Olivia Ward Bush-Banks

Olivia Ward Bush-Banks was a Harlem Renaissance writer who also supported writers and artists, hosted salons, and taught drama courses. She was well-known during her lifetime, but her name recognition has faded over time. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
have another figure who was involved with the Harlem Renaissance
but has not become nearly as well known as a

(00:23):
lot of her peers. Olivia Ward bush Banks was a
writer who also supported writers and artists. I mean she
didn't shouldn't have a lot of a ton of money
to do that with, but with the means that she had,
she tried to support other people. She also hosted salons,
she taught drama courses, and she was well known enough
during her lifetime that when she was mentioned in society

(00:45):
columns and articles about activities that she was involved with,
people wrote about her in a way that suggested that
the readers of the newspaper or the magazine or whatever
would already know who she was. But as of right now,
most of more recent writing about her has not been
things like a full length biography or a historical analysis

(01:07):
in the form of a book. It's been more like
PhD dissertations and the introduction to a collected edition of
her work that came out at this point thirty years
ago as part of a series on nineteenth century black
women writers. In addition to the things that I've already mentioned,
Olivia A. Ward Bush Banks was also a social worker

(01:29):
and a single mom and tribal historian for the Montaucket
nation at a time when that nation had just been
stripped of its lands and its recognition in New York,
all of which we are going to talk about today.
Olivia Ward was born on February eighteen sixty nine in
sag Harbor, New York, on eastern Long Island, and she

(01:49):
was the youngest of Abraham and Eliza Draper Awards three children.
At various points in her life, she wrote autobiographical statements
that describe her parents and their ancestry. In one, she says,
quote both parents possessed some Negro blood, and we're also
descendants of the Montauk tribe of Indians. And in another
she describes her father as quote a mixture of Portuguese,

(02:13):
East Indian and Negro. This is more of a clarification
or a richer level of detail, rather than a contradiction.
A lot of the first enslaved Africans who were taken
to this part of North America had been captured from
Spanish and Portuguese ships. The people aboard had often been
trafficked through the Cape Verde Islands off the western coast

(02:35):
of Africa. These islands were a primary port in the
slave trade, and they were under Portuguese control. The montauk
At nation is described in many historical documents, including ones
by Olivia herself, as the montauk That was the name
that was more commonly used until about the nineteen nineties.
This is an Algonquian speaking nation related to other indigenous

(02:57):
nations on the eastern end of what's now Long Island,
and as well as nations from what's now New England,
including the Peacott and the Narraganset. These nations spoke different
Algonquian dialects that were mutually understandable, and the Montaucket nation
seems to have spoken one that was similar to the
Mohegan Pequot language. A written vocabulary was recorded in the

(03:18):
late eighteenth century, and by the nineteenth century only a
few members of the Montaucket nations still spoke it. It is, however,
one of the Algonquian languages that's part of the Algonquian
Language Revitalization Project Today. Sag Harbor had some parallels to
the community in and around New Bedford, Massachusetts that we
talked about in our episode on Paul Cuffey. Although he

(03:41):
was born more than a century before Olivia Ward was,
both were originally home to indigenous nations who shared their
whaling knowledge with European colonists. The resulting whaling industry in
both places was exploitative, often extremely exploitative, but it was
also possible for people of color to attain more wealth
and status than they could in most other industries. The

(04:04):
Ward family had historically been part of this industry, and
Olivia's father lived with another family that was a key
part of it, starting when he was about fourteen. Another
similarity between sag Harbor and New Bedford, as well as
some other parts of New York and New England, had
to do with demographics. Europeans arriving on what's now Long
Island enslaved indigenous people there, particularly indigenous men. Indigenous men

(04:29):
were also more likely to be killed in warfare, both
warfare between indigenous nations and warfare against Europeans simultaneously. Most
of the enslaved Africans that were brought to the area
were men, so there were more African men, but more
Indigenous women. White Europeans considered both Indigenous and African people

(04:50):
to be a race apart, so it was common for
Indigenous and African people to marry and to have children,
often Indigenous women to African men. By the time Olivia
Ward was born, just a few years after the US
Civil War, many people of color in the area had
biracial or multiracial ancestry. When Olivia was about nine months old,

