Clara Ann Thompson Photograph from Songs from the Wayside 1908
1 media/clara ann thompson songs from the wayside photograph_thumb.jpg 2023-06-01T11:00:19-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 213 1 Clara Ann Thompson Photograph from Songs from the Wayside 1908 plain 2023-06-01T11:00:19-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1This page is referenced by:
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Clara Ann Thompson (Author Page)
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Clara Ann Thompson was born, possibly in 1868, in Rossmoyne, Ohio. Both of her parents were formerly enslaved people. According to Mary Anne Stewart Boelcskevy, she was a member of the YWCA, the NAACP and was active in the Baptist Church. While her collection, Songs from the Wayside was self-published in 1908, some of her poems were anthologized in prominent collections, including the Walter Clinton Jackson/Newman Ivey White collection An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes (1924). Clara Thompson's sister, Priscilla Jane Thompson, was also a published poet, and many of her poems are also to be found on this site.
Songs from the Wayside contains a significant number of poems using Black vernacular English, referred to at the time as "dialect poetry." Dialect poetry was quite popular in the time, as many writers were influenced by the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who published several volumes of dialect poetry starting in the 1890s. However, for some writers and critics in the 1910s and 20s the use of dialect would be considered passe.
In 1921, Thompson self-published a pamphlet called "What Means This Bleating of the Sheep?" which marked a signficant departure from the style and voice of her earlier poetry. The pamphlet is a ferocious critique of systemic racism in the United States.
