Inventory of the Myra Page Papers, 1910-1990

Collection Number 5143

Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Contact Information:

Manuscripts Department

CB#3926, Wilson Library

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890

Phone: 919/962-1345

Fax: 919/962-3594

Email: mss@email.unc.edu

URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/

Descriptive Summary

Repository

Southern Historical Collection

Creator

Page, Myra, 1897- .

Title

Myra Page Papers, 1910-1990

Call Number

5143

Language of Materials

Materials in English

Extent

Items: About 4000

Linear Feet: 12.0

Administrative Information

Restrictions to Access

This collection has restrictions to access. Please see details below or contact the Manuscripts Department for more information.

Usage Restrictions

Use of audio materials may require production of listening copies.

Acquisitions Information

Received from May Kanfer of Hastings on Hudson, N.Y., in October 2001 (Acc. 99687).

Processing Information

Processed by: Matthew Turi, February 2004

Encoded by: Matthew Turi, March 2004

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Myra Page Papers #5143, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Online Catalog Headings

These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.

Authors, American--Juvenile literature.

Authors, American--Political and social views.

Communism and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Labor unions--Organizing--Southern States.

Labor unions--Political activity--Southern States.

Labor unions--Southern States.

League of American Writers.

Markey family.

Page, Myra, 1897-.

Politics and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Sharecropping--Southern States--Photographs.

Southern States--Social conditions.

Soviet Union--Photographs.

Women and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Women authors, American--20th century.

Women communists--United States.

Women journalists--United States.

Related Collections

Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Interview G-42

Biographical Note

Dorothy Markey (nee Dorothy Page Gary), writer, union activist, and communist who wrote as Myra Page, was born into the family of a well-established physician in Newport News, Va., in 1897. After completing high school, she attended Westhampton College in Richmond, Va., graduating in 1918 with a bachelor's degree in English and history. Markey briefly taught school in Richmond before moving to New York City, where she attended Columbia University and earned a master's degree in political science and sociology in 1920. After graduating, she returned to Virginia and worked for one year as the Industrial Secretary for the YWCA in Norfolk helping to "organize southern working women." Markey spent the next several years working as a shop clerk and machine worker in Philadelphia, Pa., and St. Louis, Mo., while she was involved with organizing workers for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. From 1924 to 1928, she studied at the University of Minnesota and earned her Ph.D. in sociology by writing and publishing, Southern Cotton Mills and Labor (1929). During this period, she married John Fordyce Markey and joined the Communist Party.

Over the next two decades, under the pen name Myra Page, Markey was a very active political journalist. Her writings about the social, political, and economic conditions in the American South, Mexico, and the Soviet Union appeared in a number of Communist-sponsored papers, including The Daily Worker, The Southern Worker, Working Woman, and Soviet Russia Today. She was one of The Daily Worker's correspondents in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, and, for a number of years, she served on the editorial board of Soviet Russia Today. It was during this period that she wrote and published Gathering Storm: A Story of the Black Belt (1932); Soviet Main Street (1933); Moscow Yankee (1935); and With Sun in Our Blood (1950), which was later republished as Daughter of the Hills: A Woman's Part in the Coal Miners' Struggle (1986). In the early 1940s, Markey taught short story writing and similar courses at the Writers' School sponsored by the League of American Writers in New York City.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Markey wrote and published the juvenile biographies Explorer of Sound: Michael Pupin (1964) and The Little Giant of Schenectady: Charles Steinmetz (1956), both released under her married name.

Dorothy Markey died in 1993.

Collection Overview

The Myra Page papers includes materials relating to the journalistic and literary activities of writer, union activist, and communist Dorothy Markey (nee Dorothy Page Gary), who wrote under the name of Myra Page. Included are business and personal correspondence; contracts and other materials concerning the publication of her works in the United States and the Soviet Union; typed and handwritten manuscripts, newspaper clippings, notebooks, and notes relating to the writing of newspaper articles, radio plays, short stories, poems, books, and screenplays; lecture notes, handouts, student writings, and other materials relating to writing courses that she taught during the 1940s in New York City for the League of American Writers; subject files relating to the American South, organized labor, progressive and radical politics, and other topics; and biographical and family materials, including an annotated transcript of her interview with the Southern Oral History Program and photographs of southern sharecroppers and people in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Short journalistic and literary works are articles and short stories written for publication in The Daily Worker, The Southern Worker, Working Woman, and Soviet Russia Today. They concern progressive politics, labor issues in the South, life and politics during the 1930s in the Soviet Union and Mexico, and the United States homefront during World War II. Longer works include juvenile biographies (Explorer of Sound: Michael Pupin (1964), "Joseph Henry: Genius Who Inherited Franklin's Mantel" (unpublished); and The Little Giant of Schenectady: Charles Steinmetz (1956)); an unproduced screenplay ("Mona Lisa and Da Vinci"); an unpublished autobiographical novel ("Soundings"); and With Sun in Our Blood (1950), which was reissued as Daughter of the Hills (1986).

Arrangement of Collection

1. Correspondence
2. Publishing Materials
3. Writings and Associated Materials
3.1. Short Works
3.2. Long Works
3.2.1. Explorer of Sound: Michael Pupin
3.2.2. Joseph Henry: Genius Who Inherited Franklin's Mantel
3.2.3. The Little Giant of Schenectady: A Story of Charles Steinmetz
3.2.4. "Mona Lisa and Da Vinci"
3.2.5. "Soundings"
3.2.6. With Sun in Our Blood or Daughter of the Hills: A Woman's Part in the Coal Miners' Struggle
3.3. Reviews of Books
3.4. Journals, Notebooks, and Notes
4. Writing Courses
5. Subject Files
5.1. American South
5.2. Labor Unions
5.3. Progressive and Radical Politics
5.4. Miscellaneous
6. Biographical and Family Materials

Items Separated

Items separated include photographs (P-5143), audiotapes (C-5143), and oversize papers (0P-5143).

Detailed Description of the Collection