Grace Lumpkin (March 3, 1891 – March 23, 1980) was an American writer of proletarian literature who focused most of her works on the Depression era and the rise and fall of communism in the United States. The most important of four books was her first, To Make My Bread (1932), which won the Gorky Prize in 1933.

Biography

Early life

Grace Lumpkin was born on March 3, 1891, in Milledgeville, Georgia, the ninth of eleven children born to Annette Caroline Morris and William Wallace Lumpkin. In 1898 she moved with her family to South Carolina. She grew up in a very religious, prominent but economically-unstable aristocratic Georgian family. There were seven siblings, who by birth order were Elizabeth (teacher), Hope (clergyman), Alva (politician), Morris (lawyer), Grace (writer), and Katharine (academic).

In around 1910, William moved his family one final time, to a farm in Richland County. While in South Carolina, Grace witnessed firsthand the suffering of black and white sharecroppers and laborers. Black laborers performed fieldwork on the Lumpkin family farm, and the Lumpkin children attended school with white children from the "poorest classes". She volunteered in France for a year, and then returned to Georgia. In Georgia she worked for the YMCA, eventually organized an adult night school for farmers and their wives, and worked at home as a demonstration agent. In 1926 she walked the picket lines with Passaic textile strikers and wrote about it for New Masses.

In 1927 Lumpkin was arrested at a picket sponsored by the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. In 1929 she was sent to the south by the Communist Party to organize among black sharecroppers and to observe and participate in the Communist-led Gastonia textile strikes.

Later years

Lumpkin became concerned with righting what she saw as her earlier political wrong and returned to the teachings of the Bible.

On April 2, 1953, Lumpkin testified before the Permanent Subcommittee of Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. She was then living on Gramercy Park in New York City and working as a proofreader for a printing firm called the Golden Eagle Press. Asked about her affiliations in the 1930s, she replied, "I was under the influence and the discipline of the Communist movement, although I was not a member" and that she had taken part in "faction meetings and cell meetings." Also considered an examination of cultural and feminist history during the Depression, Lumpkin's novel addresses many of the stratifications between class and race. The novel won the Gorky Prize in 1933.

  • A Sign for Cain (1935). Issues with sharecropping and land ownership impact both races represented and talk of a social uprising has tones of communist revolution, a theme then emerging more prevalently in Lumpkin's own life. Lumpkin realized the influence the Communist Party had over her writing, and even claimed that the strong implications evident in her text were driven by her mentors in the party. Jennie's groom is Dr. Gregg, a new member of the community, having moved to town due to its rising industrialization. The wedding is almost put on hold after a heated argument and it is only after her mother, father, and Gregg's friend act as peacemakers that it continues. Jennie conforms to society's demands, having stood her ground for the last time against a marriage in which she has little emotional relation with the doctor. Throughout the text, Lumpkin describes the Communist Party in stark terms and addresses her novel towards Southern issues.

Articles:

  • "White Man, A Story" New Masses (September 1927)
  • "'Flaming Milka's' Story," New Masses (February 1928)
  • "The Law and the Spirit," National Review (May 25, 1957)

Legacy

In 1935, Albert Bein adapted To Make My Bread into the play Let Freedom Ring.

Lumpkin provides modern readers with a window into the past of the building of the southern working class and the changes to its patriarchal values and women's roles. Lumpkin's writings give cultural historians and scholars an important body to consider when considering this period and the movements to which she contributed.

Beginning in the 1950s, scholars regained interest in radical "lost novels" of the 1930s. They have pointed to Lumpkin as one of the period's most influential authors. They have noted both her historical and literary accomplishments, particularly prominent as a figure in the early feminist movement and for promoting worker's rights. She has received praise for her ability to portray the process in which "external forces shape a literary work".