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Books by Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers
(2003 /
Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejon
(1999)
The
Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1995) /
Erotique Noire/Black Erotica
(1992) /
Homespun
Images
( 1989) /
Notable Black Memphians
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Black Memphis Landmarks
By
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Published 2011 / ISBN: 978-1-935316-336
Paperback, 208
pages / Price: $ 20.00
These sites, some
of which are forever lost, must never be forgotten.
Thankfully, with this book, Miriam DeCosta-Willis makes
a major contribution in preserving the memory of many of
these places and the pioneers associated with them.—Ronald
A. Walter, Co-author of
Nineteenth Century Memphis
Families
of
Color, 1850-1900
Black Memphis
Landmarks is a must read book for anyone interested in
the numerous contributions that African Americans have
made to the development of Memphis. Dr. DeCosta-Willis
has documented many of the landmarks and achievements
made by Black people in Memphis.—Frank
J. Banks, co-founder Banks, Finley, Thomas & White, CPA
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
brings both academic rigor and narrative grace to an act
of love and a work of wonder. This work is more than
just an account; it explores what it is that makes Black
Memphis special and is as profound a historical moment
as those it chronicles. This one you keep.—Arthur
Flowers, author of
De Mojo Blues and
Another Good Loving Blues
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Testaments to Our History
Historical Timeline
of Landmarks
Chapters
I The Arts, Sports, and Entertainment
II Businesses and Professional Firms
III Churches and Other Religious
Organizations
IV Historic Sites and Events
V Hospitals and Medical Facilities
VI Media: Newspapers, Periodicals,
and Radio
VII Neighborhoods: Parks, Streets,
Housing Projects
VIII Organizations: Civic, Social,
and Political
IX Schools, Colleges, and Other
Educational Inst.
Photo Credits
Selected Bibliography
Index |
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To acquire your copy of
Black Memphis Landmarks
By Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Published 2011 / ISBN: 978-1-935316-336
Paperback, 208 pages /
Price: $ 20.00
Make checks/money orders payable and send to:
Dr. Miriam DeCosta-Willis
585 S. Greer Street, #901
Memphis, TN 38111
Allow 10 days for delivery
(For mail orders, enclose $ 20.00 for each copy,
plus $3.00 postage for the first copy
and $1.00 per copy for each additional copy.)
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Author professor
Dr Miriam DeCosta Willis donates civil rights collection
to library—By Linda A. Moore—Items from the
civil rights collection of
Dr. Miriam
DeCosta-Willis will be dedicated Saturday at the
Central Library on Poplar. A witness to the civil rights
movement, she put together a collection of articles,
books, photographs and academic papers . . .
Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.
Donating the
collection will allow others to build and expand on her
teaching and research on African-American heritage, said
DeCosta-Willis, 76. As the first African-American
professor at
Memphis State University and a university professor
for 40 years, much of what she donated is academic
papers, including research materials and unpublished
manuscripts.
"There are things
I've collected through my interest in local black
history—funeral programs, newspaper clippings, magazine
articles," she said. "And something that's really dear
to me are the papers from Dr. Georgia Patton Washington,
the first black female physician in Memphis."
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The photographs were hard
to let go. "They brought back a lot of
memories," she said. DeCosta-Willis was
married to civil rights attorney
Russell Sugarmon and is the widow of
civil rights attorney
A.W. Willis Jr., the first
African-American man elected to the
Tennessee General Assembly in the 20th
century.
She was born in
Florence, Alabama, attended a girls
preparatory school in Middlebury, Conn., and
majored in Spanish at
Wellesley College. DeCosta-Willis has a
doctorate in romance languages from
Johns Hopkins University. . . .
"It chronicles not only a leading academic
scholar in the field of African-American
literature, but also chronicles an important
chapter in Memphis," said Wayne Dowdy,
senior manager of the history department at
the Central Library. . . |
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The library's
collection already includes papers from
A.W. Willis Jr.,
George W. Lee and Maxine Smith. "We are aggressively
trying to collect papers, photos, any documents related
to the civil rights history in Memphis because what
we're trying to do is tell Memphis' story and that's an
important part of Memphis history," Dowdy said.
The information
DeCosta-Willis has amassed as an author and activist is
important, said Barbara Andrews, director of education
at the
National Civil Rights Museum. The museum doesn't
have the resources, the staff or the capacity to house
archival collections, she said. "It is a significant
donation that she is giving to the city and to the
world," Andrews said. . . .
"There are things I
haven't put in the collection yet, like my 35 journals,"
DeCosta-Willis said. "They won't be opened until 25
years after I'm gone."—CommercialAppeal
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Telling the Story
Library’s Memphis Room grows with Decosta-Willis
donation
By Bill Dries
As Miriam DeCosta-Willis
spoke in the Memphis Room of the Memphis Public Library
and Information Center, a set of 19 gray file boxes was
neatly lined up near the podium. The files, containing
manuscripts, notes, photographs and other items, are
“parts of our history that never would be known” without
DeCosta-Willis donating them to a growing archive in The
Memphis Room, said library director Keenon McCloy. The
papers of the Memphis civil rights veteran, teacher,
writer and historian join a collection of 250
individuals and families who have donated their papers
to The Memphis Room, the library’s long-established
archive on the city and county’s history.
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Wayne Dowdy, library history department
senior manager, calls it “the story of
Memphis—the whole story.” And DeCosta-Willis
is a prominent part of that story, even if
she protests that she isn’t famous. The
papers and photographs are a mix of her
research into Memphis history and her own
life. She participated in the Montgomery bus
boycott in 1955 during visits to that city.