(05:11):
her mother died and her father moved to Providence, Rhode
Island with her and her siblings. According to family accounts,
Abraham Ward was a member of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints, and in the years just
before Olivia's birth, he had also had another wife named Anne.
There are census records that seemed to back up the
idea that Abraham was in a polygamous marriage, but otherwise

(05:34):
we don't have a whole lot of detail here. However,
there is some interesting speculation about how Latter Day Saints
beliefs about Native Americans being descended from a lost tribe
of Israel might have affected him, including potentially influencing his
decision to join the church. So after this move to Providence,
Abraham remarried in eighteen seventy one, and sometime after that,

(05:57):
Olivia was sent to live with her maternal aunt, Maria Draper,
and her aunt had an enormous influence on her. Mariah
taught Olivia about their indigenous heritage and took her to
pow wows and other gatherings, including on the Shinnecock Reservation
on Long Island. Olivia described her aunt as making sacrifices

(06:17):
for the sake of other people, which had kept her
from being able to get an education for herself. But
Olivia credited Mariah with making sure that she got a
useful practical education. In some accounts, this involves studying nursing
during high school, and in others, Olivia trained to be
a seamstress. In spite of that focus on a practical education,

(06:39):
one of Olivia's great loves from high school was drama.
Her teacher was named Miss Dodge, who ran the Dodge
School of Dramatics. Dodge taught something called behavior drama, and
at this point no one has unearthed clear documentation about
exactly what that meant. Olivia's own notes are pretty sketchy,
and they reference emotion and interpretation of texts. Dodge thought

(07:03):
Olivia was talented enough to give her private lessons, and
Olivia went on to teach this method in her adult
life as a theater kid. I am incredibly curious about
exactly what behavior drama was. For sure. Part of me
is like I bet I could piece this together like
backwards engineer it through like um acting classes I did
in college, for sure. In eighteen eighty nine or eighteen ninety,

(07:28):
when she was twenty or twenty one, Olivia Ward married
Frank Bush, who was a tailor from South Carolina. They
went on to have two daughters, Rosa Olivia and Marie,
but this wasn't a happy marriage for reasons that aren't
really clear. The family moved to Boston, and when they
got there, Frank started working as a janitor. That would
have been a lot less lucrative than working as a tailor.

(07:51):
By Frank and Olivia were divorced, and although Olivia continued
to go by Olivia Ward Bush after this, she just
sscribed this time in her life as quote extremely unfortunate.
Her next few years were hard. She was a single
mother raising two daughters, and because of her race, she
was considered only for low paying and often physically demanding

(08:14):
or demoralizing work. She moved around, including living with her
aunt Maria from time to time, just trying to make
ends meet. When she started writing, it was with the
hope that she might be able to earn some extra
money to support her family. We will get more into
that after a quick sponsor break. Olivia ward Bush's first

(08:43):
book of poems was simply titled Original Poems, and it
was published in Providence, Rhode Island. In it was dedicated
quote with profound reverence and respect to the people of
my race, Afro Americans, but the poems in it also
draw from her indigenous hair as well, including the poem
Mourning on Shinnecock. This is the first poem in the collection,

(09:06):
and in it, a narrator looks out over a grand
and wondrous spectacle of hills, a leafy grove, corn fields,
a sea, before ending quote all morning hour, so dear,
thy joy, and how I longed for thee to last.
But in thy fading in today brought me an echo
of the past towards this. How fair my life began?

(09:28):
How pleasant was its hour of dawn, but merging into
sorrow's day. Then beauty faded with the mourn. We don't
know for sure whether Olivia Ward Bush was active in
the Temperance movement, but the second poem in this book,
titled Treasured Moments, suggests that she at least had a
favorable opinion of it. She characterizes temperance activists as quote

(09:50):
women with hearts true and strong, who dared to face
a great evil, who dared to contend against wrong. Several
poems in this book celebrate figu years from Black history,
including Christmas Addicts, who also had both African and Indigenous ancestry.
We really don't know much about Christmas Addics's biography, but

(10:11):
he's believed to have liberated himself from enslavement before becoming
the first person to be killed at the Boston Massacre
on March five, seventeen seventy. Her poem Christmas Addicts describes
him boldly striking the first blow as other Bostonians shrank
from duty. It ends quote then write in glowing letters,

