Maria Syphax Case Table

Books by Sterling Brown

Southern Road / The Negro Caravan / The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown /

The Negro in American Fiction; Negro Poetry and Drama / Last Ride of Wild Bill and Eleven Narrative Poems

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Books about Sterling Brown

Joanne,Gabbin. Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (1994)

John Edgar Tidwell, Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South (2007)

Charles Rowell. Callaloo's Sterling A. Brown: Special Issue (1998)

Mark A. Sanders. Afro-Modernist Aesthetics & the Poetry of Sterling Brown (1999)

Mark A. Sanders. A Son's Return: Selected Essays of Sterling Brown (1996)

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Overview

I knew nothing of Maria Syphax (1803-1886) of Arlington, Virginia, nor anything of her story or the stories that politicians or literary theorists, or historians may have made of her life. I stumbled onto pieces of her story about seven years ago in the unprocessed papers of Sterling Brown at Howard University. I copied ten to fifteen documents that tied together Sterling Brown's literary relationship to the story of Maria Syphax and Wisconsin Congressman Frank B. Keefe's accusation of a communist plot directing activities in the Federal Writer's Project.

Maria Syphax was the colored great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, Sterling Brown wrote rather matter-of-factly as if the facts of the assertion were self-evident. An Archival Search for Sterling Brown

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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the title to a piece of land being part of the Arlington estate, in the county of Alexandria, in the State of Virginia, upon which Maria Syphax has resided since about the year eighteen hundred and twenty-six, bounded and described as follows, to wit: An Act for the Relief of Maria Syphax

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Charles Syphax [1791-1869], the only son of William, was a slave and he belonged to George Washington Parke Custis [1781-1857], who owned Arlington, Virginia, and its environs. When about ten years of age [1801] he accompanied George Washington Parke Custis to Arlington, where he grew up with Custus' daughter Mary, who later married Genereal R.E. Lee.

Syphax became enamored of one Maria Carter [1803-1886] while working as one of the "White House" servants whose duties were confined to the serving of meals in the Arlington Mansion, and they were married at Arlington by an Episcopal minister, about 1821. By this marriage Elinor was born 1823, and William 1825. William Syphax A Pioneer

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Table

An Archival Search for Sterling Brown

(Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 )

Documents of the Syphax-Custis Case

An Act for the Relief of Maria Syphax

Charles & William Syphax: Pioneering Spirits

Colonel Custis Daughter

The Family Life of George Washington

Florence Kerr to Walter Chandler

GWP Custis' Will A Memo

Notes from the Congressional Globe

Sterling Brown Requests Historical Material on New Orleans

Sterling Brown Gives Christian an Assignment

Sterling Brown Seeks Negro Advisers

Sterling Brown Thanks Christian for History Material

Sterling Brown to Henry Alsbery (Memo 1)

Sterling Brown to Henry Alsbery (Memo 2)

Sterling Brown to Walter White

Syphax and Custis Case (Interviews)

Walter White to Franklin D. Roosevelt

Will of George Washington Parke Custis

"W.P.A. Guidebook Arouses Fuss"

Related Files

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Dunbar and Traditional Dialect

Fifty Influential Figures

The Honeymoon Is Over

Loneliness

MBC Letter Table

Marcus Bruce Christian

Missing You

Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Temporary Lovers

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The young negro [William Syphax] found in the archives at Alexandria the paper which Col. Custis had signed giving his mother her freedom and that of "her daughter Bertha, six years old, and one male infant." An octogenarian Quaker affirmed that the male child was the young negro and he received his credentials.

But the most interesting fact in the family history is that this old lady, who by act of Congress, is to be allowed to end her days on her own bit of earth, was doubly descended from the Custises. Her mother was Martha Washington's maid. The family of Robert E. Lee inherited the respect for the blood of the former slave woman, and they confirmed the legacy of Col. Custis by saying that the bit of land was hers, as though there was no deed to show in fact. Colonel Custis Daughter

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Prof. Charles S. Syphax and Mrs. Syphax, 315 T. St., City. They have summer home on tract given by W.P.A. Custis to Maria Syphax. Original tract, approximately 17 1/2 acres. They claim that the Lee family have always been friendly toward the Syphax relatives. Prof. Syphax remembers his grandmother, Maria S[yphax], but does not recall having heard her mention her father, G.W.P.C. [George Washington Parke Custis] He has heard his father (her son) mention frequently the relationship. Prof. S[yphax] was at Hoard for 46 years -- retired two years ago. Mrs. S[yphax] was the third woman to graduate from Howard, and later was instructor there. Syphax and Custis Case

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New hot water for the W.P.A.'s Federal writers' project was being stored up on Capitol Hill today because of what that agency views as an "incidental reference" in its guidebook of Washington to George Washington Parke Custis.

