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Brenda Ray Moryck

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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

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

Early life and education

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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] Moryck was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and was active in the Tau Omega chapter.

Career

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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

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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

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  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. ^ a b 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. ^ a b Ashby, William M. (William Mobile) (1972-02-16). Reflections on the Life of Negroes in Newark.
  5. ^ a b "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. ^ a b "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. ^ a b Roses, Lorraine Elena; Randolph, Ruth Elizabeth (1990). Harlem : renaissance and beyond : literary biographies of 100 black women writers, 1900-1945. 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. ^ a b "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. 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. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-88001-264-5.
  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. ^ a b "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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