(10:31):
these thrilling words in history, that Addics was a hero.
That Addics died for liberty. A hero of San Juan
is about the Black infantry and cavalry units known as
the Buffalo Soldiers at the Battle of San Juan Hill
during the Spanish American War. This poem frames the battle
as helping to liberate Cuba from Spain. Quote, they fought

(10:53):
for Cuban liberty on Wuand's Hill. Those bloody stains mark
how these heroes won the day and added honor to
their names. Of course, there is a much bigger story
to the Spanish American War than just this poem, and
we should note that there are some complexities to the
greater story of the Buffalo Soldiers, since earlier in their
history they were also part of the warfare against indigenous

(11:15):
nations during the United States Western Expansion. Yeah, that's one
of the reasons that even though I've had the Buffalo
Soldiers on my list for a long time, I haven't
figured out quite the best approach for it. This book,
containing ten poems in total, was generally well received, and
some of the poems were reprinted in other publications, including
in the Boston Transcript. In a letter, Paul Lawrence Dunbar

(11:38):
told Olivia that he liked it very much and that
quote there is a high spiritual tone about it that
is bound to please. For the next few years, Olivia
Ward Bush continued to write. In about nineteen hundreds, she
became assistant drama director for Robert Gould Shaw Community House,
that was a settlement house in Boston. We talked about

(11:59):
the settlement house movement in our previous episode on Jane Adams.
These were organizations intended to improve the lives of the
poor and working class by providing things like childcare, education,
and social support with the people doing network living in
the neighborhood they were serving. It's probably during this time
that Bush began doing social work. A pamphlet on her

(12:21):
that was published by the n double a CP in
about nineteen twenty describes her as one of the most
prominent social workers in Boston. During these years, Olivia started
supporting her aunt in addition to her two daughters. Her aunt,
at this point was getting much older, and she also
started working as the tribal historian for the Montaukeet Nation.
It's not clear exactly when she started this work, but

(12:43):
she continued until about nineteen sixteen, and as we said
at the top of the show, this was a critically
important time for the preservation of Montaukeet oral histories and
cultural knowledge, because in nineteen ten, the New York Supreme
Court had declared the Montauk tribe extinct, stripping them of
their lands on Long Island. So we need to back

(13:04):
up a little bit to explain this decision. In the
late seventeenth century, the Montaucet Nations sold land to the
proprietors of the village of East Hampton, negotiating the rights
to live on and use that land in perpetuity. But
it's clear the residents of East Hampton hoped that they
would eventually have that land unconditionally. Later agreements that the

(13:27):
Montaukeet Nation and East Hampton negotiated increasingly restricted indigenous people's
rights and land access. Then, in seventeen fifty four, the
trustees of East Hampton got representatives from the Montaukeet Nation
to sign an agreement that the Montauckets would not marry
Africans or people from other indigenous nations. The same agreement

(13:49):
gave the town the rights to prosecute anyone of African
descent or from another indigenous nation who tried to settle there.
The trustees rationale for this was twofold. On Long Island
and elsewhere, white residents worried that if indigenous people's welcomed
people of African descent into their communities, then those communities

(14:10):
would become a haven for people who had liberated themselves
from slavery, or would inspire slave uprisings, and it was
also about trying to keep them on Talket population from
growing or even maintaining itself. Intermarriages were common among the
indigenous nations of this region. They helped each nation maintain
its own population while also strengthening social and political ties

(14:33):
among the nations. The agreement signed in seventeen fifty four
meant that the Montaukeets were allowed to marry only among themselves,
but their population was just too small for that to
be sustainable. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, after decades of
warfare and increasing conflict with East Hampton and pressure from

(14:53):
the town's trustees, a group of Montaukeets who had converted
to Christianity moved to Oneida Land in New York's Mohawk Valley,
establishing the Brothertown Nation. This was a Christian community built
on an alliance of multiple Algonquian speaking indigenous nations, and
it excluded people of African ancestry. There's some suggestion that

(15:16):
at least some Montaukeets had adopted some of the same
anti black attitudes that were held by most Europeans, and
that some of the people who had signed that agreement
back in seventeen fifty four were the same ones who
then left to establish the Brothertown Nation. The Montaukeets who
remained on Long Island after this included people who didn't

(15:37):
want to convert to Christianity, people who had African ancestry,
and people who just did not want to leave their homes.
In some cases, this divided families, was some moving to
Brothertown and some staying behind. But again, the hope from
East Hampton was that everyone in the Montaukeet Nation who
had no African ancestry would go, which was not what happened.

