The cumulative effect of these and Rosemont’s other historical pieces is the reader’s realization that so much of progressive history has disappeared from dominant narratives. She is rarely included in most canons of American writing, although she seems to have founded confessional autobiographical writing. The controversial Mary MacLane, or “the Wild Woman of Butte,” is another fascinating rediscovery. The stated purpose of the anthology was “to combat racial prejudice,” and was apparently banned in several British colonies. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Schomburg, and William Carlos Williams. She became an ardent activist against fascism and racism, editing and publishing at her own expense the immense 1934 anthology Negro that brought together 150 contributors, including Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Cunard, the granddaughter of the founder of the Cunard Steamship Lines, was ultimately disinherited from the family. The pieces on Nancy Cunard and Mary MacLane, two writers well known during their lifetimes, but now widely unknown, are particularly resonant.
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