Scope and Content Note
The papers of Faith Berry (1939-2017), excluding research material, cover the period 1963-2009, with the bulk of the collection dating from 1971 to 1983. The papers concern Berry's research on the life and literary career of poet Langston Hughes, her collaboration with pioneering African American literature scholar J. Saunders Redding on an anthology of his works, her membership on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored (NAACP) Task Force on Africa (1976-1977), and her work as a television scriptwriter. Berry's involvement in the women's movement is also documented, principally her membership on the President's Advisory Committee for Women, her contract work with the Department of Labor Women's Bureau (1979-1980), and her attendance at the United Nations Decade for Women Mid-Decade Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark (1980). The collection is organized into two parts. Further description of each part follows.
Part I
Part I, excluding research material, spans the years 1963-1984, and is organized into five series: Langston Hughes , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Task Force on Africa , Women's Issues , Kissinger in Retrospect , and Oversize .
The Langston Hughes series consists in part of files generated through Berry's decade-long research on the poet's life and work. The Langston Hughes (1901-1967) files include correspondence, photocopies of research material, a program from a memorial service, and various articles written by Berry about Hughes. Correspondence consists of letters to federal, state, and local agencies concerning Hughes's birth and possible marriage, his parents' marriage, the death of an infant sibling, and his father's life after separating from Hughes's mother. Correspondence also includes Berry's Freedom of Information Act requests for documents located among the State Department records at the National Archives and Records Administration concerning Hughes's alleged communist activities. Photocopied material includes a lengthy run of correspondence between Hughes and Rinehart and Company publishers between 1953 and 1960. Berry received access to this correspondence from Theodore S. Amussen, a former vice-president of the company and later editor-in-chief at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Finally, the research files include an original program from a memorial service for Hughes held on 25 May 1967 at the Benta Funeral Home in Harlem.
Berry's research culminated in the publication of Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem in 1983, and her papers include published reviews, a certificate of copyright registration, and a copyedited manuscript of the book. While researching and publishing on Hughes's life, Berry worked to promote public awareness and appreciation of the poet within the Washington, D.C., community and beyond. The collection includes a script from a 1979 radio program honoring Hughes, written, narrated, and produced by Berry. Also included are two District of Columbia City Council resolutions honoring Hughes, which were passed in 1979 and 1982 largely through Berry's efforts.
The second series concerns Berry's membership between 1976 and 1977 on NAACP Task Force on Africa . The NAACP board of directors created the task force in September 1976, commissioning it to conduct a thorough study of current conditions in Africa and to advise the board in the creation of an African policy. Berry was selected as a member of the task force in part because of her expertise in the field of communications. Organized into four teams, the task force visited southern African countries during the spring of 1977 in order to meet with African leaders and gather firsthand information. Berry visited Botswana, Rhodesia, Tanzania, and Zambia as a member of the team chaired by Franklin Williams, president of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and former United States ambassador to Ghana.
Papers relating to the task force document the group's organization and activities and include correspondence, memoranda, drafts of reports, minutes, itineraries, photographs, and newspaper clippings. Subject files , consisting largely of printed matter, provide background information on Africa in general and the countries visited by the Williams team specifically. Printed material includes publications from the African Fund and the American Committee on Africa; government publications made available to the task force by the African countries visited; and material published by various African nationalist organizations such as the United African National Council, the Zimbabwe African National Union, and the Zimbabwe United People's Organization. The subject files also contain photocopies of official correspondence and reports, transcripts of interviews, and miscellaneous printed matter documenting Berry's research on African media as well as original pamphlets, information sheets, and application forms she collected on American mercenaries employed in the Rhodesian army.
The Women's Issues series concerns Berry's involvement in the women's movement through her employment with the President's Advisory Committee for Women (PACW) and her contract work with the Department of Labor Women's Bureau between 1979 and 1980. The PACW, chaired by Lynda Johnson Robb, was established by Jimmy Carter in 1979 to serve as heir to the National Advisory Committee for Women, formerly headed by Bella S. Abzug. Berry served as media coordinator for the PACW from July 1979 until March 1980, a tenure represented in the Women's Issues series by correspondence, memoranda, minutes, proposals, and newspaper clippings. Following her resignation from PACW, Berry undertook contract work for the Department of Labor Women's Bureau where she wrote speeches for the bureau's director, Alexis M. Herman, and oversaw various press and media projects. Memoranda, proposals, invoices, and drafts of speeches document her work for the bureau.
In 1980 Berry attended the United Nations Decade for Women Mid-Decade Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, as a representative of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) to the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) Forum. Immediately before traveling to Copenhagen, Berry visited Morocco as the NCNW's representative in the Transcentury Women-to-Women exchange program. The Women's Issues series contains brochures, programs, schedules, reports, notes, press releases, and newspaper clippings from the Mid-Decade conference, the NCNW Second International Seminar, and the Transcentury Women-to-Women program.
Subject files complete the Women's Issues series. These consist largely of research materials, including newspaper clippings, magazine articles, papers, reports, notes, and miscellaneous printed matter on such issues as education, employment, the Equal Rights Amendment, military, minority women, and social security. Various women's conferences between 1976 and 1982 are documented through programs, proceedings, newspaper clippings, reports, and memoranda. More than half of these conferences focused specifically on minority women.
