05/11/2024
LOUISE JENKINS MERIWETHER β€οΈπ€π
(May 8, 1923 β October 10, 2023)
Louise Jenkins Meriwether, a novelist, essayist, journalist, and social activist, was the only daughter of Marion Lloyd Jenkins and his wife, Julia. Meriwether was born May 8, 1923, in Haverstraw, New York, to parents from South Carolina, where her father worked as a painter and a bricklayer, and her mother worked as a domestic.
After the October 24, 1929 stock market crash, Louiseβs family migrated from Haverstraw to New York City. They moved to Brooklyn first and later to Harlem. The third of five children, Louise grew up during the Great Depression, a time that would deeply affect her young life and ultimately influence her as a writer.
Despite her familyβs financial plight, Louise Jenkins attended Public School 81 in Harlem and graduated from Central Commercial High School in downtown Manhattan. In the 1950s, she received a B.A. in English from New York University before meeting and marrying Angelo Meriwether, a Los Angeles teacher. Although this marriage and later marriage to Earle Howe ended in divorce, Louise continues to use the Meriwether name. In 1965, Louise earned an M.A. in journalism from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her first book, Daddy Was a Number Runner, a fictional account of the economic devastation of Harlem in the Great Depression, appeared in 1970 as the first novel to emerge from the Watts Writersβ Workshop. It received favorable reviews from authors James Baldwin and Paule Marshall. Daddy Was a Number Runner is a fictional account of the historical and sociological devastation of the economic Depression on Harlem residents.~blackpastorg
PHOTO BACKSTORY HERE: https://medium.com//the-unsung-day-19-the-unbothered-louise-jenkins-merriwether-600f12f99c0c
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