The reference, apparently unnoticed outside the project until recently, was to the effect that the stepgrandson of George Washington--who later became his adopted son--and father-in-law of Gen. Robert E. Lee, was the father of Maria Syphax, a Negro.

First to blast this assertion as "a libel" and "an attempt to stimulate a feeling of class hatred" was Representative Keefe (Republican, Wisconsin), who, after conducting his own investigation, took the issue to the floor of the House yesterday.

Today his speech in the Congressional Record caused a rumbling on the Senate side to supplement the fighting going on there over the W.P.A.'s supplemental appropriation. Several Senators threatened to take the matter to the Senate floor before the debate is ended.

Tucked away in the middle of a chapter captioned "the Negro in Washington," and telling of the disposition of a large body of freed slaves, the guidebook relates: WPA Guidebook Arouses Fuss

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updated 3 November 2007

Sterling Allen Brown (1901-1989), author, critic, professor, Poet Laureate for Washington, DC, and "the Dean of American Poets," was born on Howard University's campus at the site where Cook Hall Dormitory now stands, in a house on Sixth and Fairmount in Washington, DC, Brown was the last of six children born to Reverend Sterling Nelson and Adelaid Allen Brown. He grew up on the campus of Howard University, where his father taught in the School of Religion. He was educated in the District of Columbia Public Schools and received his Bachelor's degree from Williams College (Williamstown, MA) in 1922 with honors as a Phi Beta Kappa. Brown entered graduate school and received his Master's degree from Harvard University in 1923.

He taught at Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia; Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee; and Lincoln University in Missouri. He was a visiting lecturer at Atlanta University, New York University and Vassar College. Sterling Brown joined the Howard University faculty in 1929 and remained associated with Howard for almost sixty years. His poem "Strong Men," from his book entitled Southern Road (1931), celebrates the enduring spirit of Black people in the face of racial oppression and political exploitation. The poem captures the horrors of the Middle Passage and reflects the "idea of Black stoicism," Brown explains in Southern Road. According to literary critic Joanne V. Gabbin, "During the 1930s and 1940s, Brown's studies of the folk experience and culture were the fullest of any in the field."

In his book, The Negro in American Fiction (1937), Brown shows parallels of how treatment of an oppressed group in literature reflects its treatment in life. His pioneering work brought recognition to African-American literature and folklore.

Primary Works

Southern Road , 1932; "Negro Characters as Seen by White Authors," 1933; Negro Poetry and Drama, 1938; The Negro in American Fiction, 1938 ( PS374 N4 B7); The Negro Caravan (an anthology, co edited with Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee), 1941 ( PS508.N3 B75); The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown , 1980.

Brown, Sterling A. "A Century of Negro Portraiture in American Literature." Massachusetts Review 7 (1966): 73-96.

- - -. The Negro in American Fiction; Negro Poetry and Drama. NY: Arno, 1969.

- - -. "Arna Bontemps: Co-Worker, Comrade." Black World 22.1 (1973): 1, 11,91-97.

- - -. Last Ride of Wild Bill and Eleven Narrative Poems. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1975. PS3503 R833 L3

- - -. "A Son's Return 'Oh, Didn't He Ramble'." Chant of Saints A Gathering of Afro American Literature, Art, and Scholarship. Eds. Michael Harper and others. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1979.

- - -. "Negro Character as Seen by White Authors." Callaloo 5.1-2 (Feb-May 1982): 55-89.

- - -. "On Dialect Usage." The Slave's Narrative. Eds. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.

- - -. "Our Literary Audience ." Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present. Ed. Angelyn Mitchell. Durham, NC Duke UP, 1994. 69-78.

Joanne,Gabbin. Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (1994)

Southern Road and the "New Negro Renaissance"

Sterling Brown Papers. Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC). Howard University

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