip flasks, Hampton s blackstudents were not allowed to date.Even weekend movies in the collegechapel required a faculty member as chaperone for every four students.Atthat juncture, Louise Thompson accepted a National Urban Leaguescholarship in New York and began to come in contact with many youngblack intellectuals, among them Wallace Thurman, editor of the notoriousFire!!, spokesman for the movement, and scandalous bon vivant.Theymarried after a brief courtship and separated six months later.It was at thattime that she came under the influence of Charlotte Mason who employedher as secretary to Hughes and Hurston.Long afterward, Louise Thompson 59White Patronage in the Harlem Renaissancesaid she might have known on her first visit what lay ahead when, nervousand trying to please, she exclaimed at the extravagant bouquet of flowers onthe dining table. Which color do you prefer, my child? she rememberedMrs.Mason asking.When she said she thought the red ones were especiallypretty, Mrs.Mason withered her with a smile: Yes, of course, you wouldprefer red. 9 Godmother, who tried to disguise her suffocating hold onyoung black writers with largesse, only convinced Thompson to break herties, and, she later declared, she convinced Langston Hughes to do the same.But Hughes was a long time in recovering his emotional equilibrium, whileThompson was not.To complete this capsule biography of an extraordinarywoman, she went on to conduct seminars all over the South for theCongregational Education Society; she organized that group of young blackintellectuals who went to Russia to make a movie in Moscow about life inAmerica (which never got made, incidentally); she was deeply involved in theScottsboro Case and the National Committee for Political Prisoners; and sheserved for fifteen years in the International Workers Order.WallaceThurman died in 1934, and in 1940 she married William Patterson who hadbeen lawyer for the Scottsboro boys.But Charlotte Mason had leftpermanent scars, as she had on many of her protégés, and LouiseThompson s bitterness over the disturbing contradiction in patronage thatcould so subtly transform itself into patronizing left her with some disturbingsuspicions about the role of the white supporter [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]