Brenda Ray Moryck

Brenda Ray Moryck was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1892,{{Cite web |title=New Jersey Births and Christenings, 1660-1980 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FCRC-YVV |website=FamilySearch}}{{Cite web|last=Williams|first=Noelle Lorraine|date=2020-09-14|title=The Incredible Legacy of Newark's Black Women Activists|url=https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/09/14/black-women-activists-artists-leadership-newark-new-jersey-archival-records/ideas/essay/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-03-01|website=Zócalo Public Square|language=en-US|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200922051400/https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/09/14/black-women-activists-artists-leadership-newark-new-jersey-archival-records/ideas/essay/ |archive-date=2020-09-22 }} the daughter of John W. Moryck and Sarah Rose Ray Moryck. Her father owned a saloon and her mother was an educator and clubwoman.{{Cite book |last=Ashby |first=William M. (William Mobile) |url=http://archive.org/details/NwkAshby001 |title=Reflections on the Life of Negroes in Newark |date=1972-02-16}}{{Cite news|date=1942-01-24|title=Mrs. John W. Moryck Dies Here in 80th Year; Of Old Family|pages=4|work=The New York Age|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/75432/rose-moryck-obit/|access-date=2021-03-01|via=Newspapers.com}}{{Cite journal|date=June 1926|title=Our Prize Winners and What they Say of Themselves|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Wf0qAAAAMAAJ&q=Brenda+Moryck&pg=PA189|journal=Opportunity|volume=4|pages=189}} Though Brenda wrote that her great-grandfather was Charles Bennet Ray, her mother's death record gives Adam Ray and Sarah Closson as Brenda's maternal grandparents.{{Cite web |title="New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch |website=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WRP-VHN}}{{Cite web |title=D-M-1942-0001580 |url=https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/view/7052712 |website=Historical Vital Records The New York City Municipal Archives}}{{Cite book |last1=Roses |first1=Lorraine Elena |url=http://archive.org/details/harlemrenaissanc00rose |title=Harlem : renaissance and beyond : literary biographies of 100 black women writers, 1900-1945 |last2=Randolph |first2=Ruth Elizabeth |date=1990 |location=Boston, Mass. |publisher= G.K. Hall |isbn=978-0-8161-8926-7}} Multiple records for Adam Ray state that his father was Adam Ray Sr., not Charles Ray.{{Cite web |title=Adam Ray Jr. |url=https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/view/4117360 |website=New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949}}{{Cite web |title=New Jersey, Marriages, 1670-1980 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q28S-1SX3 |website=FamilySearch}}{{Cite web |title=New Jersey Marriages, 1678-1985 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FZR3-ZWL |website=FamilySearch}}

William Ashby wrote, "John Moryck [had] a saloon on Academy Street. He lived on Kearney Street. Moryck had an unusual daughter, Brenda. She graduated from Barringer High School, and won a scholarship at Wellsley College, certainly the first Negro girl from Newark to attend a prestigious white school."

Moryck completed a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1916, the only black graduate in her class.{{Cite journal|date=July 1916|title=Our Graduates|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eyoG2wFb_LwC&q=Brenda+Moryck&pg=PA121|journal=The Crisis|pages=121}} She earned a master's degree in English literature from Howard University in 1926.{{Cite web|date=February 28, 2020|title=Wellesley Celebrates the Legacy of Some of Its Earliest Black Students During Black History Month|url=http://www.wellesley.edu/news/2020/stories/node/173916|url-status=live|access-date=2021-03-01|website=Wellesley College|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200926083650/https://www.wellesley.edu/news/2020/stories/node/173916 |archive-date=2020-09-26 }} Moryck was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and was active in the Tau Omega chapter.

Moryck worked for the Newark Bureau of Charities after college, and taught physical culture at a technical school in Bordentown.{{Cite news|date=1917-06-07|title=Bordentown Industrial|pages=7|work=The New York Age|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72415243/bordentown-industrial/|access-date=2021-03-01|via=Newspapers.com}}{{Cite news|date=1917-06-01|title=12 Graduate from Industrial School|pages=7|work=Trenton Evening Times|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72435316/12-graduate-from-industrial-school/|access-date=2021-03-02|via=Newspapers.com}} She taught English and drama at Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, D.C. during the 1920s.{{Cite news|date=1927-03-15|title=School Orators Reach Semi-Finals|pages=45|work=Evening Star|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72415424/school-orators-reach-semi-finals/|access-date=2021-03-01|via=Newspapers.com}} She wrote essays and stories published in The Crisis, Opportunity, and other national periodicals and newspapers.{{Cite book|title="Girl, colored" and other stories : a complete short fiction anthology of African American women writers in the Crisis magazine, 1910-2010|date=2011|publisher=McFarland & Co|editor=Judith Musser|isbn=978-0-7864-4606-3|location=Jefferson, N.C.|oclc=630498177}}{{Cite book|title=Opportunity reader : stories, poetry, and essays from the Urban League's Opportunity magazine|date=1999|publisher=Modern Library|editor=Sondra K. Wilson, National Urban League|isbn=0-375-75379-6|location=New York|oclc=41889049}}{{Cite journal|last=Austin|first=Addell P.|date=1988|title=The "Opportunity" and "Crisis" Literary Contests, 1924-27|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44322018|journal=CLA Journal|volume=32|issue=2|pages=235–246|jstor=44322018|issn=0007-8549}} She was also a drama critic for the New York Age,{{Cite news|date=1931-05-02|title=Harlem Experimental Theatre Gives 3 Plays|pages=6|work=The New York Age|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72433702/harlem-experimental-theatre-gives-3/|access-date=2021-03-02|via=Newspapers.com}} and wrote at least one play, The Christmas Spirit, performed at Armstrong high school in 1927. She was active in the National Urban League, the Harlem YWCA,{{Cite news|date=1929-03-16|title=Rabbi Lyons to Speak at Brooklyn Y.W.C.A.|pages=2|work=The New York Age|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72415017/rabbi-lyons-to-speak-at-brooklyn/|access-date=2021-03-01|via=Newspapers.com}} and the NAACP in New York. She was also an avid golfer.{{Cite book|last=McDaniel|first=Pete|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5KmBAAAAMAAJ&q=Brenda+Moryck|title=Uneven Lies: The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf|date=2000|publisher=American Golfer|isbn=978-1-888531-36-7|pages=50|language=en}}