Printed ephemera scattered throughout the Women's Issues series provides insight into the women's movement between 1976 and 1982. Brochures, leaflets, and pamphlets reveal how women organized themselves on the local, national, and international levels and document issues of greatest concern. The PACW files include an unpublished, in-house directory of more than 275 women's organizations in existence between 1979 and 1980. The directory consists of detailed information sheets on the nature and services of each organization and occasionally includes publications and other printed material issued by the organization. Printed ephemera collected by Berry in Copenhagen during the Mid-Decade Conference includes material on communications, education, feminism, health, child care, peace, ecology, human rights, politics, violence, and work. Some of these materials are organized by subject, while other files pertaining to a specific country or region are arranged alphabetically by place of origin. More than thirty-five countries or regions are represented. Finally, the Women's Issues subject files include printed matter from more than sixty women's organizations and publications in the United States. This material is arranged alphabetically by name of organization or publication.
The penultimate series, Kissinger in Retrospect , consists of a working script for a documentary program produced by WETA/TV-FM public television in Washington, D.C., which first aired in 1977. Berry served as a researcher for the script, written by Stanley Karnow, which examined the political career of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
The final series of Part I consists of an Oversize consisting of a resolution of the District of Columbia City Council recognizing Berry's work towards promoting public awareness and appreciation of Langston Hughes within the Washington, D.C. community, and posters pulled from the Women's Issues series.
Notable correspondents in the collection include Theodore M. Berry, Broadus N. Butler, Alexis M. Herman, Franklin Williams, and Margaret Bush Wilson.
Part II
Part II spans, excluding research material, 1970-2009 and is organized into four series: Langston Hughes, J. Saunders Redding, Miscellany, and Oversize.
This Langston Hughes series in Part II supplements and expands on material in the Langston Hughes series of Part I. This Langston Hughes series includes files, mostly correspondence, on the two literary executors of the Langston Hughes estate, playwright and theater founder George Houston Bass, and poet Arna Bontemps. Also part of the series are files on Hughes's friends and associates Berry talked to, corresponded with, or researched while preparing Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem, and persons she consulted while writing the book; including Edmund Randolph Biddle, Maxin Lieber, Hollis Ralph Lynch, Charlotte Osgood Mason, Louis Thompson Patterson, Ted Posten, Harold Rome, Elsie Roxborough, Marie Seton, Ella Winter, and Thomas Wirth.
Berry did two stints, in 1987 and 1992, as guest editor of the Langston Hughes Review, a publication of the Langston Hughes Society founded after the poet's death by George Houston Bass. Her first editorial product for the Review was a 1987 commemorative issue entirely focused on Hughes himself. Writers whose articles she edited for this issue include George Houston Bass, J. F. Briere, Victor Carrabino, Michel Fabre, Ellen Conroy Kennedy, Takao Kitamura, Nancy Morejon, Ugo Rubeo, and Amritjit Singh.
The 1992 commemorative issue of the Langston Hughes Review that Berry edited was entirely focused on pioneering African American literary critic, professor, and fellow Cincinnatian Darwin T. Turner (1931-1991), who took out of favor Black writers, such as poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar and historical novelist Frank Yerby, as serious subjects worthy of criticism. Writers Berry worked with for the issue include J. R. Berry, James C. Hall, Mae Henderson, Wilfred D. Samuels, Fred L. Standly, and Zelma R. West.
Throughout the Langston Hughes series are files related to Berry's search for Hughes's more radical and socially critical poems and prose in obscure literary magazines to solidify Hughes's reputation as a revolutionary writer. Berry's findings were published as Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writings of Social Protest in two editions (1973 and 1992). Prominent among Hughes's protest writings was his 1932 book Scottsboro Limited. A file in this series includes this book and material relating to efforts to free the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black youths unjustly charged with raping two white women on a freight train in Alabama.
The Part II Langston Hughes series also includes his Federal Bureau of Investigation case file, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, that delves into Hughes's alleged Communist activities, affiliations, and sympathies. A related file includes Berry's correspondence with FBI officials, notably Director Clarence M. Kelley.
The J. Saunders Redding series includes material Berry compiled as editor of A Scholar's Conscience, an anthology of Redding's writings published in 1991. This includes correspondence, drafts, and, notably, writings Berry did not select for the book. J. Saunders Redding (1906-1988), considered the dean of African American literary critics, was a writer, educator, and, when appointed a visiting professor at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, in 1947, the first African American to teach in the Ivy League. In 1970, he became the first African American to hold an endowed chair at an Ivy League institution, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
The Miscellany series documents Berry's association with two writers' groups, the National Writers Union and Washington Independent Writers. The series also includes Berry's writings for English and French language publications such as Cosmopolitan, Crisis, Freedomways, Harper's Bazaar, Jeune Afrique, The Nation, Negro Digest, The New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Pariscope, and Washingtonian.
The Oversize series of Part II consists of two photographs of Hughes from the 1930s, with a child in the Soviet Union and with a German Shepherd dog on a beach, respectively.