Eloise Bibb Thompson

Eloise Bibb Thompson (June 26, 1878 – January 8, 1928) was an American educator, playwright, poet, and journalist. She married fellow journalist and activist Noah D. Thompson.[1]

Eloise Bibb Thompson, from a 1919 publication.

Early life

Eloise Alberta Veronica Bibb was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Catherine Adele Brian Bibb and Charles H. Bibb. Her father was a federal customs inspector. She trained as a teacher at New Orleans University, then attended Oberlin Academy from 1899 to 1901.[2] She graduated from Howard University in 1907. She pursued further studies throughout her life, at Columbia University, University of Southern California, and New York University.[3]

Career

Eloise Bibb taught school in New Orleans as a young woman. Bibb's first book of 26 poems was published in Boston in 1895. From 1908 to 1911 she worked as head resident at the Social Settlement House affiliated with Howard University. Howard University president Wilbur P. Thirkield said, "She is a woman who has accomplished a hard task of colored settlement work by putting her heart in it and her life under it and wrought wonderful results."[4]

She moved to Los Angeles, California with her new husband in 1911, and wrote for various publications there, including the Los Angeles Tribune, Morning Sun Out West, and Tidings (published by the Diocese of Los Angeles). She was also active in the Catholic Women's Clubs of Los Angeles. The Thompsons were considered members of the "Ink Slingers" literary circle in Los Angeles.[5][6][7]

Eloise Bibb Thompson's A Reply to the Clansman (1915) was a screenplay in response to the film Birth of a Nation.[8][9] She wrote at least four plays: A Friend of Democracy (1920), Caught (1920), Africanus (1922, about the lofe of Marcus Garvey; it was directed by Olga Grey),[10] and Cooped Up (1924), and she was associated with the National Ethiopian Art Theatre in New York.[11][12][13]

Personal life

Eloise Bibb married editor and fellow writer Noah Davis Thompson in 1911, in Chicago.[4] The couple moved from Los Angeles to New York in 1927, for his work in publishing. She died there from cancer early in 1928 at Edgecombe Sanitarium aged 49 years. She had first sought treatment for cancer in Vienna in 1914.[8]

References

1. "March 1933 Noah D Thompson obit". Newspapers.com.
2. "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance". Infobase Publishing. May 4, 2003 – via Google Books.
3. "An Honor to Womankind: Eloise Bibb Thompson (Poet, Journalist, Playwright, Social Worker, Laywoman)", CreoleGen.org (May 23, 2014).
4. "Eloise A. Bibb and Noah D. Thompson" Washington Bee (August 19, 1911): 5. via Newspapers.com
5. Lorraine Elena Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, eds, Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950 (Harvard University Press, 1996): 530–531. ISBN 9780674372696
6. Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Times Mirror Printing 1919): 130, 253–254.
7. "Survey of the Month", Opportunity (December 1926): 398.
8. "Eloise Bibb Thompson, Playwright, Author, Dead After Long Illness", New York Age (January 14, 1928): 10. via Newspapers.com
9. "A Playwright" Opportunity (February 1925): 63–64.
10. "The Looking Glass", The Crisis (April 1922): 275.
11. Heather Martin, "National Ethiopian Art Theater" in Cary D. Wintz, Paul Finkelman, eds., Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: K-Y (Taylor & Francis, 2004): 868. ISBN 9781579584580
12. Jean Fagan Yellin, The Pen is Ours: A Listing of Writings by and about African-American Women (Oxford University Press, 1991): 163. ISBN 9780195062038.
13. Bernard L. Peterson, Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers: A Biographical Directory and Catalog of Plays, Films, and Broadcasting Scripts (Greenwood Publishing, 1990): 181–182. ISBN 9780313266218.

External links

• A 1922 letter from Eloise Bibb Thompson and Noah D. Thompson to W. E. B. DuBois, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.
• A poem by Eloise Bibb Thompson, "After Reading Bryant's Lines to a Waterfowl" (1924), in Maureen Honey, ed., Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance (Rutgers University Press, 1989). ISBN 9780813514208
• A short story by Eloise Bibb Thompson, "Masks" (1927), appears in Judith Musser, ed., "Tell It to Us Easy" and Other Stories: A Complete Short Fiction Anthology of African American Women Writers in Opportunity Magazine (1923–1948) (McFarland 2011): 79–83, ISBN 9781476609942. It is also included in Lorraine Elena Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, eds, Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950 (Harvard University Press, 1996): 38–44, ISBN 9780674372696.