Melvin B. Tolson

{{Short description|American poet, educator and politician (1898–1966)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2021}} {{Infobox person | name = | image = Melvin B Tolson.jpg | caption = | birth_date = {{birth date|1898|2|6}} | birth_name = Melvin Beaunorus Tolson | birth_place = Moberly, Missouri, United States | death_date = {{death date and age|1966|8|29|1898|2|6}} | death_place = Dallas, Texas, United States | burial_place = Guthrie, Oklahoma | occupation = Poet | education = | alma_mater = Lincoln University; <br/>Columbia University | notable_works = | awards = }} '''Melvin Beaunorus Tolson''' (February 6, 1898 – August 29, 1966) was an American poet, educator, columnist, and politician. As a poet, he was influenced both by Modernism and the language and experiences of African Americans, and he was deeply influenced by his study of the Harlem Renaissance.<ref>Gold, David (2008). ''Rhetoric at the Margins''. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 49–59.</ref>

As a debate coach at the historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, Tolson led a team that pioneered interracial college debates against white colleges in the segregated South.<ref name="Gold, 43-49">Gold (2008), 43–49.</ref> This work was depicted in the 2007 biopic ''The Great Debaters'', produced by Oprah Winfrey, starring and directed by Denzel Washington as Tolson.<ref name="Gold, 43-49" /><ref>Beil, Gail. (2008). [https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/wiley-colleges-great-debaters "Wiley's Great Debaters"], ''Humanities Texas'', February 2008.</ref>

== Early life and education == Born in Moberly, Missouri, Tolson was one of four children of Reverend Alonzo Tolson, a Methodist minister, and Lera (Hurt) Tolson, a seamstress.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com">Joseph, Dr. Eric Anthony (February 6, 2008), {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20090304192307/http://media.www.lugazette.com/media/storage/paper816/news/2008/02/06/Opinion/The-Great.Debater.Melvin.B.Tolson-3188961.shtml "The Great Debater, Melvin B. Tolson {{!}} Black History Month Epistle Series -Part One"]}}, ''The Gazette'', Langston University, Retrieved January 13, 2009. .</ref> Alonzo Tolson was of mixed race, the son of an enslaved woman and her white master.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com" /> He served at various churches in the Missouri and Iowa area until settling longer in Kansas City. Reverend Tolson studied throughout his life to add to the limited education he had first received, even taking Latin, Greek and Hebrew by correspondence courses.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com" /> Both parents emphasized education for their children.

Melvin Tolson graduated from Lincoln High School in Kansas City in 1919. He enrolled at Fisk University, but the following year transferred to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania for financial reasons. He graduated with honors in 1923. He became a Man of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

== Marriage and family == In 1922, Tolson married Ruth Southall (1896-1982) of Charlottesville, Virginia, whom he had met as a student at Lincoln University. Their first child was Melvin Beaunorus Tolson Jr. (1923-2011), who became a doctor and a professor at the University of Oklahoma.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/tolson/libretto.htm |first=Melvin B. |last=Tolson, Jr.|title=On Preparing to Write the Modernist Ode|date=1990|journal=Modern American Poetry|publisher= University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign|access-date=January 13, 2009}}</ref> He was followed by Arthur Lincoln Tolson (1924-2015), who became a professor at Southern University; Wiley Wilson Tolson (1927-1993), who became a doctor; and Ruth Marie Tolson (1928-1976).

== Career == After graduation from Lincoln, Tolson and his wife moved to Marshall, Texas, where he taught speech and English at Wiley College (1924–1947). The small, historically black Methodist Episcopal college had a high reputation among blacks in the South and Tolson became one of its stars.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Melvin B. |last=Tolson, Jr.|url=https://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JnsGDf2p41HtQD5SNCpcshK1BpQz56K5sTBhnm0gnnWngSrFJfcb!-1064738139?docId=95710646 |title=The Poetry of Melvin B. Tolson (1898–1966)|journal=World Literature Today|volume= 64|date= 1990|doi=10.2307/40146629 |jstor=40146629 |access-date= January 13, 2009}}</ref>

In 1930–31, Tolson took a leave of absence from teaching to study for a Master's degree at Columbia University. His thesis project, "The Harlem Group of Negro Writers," was based on his extensive interviews with members of the Harlem Renaissance.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com" /><ref name="Melvin B. Tolson">{{cite journal|url=http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/tolson/bio.htm |title=Melvin B. Tolson|journal=Modern American Poetry|publisher= University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign|access-date= January 13, 2009}}</ref> His poetry was strongly influenced by his time in New York. He completed his work and was awarded the master's degree in 1940.