(16:00):
Bent Another side to this is that, in the view
of the people of East Hampton, Montackets who had African
ancestry were not indigenous. They were black, and black and
indigenous were mutually exclusive, and by the eighteen hundreds, the
trustees started using that idea to argue that the Montaukeet

(16:20):
Nation no longer existed and no longer had the land
used rights that they had negotiated back starting in the
seventeenth century. By the late nineteenth century, Montaukets living on
eastern Long Island we're facing enormous hostility from their white neighbors.
In eighteen seventy one, the nation tried to incorporate to
get on a more equal legal footing, but that effort

(16:41):
failed in the face of opposition from East Hampton. Newspaper
coverage from this time was full of racist stereotypes, and
it continually characterized the Montaucket Nation as dying out. Seemingly
every time a member of the nation died, there would
be newspaper articles about the so called Last Montauk. In

(17:02):
eighteen seventy nine, the East Hampton Trustees filed a petition
to partition Montauket Land, which a judge approved, and the
next year, the same judge approved the sale of the
land that totaled about ten thousand acres. Developer Arthur Benson
bought it for a hundred and fifty one thousand dollars.
Benson wanted to work with railroad developer Austin Corbin to

(17:24):
extend an existing railroad line to Montauk Point, but his
purchase of the Montaukeet Nations land wasn't enough for him
to do that. The Nations still had a lease dating
back to seventeen oh three giving them on Tuckets the
rights to live, hunt and fish on the land in perpetuity,
really a lot like their earliest negotiations with European columnists

(17:47):
had done decades before that. So Benson and Corbin brought
in the East Hampton town assessor, Nathaniel Domini to try
to coerce the Montaukets off the land. Dominie to people,
telling them they would be allowed to return to the
land whenever they wanted, even though he knew that was false.
Some people were offered and accepted as little as ten

(18:10):
dollars for their homes, but others refused to sell. Domini
made increasingly lofty promises, things like lifetime annual payments or
paying for an education for people's children. He didn't follow
through on a lot of this, and he probably never
intended to. These negotiations were also illegal since they went

(18:31):
through individual tribal members rather than the nation as a whole.
In eight the Montaucket Nation hired a lawyer, and Benson's
lawyers again put forth that argument that the Montauckets were
black and not indigenous, and therefore were not protected by
that seventeen oh three lease. This argument worked from a
couple of angles. One was the one drop rule, which

(18:55):
was the idea that a person with even one drop
of so called African blood was black, and the other
is the idea of blood quantum, which is basically the
idea that a person has to have a certain amount
of so called native blood to be considered indigenous. Different
indigenous nations have all had their own concepts of what

(19:15):
it means to be indigenous and what it means to
be a citizen, but broadly speaking, the one drop rule
and blood quantum are both ideas that originated from European
colonists and their descendants in order to define who was white,
who was black, and who is indigenous, usually in a

(19:36):
way that's discriminatory and restrictive. Court rulings and appeals went
on for years in the effort to remove the Montaucket
nation from their land, ultimately winding up before the State
Supreme Court. In nineteen ten, State Supreme Court Judge Able
Blackmar issued a ruling that even though the New York
State Constitution forbade the sale of indigenous land. The law

(19:59):
that only applied was the Dongan Charter, which dated back
to sixteen eighty six and had given the City of
Albany the exclusive right to negotiate with Indigenous people. Yeah,
for some reason, the only provisions of the Dongan Charter
that he was really focused on still being in force
were these these ones, the ones that related to people
taking the Montaucant Nations land. Blackmart also stated, quote, there

(20:24):
is now no tribe of Montauk Indians. It has disintegrated
and been absorbed into the massive citizens. If I may
use the expression, the tribe has been dying for many years.
There were a number of Montaukeet people in the courtroom
when he made this statement. I saw numbers ranging between
twenty five and seventy five. The Montaukeet Nation appealed, but

