{"id":6253,"date":"2025-04-03T11:11:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T16:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/?page_id=6253"},"modified":"2025-04-03T12:10:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T17:10:58","slug":"esther-popel","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/esther-popel\/","title":{"rendered":"Esther Popel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Popel\"<\/a>

Esther Popel and her daughter Esther<\/p><\/div>\n

Esther Popel<\/strong>\u00a0(1896-1958)<\/a> became the first black female graduate of Dickinson College in 1919.\u00a0 She later married William Shaw and worked for most of her adult life as a teacher in Washington, DC. She had one daughter. Popel achieved her greatest national renown as poet and writer, often identified as an example of the dynamic \u201cHarlem Renaissance\u201d from the early twentieth century.\u00a0 The country\u2019s leading civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advanced of Colored People (NAACP) often published Popel\u2019s work in its magazine, The Crisis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Her best known poem, \u201cFlag Salute,\u201d actually appeared in The Crisis\u00a0<\/em>twice, once in 1934, following the lynching of a young black man in Maryland, and then again in November 1940, after the continued threat of filibuster in the US senate seemed to kill off any hopes of passage for a federal anti-lynching bill.\u00a0 \u00a0Lynching refers to extra-judicial killings, intended as punishment but not authorized by law and usually targeting racial or religious minorities. The US senate did finally pass an anti-lynching measure in 2018, but there was no House action at that time.\u00a0 However, in March 2022, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act finally became federal law.<\/p>\n

Popel also wrote a short, fascinating memoir entitled, \u201cPersonal Adventures in Race Relations\u201d (1948)<\/a> that is available online through the Dickinson College Archives and which probably conveys her smart, witty but subtly combative personality as well as any source.\u00a0 To learn more about how students at Dickinson are engaging with the legacy of Esther Popel in their own lives, visit the\u00a0Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Flag<\/a><\/p>\n

Passages from Personal Adventures in Race Relations (1948)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“The constant and soul-searing humiliation that is the outgrowth of the dangerously reactionary policies of prejudice and biracialism serves to undermine the faith of the Negro, and other minorities, in the very foundation of the democracy they are asked to defend. Tensions have reached the explosive stage, and intelligent action is needed if we are to prevent consequences that can be utterly disastrous. In an atomic age we need atomic understanding!” (p. 3)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mitsuye Endo<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe Negro director of a Federal Housing Project in Chicago [Robert Taylor] was asked to find a place on his staff for a Japanese-American girl just out of a relocation center. She was seeking employment. When the director approached his colored office workers on the subject they all objected most strenuously. They didn\u2019t want to work with a \u201cJap\u201d. In order to change this feeling the director gave a long and stirring lecture to them on proper racial attitudes, until he finally succeeded in overcoming their objections. The Japanese-American girl came, and as the weeks passed she and the one girl in particular who had at first so bitterly opposed her employment became good friends. One day the latter was talking about the Nisei girl to her director. After expressing her affection for the new office worker she said: \u201cYou know, Mitsui is very glad she\u2019s working here with us. She said she\u2019d so much rather be here than with those Jews in the downtown office!\u201d (p. 6-7)<\/p>\n

“Encountered recently in a pre-Christmas crowd while [this black teacher] was on her way to do her Christmas shopping, she gave forth this amazing piece of evidence of the deep-seated, inner resentment which controls her life whether or not she realizes its import. These were her words as she joked about Christmas shopping: ‘I just love Christmas time, and Christmas shopping. It gives me a chance to get my arms full of bundles and go barging through the stores where I can bump into these old “crackers” and step on their toes and push them out of my way. And they can\u2019t do or say anything about it because in a Christmas crowd nobody has to be bothered about being polite to them!’ Christmas Spirit in the 1940\u2019s! This is as eloquent an indictment of racial proscription as one may cite. And the tragedy underlying it is significant also, for hers is not the only soul that has become warped in such fashion.” (p. 19)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Esther Popel\u00a0(1896-1958) became the first black female graduate of Dickinson College in 1919.\u00a0 She later married William Shaw and worked for most of her adult life as a teacher in Washington, DC. She had one daughter. Popel achieved her greatest national renown as poet and writer, often identified as an example of the dynamic \u201cHarlem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6253","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-204pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}