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In Memoriam: Dorothy West; 1907-1998
Dorothy West died this past August at age 91. She is remembered as the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, the dramatic black cultural awakening that peaked between 1923 and 1929. She was the youngest of the great literary figures of the period who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Dorothy West was born in Boston in 1907. Her father, Isaac West, an emancipated slave, was known as the Black Banana King. He operated a highly successful wholesale fruit business in Boston. West's mother, Rachel Benson West, was one of 22 children. Light skinned and considered very beautiful, West's mother was sent north by her parents who were concerned that their daughter was vulnerable to sexual abuse by white men in the South.
"My mother sent me to school. I'm four years old, everybody else is six," Dorothy West later recalled. "And she says to me, don't you come back in this house and tell me any white child is smarter than you. White people...