Miriam DeCosta-Willis

Miriam DeCosta-Willis was born Miriam Dolores DeCosta in Florence, Alabama, in 1934.[1][2][3][4] The granddaughter of Zachary Hubert, who had been enslaved in Georgia, Alabama, she was born to a pair of African-American educators.[1][2][5] Her mother, Beautine Hubert DeCosta, had graduated from Spelman College and Atlanta University, and her father, Frank A. DeCosta, held degrees from Lincoln University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She and her brother, Frank, grew up on the college campuses across Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina where her parents worked.[1]

DeCosta first became engaged in activism as a child, staging a student protest as a junior at Wilkinson High School.[1][3][6] In 1950, she became the first Black student to attend Westover School, a college prep school in Connecticut, where she was known as "Laurie."[1][2] She had been chosen by local advocates to integrate the school because she seemed like the kind of "nice Negro girl" whom Westover would be hard-pressed to reject.[6]

She then attended Wellesley College, where she excelled academically, beginning in 1952.[1][2][7] At the women's college, she was one of only a handful of Black students at the time.[7] In 1955, she participated in the Montgomery bus boycott while visiting her mother in Alabama; observing her mother's own activism would have a lasting impact on her.[1][7][8][9] During her junior year at Wellesley, she married the civil rights lawyer Russell Sugarmon, and they moved to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, after she graduated in 1956.[1][5][7] The couple had four children between 1956 and 1964: Tarik, Elena, Erika, and Monique.[1]

Her four-decade-long career as a college professor and administrator began in 1957, when she was hired to teach French at LeMoyne College.[1][2] That year, she sought to pursue graduate studies at Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis, but was denied admission due to her race.[2][5][7][8][9] Instead, she applied to Johns Hopkins University under her husband's name, Sugarmon, and was accepted under the assumption that she was Jewish, although the admissions officer still questioned whether a "good Jewish wife and mother" would actually leave home and enroll.[6] She graduated from Johns Hopkins with a master's degree in 1960 and PhD in Romance languages in 1967.[1][9] She was one of the first Black women to earn a doctorate at Johns Hopkins.[2][4][5]

As an academic, DeCosta-Willis was particularly engaged in African, Caribbean, African-American, Afro-Latino, and Latin American literature and culture, traveling across the Americas and to Ghana and Spain for research, and serving as associate editor of SAGE: A Scholarly Journal of Black Women and on the editorial board of the Afro-Hispanic Review.[1][4] Howard University associate dean James Davis described her as "the godmother of Afro-Hispanic literature and culture."[3] She also conducted research on the history of Memphis' African-American community.[1] In addition to dozens of articles and reviews, she wrote, edited, or co-edited 15 books.[1][5][7][9] Notable works included Blacks in Hispanic Literature: A Collection of Critical Essays (1977), Erotique Noire / Black Erotica (1992), The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1995), Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers (2003), Notable Black Memphians (2008), and Black Memphis Landmarks (2010).[1][3][7][8]

In 2011, DeCosta-Wills donated her personal archive to the Memphis Public Library.[8] The University of Memphis dedicated a historical marker and renamed a building in her honor in December 2020.[5][7][9] She died the following month, at her home in Memphis, aged 86.[2][4][5][9]

• A 2003 oral history interview with Miriam DeCosta-Willis
• The Miriam DeCosta-Willis Collection at the Memphis Public Library