Brenda Ray Moryck

Brenda (Estelle) Ray Moryck (1892-1945) was an American writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Brenda Ray Moryck
A yearbook photograph of a young African-American woman. Her hair is dressed in an updo with combs at the crown.
Brenda Ray Moryck, from the 1916 Wellesley College yearbook
Born(1892-06-13)June 13, 1892
Newark, New Jersey, US
Died(1945-12-06)December 6, 1945[1]
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Other namesBrenda Moryck Francke (after 1930)
Occupation(s)Writer, teacher
RelativesCordelia Ray (great-aunt); Charlotte E. Ray (great-aunt); Charles Bennett Ray (great-great-grandfather)

Early life and education

Brenda Ray Moryck was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1892[2],[3] the daughter of John W. Moryck and Sarah Rose Ray Moryck. Her father owned a saloon and her mother was an educator and clubwoman.[4][5][6] Though Brenda wrote that her great-grandfather was Charles Bennet Ray , her mother's death record gives Adam Ray and Sarah Closson as Brenda's maternal grandparents.[6][7][8][9] Multiple records for Adam Ray state that his father was Adam Ray Sr., not Charles Ray.[10][11][12]

William Ashby wrote, "John Moryck [had] a saloon on Academy Street. He lived on Kearney Street. Moryck had an unusual daughter, Brenda. She graduated from Barringer High School, and won a scholarship at Wellsley College, certainly the first Negro girl from Newark to attend a prestigious white school."[4]

Moryck completed a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1916, the only black graduate in her class.[13] She earned a master's degree in English literature from Howard University in 1926.[14]

Career

Moryck worked for the Newark Bureau of Charities after college, and taught physical culture at a technical school in Bordentown.[15][16] She taught English and drama at Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, D.C. during the 1920s.[17] She wrote essays and stories published in The Crisis, Opportunity, and other national periodicals and newspapers.[18][19][20] She was also a drama critic for the New York Age,[21] and wrote at least one play, The Christmas Spirit, performed at Armstrong high school in 1927. She was active in the National Urban League, the Harlem YWCA,[22] and the NAACP in New York.[14] She was also an avid golfer.[23]

Moryck's writings are associated with the Harlem Renaissance[24][25] and have been included in several recent anthologies, among them The new Negro: Readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938 (2007), edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Gene Andrew Garrett,[26] Double-take: A revisionist Harlem Renaissance anthology (2001), edited by Venetria K. Patton and Maureen Honey, Harlem's Glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950 (1996), edited by Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph,[27] and Speech & power: The African-American essay and its cultural content, from polemics to pulpit (1992). edited by Gerald Early.[28] She had an unpublished novel in manuscript at the time of her death.

Personal life

Moryck married twice. Her first husband was Lucius Lee Jordan; they married in 1917 and he died before their first anniversary.[9] She married Robert Beale Francke in 1930. She had a daughter, Elizabeth (Betty) Osborne Francke,[5][29] and a foster daughter, Julia Wormley.[30][31] She died in 1945, in Massachusetts.[3][32][33][34] She had been scheduled to meet up with her daughter who was in boarding school in Albany, New York.[32]

