American poet (1901–1927)
Clarissa Mae Scott, from the cover of The Crisis (July 1923)
Clarissa Scott Delany , nee Clarissa Mae Scott (1901–1927) was an African-American poet, essayist, educator and social worker associated with the Harlem Renaissance .[ 1]
Life
Clarissa Mae Scott was the daughter of Emmett Jay Scott, secretary to Booker T. Washington , and Elenor Baker Scott. She was born and grew up in Tuskegee , Alabama , and was educated at Bradford Academy and Wellesley College , joining Delta Sigma Theta [ 2] and graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1923. After travelling in France and Germany , she taught for three years at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. While in Washington she attended Georgia Douglas Johnson 's literary salon, the Saturday Nighters Club.[ 3]
Scott's four published poems are unusual in that she does not discuss specific struggles, but speaks more allegorically. Her work was positively received by Alice Dunbar-Nelson , Angeline Weld Grimké , and W. E. B. Du Bois .[ 2]
In 1926 Scott married the attorney Hubert Thomas Delany , and they moved to New York City . She worked as a social worker , collecting statistics for a "Study of Delinquent and Neglected Negro Children" in New York City with the National Urban League and the Women's City Club . In 1927 she died of kidney disease ,[ 3] after experiencing six months of a streptococcal infection.[ 2]
American author, professor and literary critic Samuel R. Delany is her nephew.[ 4]
Works
Poems
"Solace", in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life , 1925
"Joy", in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life , 1926
"The Mask", in Palms , 1926
"Interim", in Countee Cullen , ed., Caroling Dusk : An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets , 1927
Essays
References
^ Eleanor Dore, "Clarissa M. Scott Delany (1901–1927)" , dclibrary.org. Accessed May 21, 2013.
^ a b c Roses, Lorraine Elena; Ruth Elizabeth Randolph (January 1, 1990). Harlem Renaissance and beyond: literary biographies of 100 Black women writers, 1900–1945 . Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall. ISBN 0816189269 .
^ a b Gates, Henry Louis ; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (2009). Harlem Renaissance Lives: From the African American National Biography . Oxford University Press. pp. 154–6. ISBN 978-0-19-538795-7 . Retrieved May 21, 2013 .
^ Moskowitz, Sam (2021-04-01). "Samuel 'Chip' Delany, Author and Genius" . Village Preservation . Retrieved 2022-03-09 .
External links
International National Other