In addition to teaching English at Wiley, Tolson built an award-winning debate team, the Wiley Forensic Society, which became a pioneer in interracial collegiate debates. Beginning in 1930, the team debated against law students from the University of Michigan in Chicago. In 1931, the team participated in the first known interracial collegiate debate in the South, against Oklahoma City University. During a tour in 1935, they competed against the top-ranked team of University of Southern California, which they defeated.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com" /><ref>Latham, Phil (December 9, 2007), [http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/news/content/news/opinion/120907_WEB_latham.html "Invisibility was the worst result of Jim Crow's South"], ''Marshall News Messenger''. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071211004539/http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/news/content/news/opinion/120907_WEB_latham.html |date=December 11, 2007 }}.</ref>

At Wiley, Tolson also co-founded the black intercollegiate Southern Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts and directed the theater club. He coached the junior varsity football team.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com" />

Tolson mentored students such as James Farmer and Heman Sweatt, each of whom later became civil rights activists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Beil |first=Gail K. |date=2002 |title=Four Marshallites' Roles in the Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30242135 |journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly |volume=106 |issue=1 |pages=1–29 |issn=0038-478X}}</ref> He encouraged his students not only to be well-rounded people but to stand up for their rights. This was a controversial position in the segregated U.S. South of the early and mid-20th century, when Jim Crow laws predominated and blacks were effectively disenfranchised.

In 1947, Tolson began teaching at Langston University, a historically black college in Langston, Oklahoma, where he worked for the next 17 years. He was a dramatist and director of the Dust Bowl Theater at the university. One of his students at Langston was Nathan Hare, the black studies pioneer and founding publisher of the journal ''The Black Scholar''.

In 1947, Liberia appointed Tolson its Poet Laureate. In 1953, he completed a major epic poem in honor of the nation's centennial, the ''Libretto for the Republic of Liberia''.

Tolson entered local politics and served three terms as mayor of Langston, Oklahoma, from 1954 to 1960.<ref>Melvin B. Tolson biography, [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/tolson/bio.htm "Melvin B. Tolson 1898–1966: Plain Talk and Poetic Prophesy"], ''Modern American Poetry'', University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; accessed January 13, 2009.</ref>

In 1947, Tolson was accused{{by whom|date=February 2022}} of having been active in organizing farm laborers and tenant farmers during the late 1930s (though the nature of his activities is unclear) and of having radical leftist associations.<ref>[http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/featr/content/features/entertainment/tolson_bio.html Marshall News Messenger].</ref>

Tolson was a man of impressive intellect who created poetry that was "funny, witty, humoristic, slapstick, rude, cruel, bitter, and hilarious," as reviewer Karl Shapiro described the ''Harlem Gallery''.<ref>Introduction, ''The Harlem Gallery'', New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965.</ref> The poet Langston Hughes, who like Tolson was a Lincoln University alumnus, described him as "the most famous Negro professor in the Southwest" and "a poet of no mean ability" who could connect with students from various walks of life: "Kids from the cottonfields like him. Cowpunchers understand him. ... It is not just English he teaches, but character, and manhood, and womanhood, and love, and courage, and pride."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lenhart |first=Gary |url=https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-Stamp-of-Class |title=The Stamp of Class: Reflections on Poetry and Social Class |publisher=University of Michigan Press |year=2005 |isbn=9780472069170 |location=Ann Arbor |pages=76–77}}</ref>

In 1965, Tolson was appointed to a two-year term at Tuskegee Institute, where he was Avalon Poet. He died after cancer surgery in Dallas, Texas, on August 29, 1966. He was buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

== Literary works == From 1930 on, Tolson began writing poetry. He also wrote two plays by 1937, although he did not continue to work in this genre.<ref name="media.www.lugazette.com" />

From October 1937 to June 1944, Tolson wrote a column for ''The Washington Tribune'' that he called "Cabbage and Caviar"; a selection of the columns, in a volume also titled ''Caviar and Cabbage'', edited and with an introduction by Robert M. Farnsworth, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1982.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Cabbage and Caviar: Selected Columns from the Washington Tribune, 1937–1944|editor-last=Farnsworth|editor-first=Robert M.|publisher=University of Missouri Press|year=1982|location=Columbia|pages=vi}}</ref>

In 1941, Tolson published his poem "Dark Symphony" in the ''Atlantic Monthly''. Some critics believe it is his greatest work, in which he compared and contrasted African-American and European-American history.

