"Clarissa Scott Delaney 5-9-1901-1927

She was born in Tuskegee Alabama.Her father,Emmett J.Scott was secretary to Booker T.Washington,founder of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University).After her early years in the south she was sent to New England where she educated at Bradford Academy.Clarissa then attended Wellesley College,where graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1923.She was an active college student.She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta,of the debating team,and of the Christian Association,and she played varsity field hockey.During Clarissa Wellesley years,she attended meetings,in Boston of the Literary Guild,where young African Americans gathered weekly to listen to featured speakers such as Claude McKay.This began her political and literary work,in an environment that helped shape her ideas on art and literature.As a woman of color,she identification with Harlem Renaissance.After College,Clarissa traveled through Europe.When Clarissa returned,she moved to Washington,D.C. where she taught at Dunbar High School.Clarissa continued to write and to publish in Opportunity.Like her colleagues among the Harlem writers,she wrote about Pan Africanism,superstition,and the mulatto,among other topics.She won a prize for one of poems entitled "Solace,"published in Opportunity,in 1925.That same year Clarissa also wrote a play,"Dixie to Broadway,"and the poem,"A Golden Afternoon in Germany."One year later she married a young lawyer,Hubert T.Delaney,in Washington,D.C.,and they moved to New York City.In New York,she worked as a social worker,with the National Urban League and Woman's City Club of New York.One project was to gather statistics for a "Study of Delinquent Neglected Negro Children."Clarissa died of Kidney disease,which was probably a reaction to the streptococcal infection she had had for six months.According to a Wellesley classmate,her family established a "YWCA Camp Clarissa Scott" in 1931 on the Chesapeake Bay.Because her life was cut so short,she only published four poems.