View source for Ellen Tarry

{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
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| name        = Ellen Tarry
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| birth_date   = {{birth date|1906|9|26}}
| birth_place  = [[Birmingham, Alabama]], [[United States]]
| death_date   = {{death date and age|2008|9|23|1906|9|26}}
| death_place  = [[New York, New York]], [[United States]]
| occupation  = Author
| period      = 1940–2008
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'''Ellen Tarry''' (September 26, 1906 – September 23, 2008) was an [[African-American]] journalist and author who served as a minor figure in the [[Harlem Renaissance]].<ref>[http://archives.nypl.org/scm/24785 "Ellen Tarry papers"], The New York Public Library, Archives & Manuscripts.</ref> Her ''Janie Belle'' (1940) was the first African-American picture book, and her other works include further literature for children and young adults as well as an autobiography.
==Biography==
Tarry was born in [[Birmingham, Alabama]]. Although raised in the Congregational Church, she converted to [[Roman Catholicism|Catholicism]] in 1922, after years of attending the St Francis de Sales school for girls on the former [[Belmead (Powhatan, Virginia)|Belmead plantation]] property in Virginia. She was taught there by the [[Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament]].
She thereafter attended [[Alabama State Normal School]], now Alabama State University, and became a teacher in Birmingham. At the same time, she began writing a column for the local African-American newspaper entitled "Negroes of Note", focusing on racial injustice and racial pride.
In 1929, she moved to New York City in hope of becoming a writer. There she befriended such [[Harlem Renaissance]] literary figures as [[Langston Hughes]], [[Claude McKay]] and [[Countee Cullen]]. She was the first "Negro Scholarship" recipient at the [[Bank Street College of Education]] in New York City, where she met and became friends with [[Margaret Wise Brown]] and was influenced by the "here and now" theory of picture book composition.<ref>Smith, Katharine Capshaw, "From Bank Street to Harlem: A Conversation with Ellen Tarry", ''The Lion and the Unicorn'' 23.2 (April 1999): 271–285.</ref>
Tarry published four picture books: ''Janie Belle'' (1940), illustrated by [[Myrtle Sheldon]]), 1942's ''Hezekiah Horton'' (illustrated by [[Oliver Harrington]]), 1946's ''My Dog Rinty'' in collaboration with [[Caldecott Medal]] winner [[Marie Hall Ets]] (photographs by Alexander and Alexandra Alland), concerning a Harlem family and their mischievous pet, and 1950's ''The Runaway Elephant'' (again illustrated by Harrington), which continued the relationships started in ''Hezekiah Horton''.
Tarry's ''The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman'' (from 1955) tells of her life in the South (including her time at the SBS school in Virginia), her migration to New York City, her friendship with McKay, and her deep commitment to Catholicism. In 1942, Tarry was one of the first two co-directors along with [[Ann Harrigan Makletzoff]],<ref>{{cite journal|last=Schorsch|first=Albert J. III|title="Uncommon Women and Others": memoirs and lessons from radical Catholics at Friendship House|journal=U.S. Catholic Historian|year=1990|volume=9|issue=4|pages=371–386|url=http://www.friendshiphouse.org/files.html/fhhist3.htm}}</ref> at the request of [[Catherine de Hueck Doherty]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Sharum|first=Elizabeth Louise|title=A strange fire burning: a history of the Friendship House Movement|year=1977|publisher=University Microfilms|location=Texas Tech University|page=145|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N8EPHwAACAAJ|format=Thesis / Dissertation}}</ref> of the Chicago branch of [[Friendship House]], a Catholic outreach movement promoting interracial friendship.  It offers a thoughtful eyewitness view of life in Alabama and Harlem from the 20s through the early 50s, a pivotal era in the evolution of race relations.  Her involvement with USO during the Second World War opens a window on the experience of mobilization and the later integration of the military.  The book's concluding chapter recounts a drive from Harlem to Birmingham and back in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision.
Tarry's biographies include ''Katherine Drexel: Friend of the Neglected'', ''Pierre Toussaint: Apostle of Old New York'', ''The Other Toussaint: A Post-Revolutionary Black'', and ''Martin de Porres, Saint of the New World''.
Tarry died on September 23, 2008, three days before her 102nd birthday.
== Personal life ==
She had one daughter, Elizabeth Tarry Patton, from a brief marriage.
==See also==
{{Portal|Children and Young Adult Literature}}
*[[Friendship House]]
==References==
{{Reflist}}
*[http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.books.childrens/2008-11/msg00010.html Confirmation of death]
==External links==
* [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/lion_and_the_unicorn/v023/23.2smith.html Excerpt from Project Muse]
* [http://www.nathanielturner.com/aphiliprandolph.htm Article by Ellen Tarry on A. Philip Randolph]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060909033123/http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/tarry.htm Review of ''The Other Toussaint: A Post-Revolutionary Black'']
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_n1_v29/ai_17276650 Review of ''The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman'']
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20061015100129/http://www.pittsburghcatholic.org/newsarticles_more.phtml?id=1616 Article which mentions her from 2006]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tarry, Ellen}}
[[Category:1906 births]]
[[Category:2008 deaths]]
[[Category:Alabama State University alumni]]
[[Category:Bank Street College of Education alumni]]
[[Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism]]
[[Category:African-American women writers]]
[[Category:African-American centenarians]]
[[Category:American women centenarians]]
[[Category:20th-century African-American women]]
[[Category:20th-century African-American writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American people]]
[[Category:African-American Catholics]]
[[Category:21st-century African-American people]]
[[Category:21st-century African-American women]]
[[Category:Writers from Birmingham, Alabama]]
[[Category:American Christian writers]]
[[Category:American children's writers]]
[[Category:American women memoirists]]
[[Category:Memoirists from Alabama]]