Black and white portrait of Thomas J. Moise, 2x4 inches. Back of portrait lists photographer as S. Friedlaender of New York, NY, and a handwritten note reading "Mrs. G. H. Moses with best love of T. J. M."
Black and white portrait of Caroline Moses, 2x4 inches. Back of portrait includes inscription reading, "Mother from Carrie," and notes photographer as Bogardus of New York, NY.
Black and white portrait of Isabel Lazarus Hart, wife of Samuel Nathan Hart, 2.5x4 inches. Portrait card also includes a blue George Washington postage stamp.
Black and white portrait of David Daniel Cohen Jr., brother of Asher D. Cohen, 2x3 inches. Portrait card also includes a blue George Washington postage stamp.
Blanche McCrary Boyd (pronouns: she/her/hers) describes the events that lead to her becoming an acclaimed novelist and professor at Connecticut College. Born in Charleston, SC in 1945 to working class parents, she lost her father at age 15, one of the crucial events of her life. Living with family on a 400-acre plantation near Rantowles, SC, she became “radicalized” by events seen on television, realizing, unlike other members of her family, that she lived in a racist society, finding a “sense of horror” and a “sense of beauty” in the South. She attended Duke University and met Dean Boyd, the man she married, while attending Harvard University summer school. Boyd credits her husband for helping her mature and encouraging her writing once she decided upon that as a goal. Moving to California, Boyd began writing seriously at Pomona College, and won a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University. Her marriage unraveled, as she discovered feminism, and her attraction to women, bringing her to a “different reality.” She had starting drinking alcohol soon after her father’s death and she spent over a decade abusing it and drugs as she moved to New York and became a “radical lesbian.” She helped set type for the classic novel Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, and founded Sagaris, an “institute for feminist thought,” associating with leading feminists, including accused bomber Patricia Swinton. She published essays, mostly about the South, in The Village Voice, learned how to “seize” her authority, and published books on popular musicians under the name Vivian Claire. She returned to Charleston, continuing writing and publishing novels, becoming sober in 1981. She discusses how a teenage car wreck involving a Black man’s death became the “fulcrum of my understanding of life” and how it serves as a metaphor for America as she wonders “what white people who are anti-racist are going to do about white supremacy.” She and her wife Leslie are the mothers of twins, James and Julia, and Boyd reflects on parenting, Leslie’s life-threatening illnesses, and how her novel Tomb of the Unknown Racist has capped her fiction writing career. As retirement from Connecticut College looms, she assesses her accomplishments, notes satisfactions, and the many surprising turns her life took.
Photograph was taken by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in January, 1947 while Renee and Michael were still aboard ship. The original photograph is in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
Album belonging to Esther Eudora Ezekiel Hart. The album includes various handwritten poems, songs, and notes from friends and family members. The album also includes a number of transcribed portions of texts and quotations from various literary figures such as Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and John Milton.
Black-and-white photographic postcard of the corner of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in New York, with the exterior of the former location of Temple Emanu-El at 5th Avenue and 43rd Street in the background.
Black-and-white photographic postcard of the corner of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in New York, with the exterior of the former location of Temple Emanu-El at 5th Avenue and 43rd Street in the background.
Color postcard of the corner of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in New York, with the exterior of the former location of Temple Emanu-El at 5th Avenue and 43rd Street in the background.