(20:45):
this decision was upheld in nineteen fourteen. So Olivia ward
Bush was acting as the Montaukeet Nation tribal historian in
the wake of all of this. We'll talk some more
about this towards the end of the episode, but for
now we're going to pause for a sponsor break. Unfortunately,

(21:10):
I don't have a lot of additional detail about Olivia
Ward Bush's work as the Montaka Nations tribal historian. But
her second book, Driftwood, was published in nineteen fourteen. This
one was dedicated to her aunt Mariah. Some sources list
this book is having twenty five poems and two prose pieces,
and the others say twenty four and three, probably because

(21:32):
one of the pieces is an anti lynching essay titled
Hope that also includes some verse. This book is arranged
into sections that have an ocean theme, and in the
introduction she talks about watching Italian children gathering driftwood, thinking about, quote,
what a joyous sight it would be as they sat
around the evening fire. And I imagined that the firelight

(21:55):
streaming through the windows would brighten up the way of
some weary homeward travel. In a letter to Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
she also said she'd called it Driftwood because the pieces
in it were quote, bits of experiences cast up on
the shore of my life. This volume contains a poem
titled to the Memory of Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Dunbar had

(22:18):
died in nineteen o six, and this poem has been
compared to Phyllis Wheatley's On the Death of the Reverend
Mr George Whitfield for its subject matter and its tone
and language. Driftwood also includes poems to Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas,
and William Lloyd Garrison. The poem Carney the Brave Standard
Bearer is about Sergeant William H. Carney of the fifty

(22:40):
four Massachusetts Regiment, who was the first black man to
be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that
was at the Battle of Fort Wagner. After being shot
several times and seriously wounded, Carney carried the American flag
to the fort, planted it, and held it upright until
help arrived. It's actually possible that Bush had met Carney.

(23:01):
He lived in Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts, after the
Civil War. This book also includes pieces that are more
like poems of protest. One of them, titled Unchained eighteen
sixty three, celebrates the abolition of slavery, before the tone
shifts to quote free indeed, but free to struggle, free
to toil unceasingly, not of wealth, not of possession, was

(23:23):
their portion iano free. The same year that Driftwood was published,
Olivia Award Bush married Anthony Barrell Banks in Boston, and
then the following year, bush Banks was part of the
city's demonstrations against d. W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation.
This was part of ongoing protests all over the country,

(23:43):
as black communities called for the film to be banned
not just for its racist depictions of black people and
its celebration of the Ku Klex Klan, but also for
its potential to incite racist violence. All of our episodes
overlap a little, so you remember we mentioned Griffith's in
our Todd Browning episodes. I also feel like, as was

(24:04):
the case with the Schaumberg collection, feeling like a tour
of previous episodes of Stephye Miss and History Glass. A
lot of her poems feel like topics that should be
familiar to folks that have been listening to the show
for a long time. Bush Banks organized a protest that
took place on April nineteen fifteen and brought together about
eight hundred black women at twelfth Baptist Church in Boston's

(24:28):
Roxbury neighborhood. This was described as the largest gathering of
black women ever assembled in the city at the time.
Although bush Banks herself could not attend it because she
was sick. At this and other protests around Boston, people
called for Birth of a Nation to be removed from
the city and for Boston Mayor James Michael Curly to

(24:48):
be recalled. Curly had previously banned the production of a
play that, like Birth of a Nation, was based on
the novel The Klansman, but he had allowed the film
to be shown. Black women and in Greater Boston also
established a Protective League Quote for the Maintenance and Protection
of our Civil Rights, and bush Banks was elected as

(25:08):
its president. In the face of this and other demonstrations,
the Massachusetts legislature passed the Sullivan Bill, which banned amusements
that were believed to create religious or racial prejudice or
to incite riot. But when the Censorship Board evaluated Birth
of a Nation after the law was passed, it ruled
that the film was quote not at all objectionable. In

(25:31):
the end, Birth of a Nation played in Boston for
more than six months, with more than three hundred and
sixties showings, and today this film is cited as a
major factor in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
In nineteen fifteen, bush Banks's last published poem came out
in nineteen sixteen. This was on the Long Island Indian,

(25:51):
which was published in the Montaukat Nations Annual Report that year.
This poem draws from tropes and language for Indigenous people
that were in place at the time, while also expressing
a sense of grief. Quote now remains a scattered remnant
on these shores. They find no home here and there,
in weary exile, they are forced through life to Rome.

