Effie Lee Newsome, Harlem Renaissance Era Poet

By Nava Atlas | On December 16, 2024 | Comments (0)

Effie Lee Newsome (1885–1979), was a writer, illustrator, and librarian whose poetry for adults and children made her a notable literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

From the time her poetry was first published in NAACP’s The Crisis, her work was regularly featured in anthologies and other publications, particularly in the 1920s.

Mary Effie Lee was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Wilberforce, Ohio. Her parents were Mary Elizabeth Ashe Lee and Benjamin Franklin Lee. Her clergyman father was editor-in-chief of the Christian Recorder and served as president of Wilberforce University.

Fascinating side note: Benjamin Franklin Lee was descended from free Blacks who founded the Gouldtown community (New Jersey) in the 18th century. Gouldtown was once cited as “America’s Oldest Negro Community.”

Effie took classes at Wilberforce University, Oberlin College, Philadelphia Academy of the Arts, and the University of Pennsylvania. Though she didn’t complete a degree, she was able to explore her dual interests in art and writing. She and her sister Consuelo, also a poet, both worked as illustrators for children’s magazines.

The Brownie’s Book and the Little Page

Effie began publishing her poems and stories in The Crisis in 1915. One of her most anthologized poems, “Morning Light: The Dew-Drier,” appeared in a 1918 issue. Her poems were regularly featured in The Brownie’s Book, a magazine for Black children that was a spinoff of The Crisis — both founded by W.E.B. Du Bois. Jessie Redmon Fauset was its editor.

As a major contributor to The Brownie’s Book, Effie was among the first contingent of writers to create poems expressly for Black children. Subsequently, writing for children became a longstanding professional interest for Effie and something for which she became known. In 1924, she became the editor of the children’s column “Little Page” in The Crisis, a position that lasted for a decade. Her poetry encouraged younger readers to appreciate their worth and beauty, and to marvel at the world around them.

Marriage and a profession

In 1920, after marrying Rev. Henry Nesby Newsome, an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister, she began using the name of Effie Lee Newsome. Until then she had been Mary Effie Lee, her given family name.

The couple briefly lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where she taught in an elementary school and worked as the school librarian. When they returned to Wilberforce, she continued to work as a librarian in various schools and colleges. Her last position was at Wilberforce University, where she remained until her retirement in 1963.

. . . . . . . . . .

Anthologies and two books of collected poetry

Throughout the 1920s, Effie continued to contribute to Black poetry anthologies. In her biographical note in Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, a classic 1927 collection edited by Countee Cullen, she described herself as “ a lover of the out-of-doors, and of the beautiful.”

Her only published collection, Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers, was published in 1940.

The Oxford Companion to American Literature, stated that Effie’s writing gave children “two great gifts: a keen sense of their own inestimable value and an avid appreciation of the natural world.” A digital copy of this book, with its generous collection of dozens of poems, can be viewed here (New York Public Library Digital Collections).

. . . . . . . . . .

Wonders: The Best Children’s Poems of Effie Lee Newsome was published in 1999. It includes poems from Gladiola Garden, The Brownies’ Book magazine, and “The Little Page” column from The Crisis. According to the publisher, this collection “reintroduces Effie Lee Newsome and the spirit of her work to a new generation of children.”

Not a lot more is known about Effie Lee Newsome’s life, and it’s next to impossible to find other images of her than the one shown here. Hers seemed a life of steady work and creativity with little drama or upheaval. Though Effie never lived in New York City, her thoughtful poetry was a valued contribution to Harlem Renaissance era literature. Perhaps the time for her work to be more widely known and studied is at hand.

Sources and more information

African American Registry
Afro-American: “Effie Lee Newsome, African American Poet of the 1920s” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly; Johns Hopkins University Press, Summer 1988.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 76, Afro-American Writers 1940 – 1955 (1988)
Notable Black American Women Book 1. Edited by Jessie Carney Smith,1992
The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, First edition, 1997

Literary Ladies Guide

An archive dedicated to classic women authors and their work