Scope and Content Note
The papers of Rayford Whittingham Logan (1897-1982) span the years 1925-1982, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the periods 1926-1933 and 1940-1982. Logan, an African American raised in the segregated city of Washington, D. C., was concerned with the indignities and impositions of what he viewed as separate but unequal citizenship and devoted his career to the study of Africans and African Americans. His frustration with racial inequality was a recurring theme throughout his life, as reflected in his diaries, which, kept for over forty years, form the chief research component of this collection. Since Logan did not preserve much of his correspondence other than scattered cards and letters found in his diaries and in small groupings, his diaries provide the only continuous record of his impressions and activities.
These papers are divided into three categories, Family Papers, Diaries and Related Material, and General Correspondence. The Family Papers consist of correspondence between Logan and his wife, Ruth, detailing their courtship and early marriage, as well as scattered correspondence from later years. Get-well cards addressed to Ruth during her illness in 1964 and sympathy cards addressed to Logan upon his wife's death in 1966 make up the remainder of the personal correspondence. A small biographical file containing assorted information regarding Logan is also included in the Family Papers.
The Diaries and Related Material File contains diaries that Logan maintained between 1940 and his death in 1982. Diary entries are frequent and lengthy except for those dated near the end of his life, which, though less frequent, are also highly detailed. Loose items have been culled from the diary volumes and filed as related material adjacent to the diaries from which they were removed. Most of the volumes were commercially printed to serve as diaries for specific years, containing one page per day of the year and with covers bearing but one printed year date. Logan generally disregarded the printed dates and did not confine his daily passages to the pages bearing their preprinted dates, nor did he limit himself to one year per volume. Most volumes contain multiple years, of which the year date stamped on the cover is usually the first.
Logan sometimes recorded events predating his diaries, including his army service in France during World War I, the Pan-African movement of the 1920s and 1930s, Haitian diplomatic soirées, speaking engagements, and travels. After 1940, he related events as they occurred. Accounts describe his attendance at various United Nations activities, including its founding conference in San Francisco in 1945, his meetings with African independence leaders Kwame (Francis) Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamidi Azikiwe of Nigeria, and his career at Howard University. He frequently mentioned Mordecai W. Johnson, longtime Howard president, and his colleagues on the faculty.
The General Correspondence File contains correspondence to and from Logan and his wife, but consists mostly of letters from A. S. B. Olver and Roger William Riis and Betty Riis. Included is a handwritten letter to Ruth Logan from African-American composer Harry Burleigh expressing pleasure that she was performing one of his pieces and suggesting another that might better suit her vocal range.