Moryck's writings are associated with the Harlem Renaissance{{Cite book|title=Black women of the Harlem Renaissance era|date=2014|others=Lean'tin L. Bracks, Jessie Carney Smith|isbn=978-0-8108-8543-1|location=Lanham|oclc=894554745}}{{Cite journal|last=Caughie|first=Pamela L.|date=September 2012|title="The best people": The Making of the Black Bourgeoisie in Writings of the Negro Renaissance|journal=Modernism/Modernity|volume=20|issue=3|pages=519–537|doi=10.1353/mod.2013.0064|s2cid=144761198 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/525170 }} and have been included in several recent anthologies, among them The new Negro: Readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938 (2007), edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Gene Andrew Garrett,{{Cite book|last1=Gates|first1=Henry Louis|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/77476415.html|title=The new Negro: readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938|last2=Jarrett|first2=Gene Andrew|date=2007|publisher=Princeton University Press|location=Princeton, N.J.|language=English|oclc=608490813}} Double-take: A revisionist Harlem Renaissance anthology (2001), edited by Venetria K. Patton and Maureen Honey, Harlem's Glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950 (1996), edited by Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph,{{Cite book|last1=Roses|first1=Lorraine Elena|url=http://archive.org/details/isbn_9780674372696|title=Harlem's glory : Black women writing, 1900-1950|last2=Randolph|first2=Ruth Elizabeth|date=1996|location=Cambridge, Mass. |publisher= Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-37269-6}} and Speech & power: The African-American essay and its cultural content, from polemics to pulpit (1992). edited by Gerald Early.{{Cite book|url=http://archive.org/details/speechpowerafric0000unse|title=Speech & power : the African-American essay and its cultural content, from polemics to pulpit|date=1992|location=Hopewell, NJ |publisher= Ecco Press|isbn=978-0-88001-264-5}} She had an unpublished novel in manuscript at the time of her death.

Moryck married twice. Her first husband was Lucius Lee Jordan; they married in 1917 and he died before their first anniversary. She married Robert Beale Francke in 1930. She had a daughter, Elizabeth (Betty) Osborne Francke,[https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b094-i417 Letter from Brenda Moryck Francke to W. E. B. Du Bois], October 14, 1941, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. and a foster daughter, Julia Wormley.{{Cite news|date=1930-04-12|title=C. C. S. Girls Meet in Staten Island|pages=2|work=The New York Age|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72434042/c-c-s-girls-meet-in-staten-island/|access-date=2021-03-02|via=Newspapers.com}}{{Cite web |title=United States Census, 1930 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X4G1-X96 |website=FamilySearch}} She died in 1945, in Massachusetts.{{Cite news |date=1945-12-12 |title=Summer Resident of Stockbridge Dies in Hospital |pages=24 |work=The Berkshire County Eagle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-berkshire-county-eagle/34276834/ |access-date=2023-09-23}}{{Cite web |date=2020-03-28 |title=Records of Evergreen Cemetery (by email correspondence to Noelle Lorraine Williams) |url=https://www.evergreencemetery.net/ |access-date=2023-09-23 |website=Evergreen Cemetery {{!}} Hillside, New Jersey 07205 |language=en-US}}{{Cite news |date=December 15, 1945 |title=Brenda M. Francke Noted School Teacher Dies From Pneumonia |pages=4 |work=New York Age |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-new-york-age/34629232/ }} She had been scheduled to meet up with her daughter who was in boarding school in Albany, New York.

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• [https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/15814938 "Johnsons, John B. Nail, John E. Nail, Grayce Fairfax Nail, Brenda Moryck, Bertha Randolph, Clara Wood, Great Barrington, Massachusetts"], a photograph of Moryck and others taken in 1928, from the James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson papers, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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Category:1894 births

Category:1949 deaths

Category:20th-century American writers

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:20th-century African-American women writers

Category:20th-century African-American educators

Category:20th-century American educators

Category:20th-century American women educators

Category:African-American women educators

Category:Wellesley College alumni

Category:Writers from Newark, New Jersey

Category:20th-century African-American writers