In 1944, Tolson published his first poetry collection, ''Rendezvous with America'', which includes ''Dark Symphony''. He was especially interested in historic events that had fallen into obscurity.<ref name="Melvin B. Tolson" />

Tolson's ''Libretto for the Republic of Liberia'' (1953), another major work, is in the form of an epic poem in an eight-part, ''rhapsodic'' sequence. It is considered a major modernist work.<ref name="Melvin B. Tolson" />

Tolson's final work to appear in his lifetime, the long poem ''Harlem Gallery'', was published in 1965. The poem consists of several sections, each beginning with a letter of the Greek alphabet. The poem concentrates on African-American life. It was a striking change from his first works, and was composed in a jazz style, with quick changes and intellectually dense, rich allusions.<ref name="Melvin B. Tolson" />

In 1979, a collection of Tolson's poetry was published posthumously, entitled ''A Gallery of Harlem Portraits''. These were poems written during his year in New York, and they represented a mixture of various styles, including short narratives in free verse. This collection was influenced by the loose form of Edgar Lee Masters' ''Spoon River Anthology''.<ref name="Melvin B. Tolson" /> An urban, racially diverse and culturally rich community is presented in ''A Gallery of Harlem Portraits''.

With increasing interest in Tolson and his literary period, in 1999 the University of Virginia published a collection of his poetry entitled ''Harlem Gallery and Other Poems of Melvin B. Tolson'', edited by Raymond Nelson.

Tolson's papers are housed at the Library of Congress.

== Legacy and honors == * Fellowship to Columbia University, 1930–31. * 1947, Liberia named Tolson its poet laureate. * 1954, appointed permanent fellow in poetry and drama at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.<ref name="Melvin.B page2">{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20141223032143/http://media.www.lugazette.com/media/storage/paper816/news/2008/02/13/Opinion/Melvin.B.Tolson.The.Great.Debater.Life.After.Langston-3204089-page2.shtml Dr. Eric Johnson, "Melvin B. Tolson: The Great Debater, Life after Langston"]}}, ''The Gazette'', Langston University, February 13, 2008; accessed January 13, 2009.</ref> * 1964, elected to the New York ''Herald Tribune'' book-review board, and the District of Columbia presented him with a citation and Award for Cultural Achievement in the Fine Arts.<ref name="Melvin.B page2" /> * 1964, grant from the National Institute.<ref name="Melvin.B page2" /> * 1966, annual poetry award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<ref>[https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fto36 "Melvin B. Tolson"], ''Handbook of Texas Online''; accessed January 13, 2009.</ref> * 1970, Langston University founded the Melvin B. Tolson Black Heritage Center in his honor, to collect material of Africans, African Americans, and the African diaspora.<ref name="Melvin.B page2" /> * 2004, inducted posthumously into Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.<ref name="Melvin.B page2" /> * 2007, a biographical film, ''The Great Debaters'', was released.<ref name="Debaters">{{cite web | title = IMDB The Great Debaters | website = IMDb | date = December 25, 2007 | url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427309/ }}</ref>

== References == {{Reflist}}

== Further reading == *{{cite book |last=Christensen |first=Lawrence O. |title=Dictionary of Missouri Biography |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-8262-1222-0 |display-authors=etal |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofmiss00unse }} *{{cite book |last=Farnsworth |first=Robert M. |title=Melvin B. Tolson, 1898–1966: Plain Talk and Poetic Prophecy |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |year=1984 |isbn=0-8262-0433-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/melvinbtolson18900farn }}

== External links == *[https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4412 "Melvyn B Tolson"], ''Literary Encyclopedia''. *[http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/featr/content/features/entertainment/tolson_bio.html Biography of Tolson from the Marshall News Messenger]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolson, Melvin Beaunorus}} Category:1898 births Category:1966 deaths Category:20th-century African-American writers Category:20th-century American poets Category:20th-century mayors of places in Oklahoma Category:African-American mayors in Oklahoma Category:African-American people in Oklahoma politics Category:African-American poets Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Fisk University alumni Category:Langston University faculty Category:Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) alumni Category:People from Marshall, Texas Category:People from Moberly, Missouri Category:People from the Kansas City metropolitan area Category:Wiley University faculty Category:African-American history in Marshall, Texas