Effie Lee Newsome

Biography

Effie Lee Newsome (January 16, 1885 – 1979), born Mary Effie Lee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a Harlem Renaissance writer. She mostly wrote children's poems, and was the first famous African-American poet whose work was mostly in this area. Her first publications appeared in W.E.B. Du Bois and Jessie Fauset's periodical for children, The Brownies' Book. She edited a column in The Crisis from 1925 until 1929, called "The Little Page", where she made drawings and wrote poetry for children and parables about being young and black in the 1920s. Newsome also illustrated for children's magazines and edited children's columns for Opportunity. Her volume of poetry was issued by Carter G. Woodson's Associated Publishers. Gladiola Garden (1940), a collection for children, was illustrated by the important painter Lois Mailou Jones. An amateur illustrator whose drawings of birds appear on the Children's Page of The Crisis, Newsome also illustrated Pauline E.

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