She attended Medgar Evers’ funeral.
She
told a group of more than 100 in The Memphis
Room that for a time she didn’t consider
herself a participant but an observer. She
was among the black men and women denied
admission to the University of Memphis in
the 1950s.
G. Wayne Dowdy, senior
manager of the Memphis & Shelby County Room,
handles papers and photographs from the
Miriam Decosta-Willis collection at the
Memphis Public Library. Willis’ collection
includes photographs from the civil rights
movement, correspondence and her scholarship
studying African-American literature and
Memphis history. (Photo: Lance Murphey) |
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Although she had a
degree from Wellesley College, she and
Maxine Smith were denied admission in a decision by
the university that changed local history. “That started
her on her journey and that started me on my journey in
terms of civil rights,” she said. “Because we were
observing history in the making, we did not realize we
were also participants in that history.”
She would later
become the university’s first black faculty member.“But
that’s not as important as my involvement in civil
rights on campus as faculty adviser to the Black Student
Association and organizer of faculty forums.”
DeCosta-Willis
dedicates her latest book,
Black Memphis: Landmarks, to
her late husband, A.W. Willis, whom she credits for
encouraging her pursuit of the city’s history. Willis
was one of the city’s black attorneys who became the
cornerstone of the dismantling of racial segregation in
Memphis. He was also a state representative and business
leader.
As he worked on
bringing back Beale Street in the early 1970s, he
encouraged his wife to research the street’s history. “I
learned things about Memphis that I had never heard of
before,” she said. The research and other work over the
years led to
Notable Black Memphians. This reference book offers
biographical sketches and notes on 345 Memphians born
between 1795 and 1972.
“I worked all my
life trying to preserve our history. But these are just
biographical sketches,” she said. “These are just
descriptions of organizations, schools and churches and
nightclubs and things that go way back to antebellum
times and come up to where we are today. I know much is
left out. But at some point you just have to stop your
research or the books will never get out.”
DeCosta-Willis
herself has used The Memphis Room as well as the Library
of Congress in her research into the city’s history. Her
1995 editing of
The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells
brought to life not only the keen mind of Wells, but
also placed the indomitable, strong-willed crusader in
the context of the city whose violence made her a
national and international figure.
Like most
historians, DeCosta-Willis has had heartbreaking moments
in her pursuit of material not yet in any books. She
recalled funeral home owner and matriarch
Frances Hayes telling her she had in her attic
programs from every funeral at the business since the
turn of the 20th century. DeCosta-Willis said she later
pursued the lead only to be told the programs had all
been thrown out in a spring cleaning. “That is what has
happened to our history,” she said.
11 March 2011
Source:
MemphisDailyNews
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Notable Black Memphians (Miriam
DeCosta-Willis)—This
biographical and historical study by Miriam DeCosta-Willis (PhD,
Johns Hopkins University and the first African American faculty
member of Memphis State University) traces the evolution of a major
Southern city through the lives of men and women who overcame social
and economic barriers to create artistic works, found institutions,
and obtain leadership positions that enabled them to shape their
community. Documenting the accomplishments of Memphians who were
born between 1795 and 1972, it contains photographs and biographical
sketches of 223 individuals (as well as brief notes on 122 others),
such as musicians Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin, activists Ida B.
Wells and Benjamin L. Hooks, politicians Harold Ford Sr. and Jr.,
writers Sutton Griggs and Jerome Eric Dickey, and Bishop Charles
Mason and Archbishop James Lyke—all of whom were born in Memphis or
lived in the city for over a decade. . . . |
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Also included
are short biographies of barbers, sanitation
workers, and postal employees such as Alma Morris,
T. O. Jones, and Tom Lee—ordinary citizens who made
extraordinary contributions to their community. The
result of ten years of painstaking research in
archives and libraries, this study draws upon
interviews, private papers, newspaper articles, and
photographic collections to illuminate Black
achievements in Memphis, Tennessee.
Located in a bend of the Mississippi
River, in the heart of the Bible Belt, and in the center of a tri-state
region that includes Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, Memphis is the
site of a rich African American culture that finds expression in blues and
jazz, in poetry and fiction, and in painting and sculpture. Less well known,
perhaps, are Black cultural expressions in business, athletics, and
medicine: for example, the founding of hospitals and a medical school; the
building of a public park/auditorium and the first Black-owned baseball
stadium in the country; and the creation of the South's first integrated law
firm and first Black savings and loan association.
Sons and daughters of the city include
city and county mayors, an Olympic medalist, an Oscar-winning actor, and
former member of the Federal Communications Commission, CEO of the Regional
Medical Center, president of Colorado State University, and professor of
orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School.
The lives of these outstanding Black
Memphians provide a context for understanding and interpreting the social,
political, and cultural history of a city in the Deep South. Notable Black
Memphians is a vital addition to all collections in African American studies
and American history.
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DeCosta-Willis
makes it possible to look back in a new way into the
character of wells, and, more than that, into the daily
life of African-Americans a century ago.
— Chicago Tribune
Wells and
DeCosta-Willis join together across time in a scholarly
collaborative dance of sisterhood to produce a work that
not only holds an insightful mirror to the past, but
could be used as a guidepost for African-American and
other women today in living totally self-defined lives.
—Tri-State Defender
A unique look
at the life o an independent, unmarried African-American
woman coping with financial hardships, romantic
entanglements, sexism, and racism . . . A substantial
contribution to African-American Studies
—Publisher Weekly
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posted 27 February 2010 |
