African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

Nellie Rathbone Bright (Author Page)

Nellie Rathbone Bright was a poet and editor who lived in Philadelphia. She was part of a literary group that emerged at the peak years of the Harlem Renaissance (here, not in Harlem, but Philadelphia!). She and Arthur Fauset co-edited Black Opals, a magazine named after a line in a poem Bright herself wrote and published in the magazine's first issue ("Longings"). The magazine published several issues, with one issue guest-edited by Gwendolyn B. Bennett. Unfortunately, it stopped publication after its fourth issue, in 1928. 

Bright graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1923. At Penn, she was a charter member of the university's first Black sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. She taught in Philadelphia schools for many years, and became the principal of the Joseph E. Hill School in Philadelphia in 1925. 

Bright never published a collection of her own poems, though in 1972, she and Arthur Fauset co-authored a History book for young readers called America: Red, White, Black, Yellow, which focused on the histories of minoritized communities in the United States. 

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