"May Miller"(January 26 1899-February 8 1995)

Was an African-American poet,playwright and educator.She became known as the most widely published female playwright of the Harlem Renaissance,with seven published volumes of poetry doing her career as a writer.She was born in Washington,D.C.,to Kelly and Anna May Miller,one of the Millers' five children.Kelly was born shortly, after the Emancipation Proclamation,was the first African-American student John Hopkins University,and later became one of the pioneers of sociology.May began writing poetry at an early age,buying a pair of earrings with her earnings.While attending Dunbar High School she studied under the writers Mary P. Burrill and Angelina Weld Grimke.She graduated from Howard University in 1920,where she won an award for her play Within the Shadows.May did graduate work in poetry and drama at American University and Columbia University,followed by twenty years teaching English and speech at Frederick Douglass High School,in Baltimore Maryland.May also lectured at Monmouth College,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,and Phillips Exeter Academy.May entry into the cultural scene of the Harlem Renaissance began with the publishing of her play The Bog Guide in 1925.Her claimed third place in the play category for Opportunity magazine's Literary Prize Contest in 1925.She sought her writing to portray black people with a level of respect and dignity that had absent in drama.Inspired by the work of the Chicago Imagists  and Archibald Macleish,May turned her writing towards poetry in the 1940s.