NW Quadrant, East of Rock Creek, African American, Female, Howard University, Journalists, Visual Arts

Gwendolyn Bennett
(July 8, 1902 – May 30, 1981)

1454 T St. NW, historic U Street neighborhood, DC.

Bennett was active in the Harlem Renaissance period, writing poetry, fiction, and journalism, as well as creating visual art (painting, drawing, and working in batik).

She lived in DC as a child (1907-1910), and moved back as an adult, when she taught in the Art Department at Howard University (1926-1929). Her parents rented this house in 1909, when she was seven.

Bennett never published her work in book form. However, her short fiction, poems, and essays appeared in Opportunity, The Crisis, Fire!!, and other journals, and was included in the anthologies Caroling Dusk and The New Negro. From 1926 to 1928, she was an assistant editor and columnist for Opportunity, a magazine sponsored by the National Urban League, where she published a monthly column on the theme of racial pride called "The Ebony Flute."

Beltway Poetry Quarterly, "A Black Girl Sings: Gwendolyn Bennett in the Harlem Renaissance"