References

  1. "Mrs. John W Moryck Dies Here In 80th Year; Of Old Family". New York Age. Jan 24, 1942.
  2. "New Jersey Births and Christenings, 1660-1980". FamilySearch.
  3. Williams, Noelle Lorraine (2020-09-14). "The Incredible Legacy of Newark's Black Women Activists". Zócalo Public Square. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
  4. Ashby, William M. (William Mobile) (1972-02-16). Reflections on the Life of Negroes in Newark.
  5. "Mrs. John W. Moryck Dies Here in 80th Year; Of Old Family". The New York Age. 1942-01-24. p. 4. Retrieved 2021-03-01 via Newspapers.com.
  6. "Our Prize Winners and What they Say of Themselves". Opportunity. 4: 189. June 1926.
  7. ""New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch". FamilySearch.
  8. "D-M-1942-0001580". Historical Vital Records The New York City Municipal Archives.
  9. Roses, Lorraine Elena; Randolph, Ruth Elizabeth (1990). Harlem : renaissance and beyond : literary biographies of 100 black women writers, 1900-1945. Internet Archive. Boston, Mass. : G.K. Hall. ISBN 978-0-8161-8926-7.
  10. "Adam Ray Jr". New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949.
  11. "New Jersey, Marriages, 1670-1980". FamilySearch.
  12. "New Jersey Marriages, 1678-1985". FamilySearch.
  13. "Our Graduates". The Crisis: 121. July 1916.
  14. "Wellesley Celebrates the Legacy of Some of Its Earliest Black Students During Black History Month". Wellesley College. February 28, 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-09-26. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
  15. "Bordentown Industrial". The New York Age. 1917-06-07. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-03-01 via Newspapers.com.
  16. "12 Graduate from Industrial School". Trenton Evening Times. 1917-06-01. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-03-02 via Newspapers.com.
  17. "School Orators Reach Semi-Finals". Evening Star. 1927-03-15. p. 45. Retrieved 2021-03-01 via Newspapers.com.
  18. Judith Musser, ed. (2011). "Girl, colored" and other stories : a complete short fiction anthology of African American women writers in the Crisis magazine, 1910-2010. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-4606-3. OCLC 630498177.
  19. Sondra K. Wilson, National Urban League, ed. (1999). Opportunity reader : stories, poetry, and essays from the Urban League's Opportunity magazine. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75379-6. OCLC 41889049.
  20. Austin, Addell P. (1988). "The "Opportunity" and "Crisis" Literary Contests, 1924-27". CLA Journal. 32 (2): 235–246. ISSN 0007-8549. JSTOR 44322018.
  21. "Harlem Experimental Theatre Gives 3 Plays". The New York Age. 1931-05-02. p. 6. Retrieved 2021-03-02 via Newspapers.com.
  22. "Rabbi Lyons to Speak at Brooklyn Y.W.C.A." The New York Age. 1929-03-16. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-03-01 via Newspapers.com.
  23. McDaniel, Pete (2000). Uneven Lies: The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf. American Golfer. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-888531-36-7.
  24. Black women of the Harlem Renaissance era. Lean'tin L. Bracks, Jessie Carney Smith. Lanham. 2014. ISBN 978-0-8108-8543-1. OCLC 894554745.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  25. Caughie, Pamela L. (September 2012). ""The best people": The Making of the Black Bourgeoisie in Writings of the Negro Renaissance". Modernism/Modernity. 20 (3): 519–537. doi:10.1353/mod.2013.0064. S2CID 144761198.
  26. Gates, Henry Louis; Jarrett, Gene Andrew (2007). The new Negro: readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. OCLC 608490813.
  27. Roses, Lorraine Elena; Randolph, Ruth Elizabeth (1996). Harlem's glory : Black women writing, 1900-1950. Internet Archive. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-37269-6.
  28. Speech & power : the African-American essay and its cultural content, from polemics to pulpit. Internet Archive. Hopewell, NJ : Ecco Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-88001-264-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  29. Letter from Brenda Moryck Francke to W. E. B. Du Bois, October 14, 1941, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
  30. "C. C. S. Girls Meet in Staten Island". The New York Age. 1930-04-12. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-03-02 via Newspapers.com.
  31. "United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch.
  32. "Summer Resident of Stockbridge Dies in Hospital". The Berkshire County Eagle. 1945-12-12. p. 24. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  33. "Records of Evergreen Cemetery (by email correspondence to Noelle Lorraine Williams)". Evergreen Cemetery | Hillside, New Jersey 07205. 2020-03-28. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  34. "Brenda M. Francke Noted School Teacher Dies From Pneumonia". New York Age. December 15, 1945. p. 4.
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