(26:14):
The only play that bush Banks published came out a
year later. This was a Sunday school play called Memories
of Calvary and Easter Sketch. But other than these two publications,
the poem and the play, we really don't know much
about her life between nineteen fifteen and nineteen twenty. It
seems that after marrying Anthony Banks, she eventually moved to Chicago,
where he got a job as a pullman porter. In

(26:36):
about ninety the n double A CP printed a pamphlet
about bush Banks, headlined lecturer, social worker, writer. It included
quotes from people like Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
as well as publications like The Chicago Plain Dealer. In it,
she's described as a forceful and magnetic speaker, a remarkable

(26:57):
writer and quote possessed of a leasing personality, a sympathetic nature,
with a broad mind and high ideals. At some point,
bush Banks started splitting her time between Chicago and New York.
Over the nineteen twenties and early thirties, she wrote Aunt
Viny's Sketches. This is a collection of twelve sketches featuring

(27:18):
two characters. One of them, Aunt Viney, is in conversation
with the other, who's Miss Ali. Aunt Viney speaks in
black dialect, offering up folk wisdom, humor, and commentary on
things like the Great Depression, the community of Harlem, New York,
and various issues of the day. Bush Banks submitted these
to a radio station, and she started the process of

(27:39):
filing for copyright protection on them, but it doesn't appear
that that process was ever completed, and these pieces weren't
published during her lifetime. In the hands of white writers
in the early twentieth century, these kinds of dialect characters
tended to be racist caricatures that reinforced damaging stereotypes of
black people. But Aunt Viney is assertive, confident, and wise

(28:02):
while not being formally educated. This is one of the
earliest examples of this type of dialect character written by
a black writer. Langston Hughes first introduced his character Jesse
b Simple about six years later. During these years that
were split between Chicago and New York, bush Banks also
wrote a three act play titled Indian Trails or Trail

(28:25):
of the Montauk. Today, only the cast list, a synopsis,
and a few scenes have survived. Most of the characters
in the play are Indigenous, with their names drawn from
indigenous languages from northeastern North America. This play reflects on
the nineteen ten court decision that we discussed earlier, but
in the play it ends with the Montacict Nation's land

(28:47):
being returned to them. This play was performed at Booker T.
Washington High School in Norfolk, Virginia, probably sometime in the
nineteen twenties, as well as when bush Banks took a
tour of the Southeast. Many of a audiences were predominantly black,
and the play essentially served as an introduction to indigenous
issues for non indigenous black people. Fans of the play

(29:10):
included Maggie L. Walker, who was the first black woman
in the US to charter a bank in ninety nine,
bush banks daughter, Rosa Olivia, died at some point that
two of them had become estranged and they hadn't been
able to reconcile by the time of her death. By
the late nineteen twenties, bush Banks had become well known
and well respected in both Chicago and New York, including

(29:33):
becoming a prominent figure in the New Negro movement also
known as the Harlem Renaissance. She was friends and colleagues
with figures like Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du boys A,
Philip Randolph, Julia Ward Howe, and County Cullen. She also
taught drama in both Chicago and New York, in public
schools and in enrichment programs. In Chicago, she established the

(29:56):
bush Bank School of Expression, which was a performance and
meeting space for dance, drama, and visual arts, and she
also hosted salons in her home. In nineteen thirty six,
a society column in the Pittsburgh Courier, which was featuring
happenings in New York, called bush Banks quote the grand
Dame of the Literati, saying quote, there was a time

(30:19):
when her salon was filled of a Sunday evening with
promising young playwrights, poets, novelists, and others fired with the
ambitions of youth. That same year, bush Banks earned a
teacher training certification in New York and she started teaching
drama at the Abyssinia Community Center in Harlem. This continued
until nineteen thirty nine. Bush Banks's work at Abyssinia Community

