Scope and Content Note
The papers of Melvin Beaunorus Tolson (1898-1966) span the years 1932 to 1975, with the bulk of the material dated 1940-1966. The collection consists primarily of literary manuscripts and drafts, along with correspondence and notes which relate to literary matters. There are very few papers which deal with Tolson's career as a college professor, drama and debate coach, mayor of Langston, Oklahoma, or Tolson family history. The papers are organized into the following series: General Correspondence , Subject File , Writings File , and Addition .
The collection provides source material on Tolson's works and on the literary, artistic, and social legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. Since Tolson was born in 1898 and came of age as a poet along with the rise of black consciousness throughout the world, his papers represent a synthesis of the African-American experience of self definition and ethnic cultural expression in early to mid-twentieth century America. Tolson's papers often focus on race relations, African-American art and artists, and related social issues.
The General Correspondence series includes letters of a personal and professional nature. There is no family correspondence and only a few drafts of letters written by Tolson. Selected correspondents are listed for each folder and include Horace Mann Bond, William K. Flowers, Herbert Hill, Langston Hughes, Albert Y. Lansdowne, Dudley Randall, Karl Jay Shapiro, Jacob Steinburg, Allen Tate, and Ida Frances Wilson.
The Subject File consists primarily of printed material concerning organizations, conferences, colleges, universities, and individuals having a professional relationship with Tolson. Included in this series are address books and Tolson's miscellaneous notes of a biographical nature. Some entries appear in both the Subject File and the General Correspondence , for example, "Liberia" and "Langston Hughes."
The Writings File concerns Tolson's literary works in drama, fiction, poetry, and, to a lesser extent, in speeches and essays. The bulk of the series, and almost half of the entire collection, consists of poetry and related material. Multiple versions of the poetry trace the creative process of Tolson's art. One long work in particular, Libretto for the Republic of Liberia, exists in eight complete drafts plus numerous fragmentary drafts and notes which document the poem's stylistic and structural development. There are also numerous drafts of Tolson's major poetic work, Harlem Gallery, but the sequence is not as readily apparent as that of the Libretto. An unpublished book-length manuscript of poems completed in the mid-1930s, called "A Gallery of Harlem Portraits," preceded Harlem Gallery, published thirty years later in 1965. "A Gallery of Harlem Portraits," edited by Robert M. Farnsworth, was published in 1979. Material relating to this and other Farnsworth publications is in the Addition to the papers, as is a copy of Tolson's Columbia University master's thesis, "The Harlem Group of Negro Writers," 1940.
The Writings File also includes several unpublished plays and novels, both in finished and preliminary form. His longest novel, "All Aboard!" portrays the heroism of a Pullman porter. Tolson's plays, speech notes, and essays explore the subtleties of race relations.
The Addition includes material received by the Library after 1976, the largest part in 1995 from Robert M. Farnsworth, professor of English at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Miscellaneous material added to the collection in 1984 is organized as general correspondence, subject file, and writings file to conform with the arrangement established for the Tolson Papers. Family papers are included in the subject file.
Farnsworth compiled and edited two books of Tolson's writings, A Gallery of Harlem Portraits (Columbia, Mo., 1979) and Caviar and Cabbage: Selected Columns by Melvin B. Tolson from the Washington Tribune (Columbia, Mo., 1982), and wrote a biography, Melvin B. Tolson, 1898-1966: Plain Talk and Poetic Prophecy (Columbia, Mo., 1984). In the course of his research, Farnsworth corresponded with Tolson's family, academic and literary colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and former students. He acquired a typewritten copy a Tolson play, "Black No More," which had been lost, and copies of early poems and stories printed in school publications. He copied documents from his correspondents and from libraries, thus amassing a research file which adds documentation on the poet's life and supplements existing material in the collection.
Farnsworth's research file is organized in two groups as Farnsworth documents and Tolson documents. The Farnsworth documents include correspondence and notes about Tolson. The Tolson documents include original material by Tolson or from his family. Some of the documents are photoreproductions. The Tolson documents are organized in accordance with the first three series of the collection as correspondence, subject file, and writings file. Material relating to the Tolson family is in the correspondence and subject file.