(30:42):
Center was part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theater Project.
This was a Depression era program meant to provide jobs
for out of work theater professionals. It was disbanded in
ninety nine after a series of investigations by the House
an American Activities Committee, which were brought on in part
by the program's effort toward racial integration and equality. Yeah

(31:05):
there were, also, of course, allegations that it had been
infiltrated by communist radicals, as is pretty much the case
with everything investigated by the House on American Activities Committee.
Bush Bank seems to have had an interest in religion
and spirituality throughout her life, including an interest in the
High Faith, which may have influenced her work. She was

(31:26):
also a member of John Haynes Holmes Community Church in
New York City in the nineteen twenties and early thirties.
Towards the end of her life, she converted to Seventh
Day Adventism. Her daughter Marie and her granddaughter Helen, who
she lived with from time to time while in New York,
had also become Seventh Day Adventists. Olivia Ward Bush Banks
died on April eighth, ninety four, at the age of

(31:48):
seventy five. Most of her papers are housed at the
Amistad Research Center at two Lane University in New Orleans.
Apart from the work that we've talked about in this episode,
plus a couple of their poems and essays, most of
what she wrote went unpublished until and then Oxford University
Press published her collected works. This was part of the

(32:11):
Schaumberg Library of nineteenth century Black Women Writers, and it
was edited and compiled by her great granddaughter, Bernice Elizabeth Forrest.
As of when we are recording this, the Montaucket Nation
is still not recognized by the State of New York
or by the federal government in the United States. The
New York Legislature passed legislation to recognize the nation in

(32:35):
seventeen and eighteen, and then Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed it
each time. Legislation has been reintroduced since twenty eighteen, including
this year. As of right now when we are recording,
legislation has been referred to committee in both the New
York State Assembly and the New York Senate. That's a
frustrating end. Do you have less frustrating listener mail? It

(32:59):
is a frustra rating and I do have listener mail,
and this is just a funny thing to end the
episode on. This is from Carly. Carly said, Hi, Holly
and Tracy. I'm so excited to finally be reaching out
to you guys. My name is Carly and I'm a
high school Spanish teacher. I discovered your podcast a couple
of years ago when starting my masters and it has

(33:21):
been a constant companion throughout the years. At least once
a week I share a factor anecdote I heard in
an episode that is totally interesting to me and may
or may not be totally interesting to the other person.
I wanted to reach out because on my way to
school today I was listening to the episode on William Rice.
At the point in the episode where William is trying
to start a high school in Texas and has met
with the response a quote stating that high school was

(33:44):
quote high salute nonsense. I couldn't help but busting out laughing.
It was so funny to me to hear my career
reduced to such a silly little statement. I then proceeded
to giggle about it at regular intervals throughout the day.
I think as we returned to beginning the school you're
in her, so many teachers held onto the hope that
things would be easier, which has unfortunately not been the case.

(34:06):
Teaching in a mid slash post pandemic world has brought
on an entirely new, unforeseen set of challenges that have
been pushing us all. Thank you for bringing joy, learning,
and a little silliness through this podcast. That has been
my favorite way to unwind after a challenging day as
of late. Best carly ps and sticking with the pet
picks theme of your fan mail, attached to pictures of

(34:27):
mine and my fiance's two for babies, Danny the Dog
and Hank the Cat. Danny and Hank are very cute. Indeed,
Danny the Dog is on the couch, then Danny the
and the and the couch are both brown and um
and It's one of those situations where the dog almost
matches the couch, which is great, and then uh and

(34:48):
then Hank the cat is under what looks like Christmas tree,
little key cap present. It's very good. I love this email.
And I also had forgotten in the interim between recording
that episode and when we got this email that I
had read or one of us had had read this
quote about high school being high falutin nonsense. So when

(35:10):
I saw an email that had the subject line high
falutin nonsense, I had this moment where I was like, Oh,
I was like, oh no, that's the thing we said
on the show. Um, So thank you. I'm so glad
that that that quote brightened your day. And thank you
so much for sending these pet pictures. If you would

(35:32):
like to write to us about this or any other
podcasts were History Podcast at I heart radio dot com.
We're also all over social media at miss and History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
And you can subscribe to the show on the I
heart Radio app or wherever else you get your podcasts.

(35:55):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Radio, visit
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listen to your favorite shows. H m hm