Akasha Hull Papers Now Available at the Schomburg Center

By Allison Hughes, Librarian II
April 17, 2023
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is pleased to announce that the papers and photographs of Akasha Gloria Hull, pioneering Black feminist poet and author, are now open to the public. 

The papers are located in Schomburg's Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books division. For further details on accessing the collection, please contact the division at schomburgarchives@nypl.org. The photograph collection is available in the Photographs and Prints division.

Portrait of Akasha Hull

Akasha Hull, 1988, photographed by Bruce K. Turner. Akasha Hull Photograph Collection, Box 1, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Akasha Hull was born Gloria Theresa Thompson in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1944. She attended Southern University then Purdue, where she earned her Master's (1968) and Ph.D. (1972) degrees in English literature. As a professor at the University of Delaware (1971-1988) and the University of California, Santa Cruz (1988-2000), she was influential in shaping the field of women’s studies and bringing scholarly attention to Black women writers and activists.

In 1982, she coedited, with Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, a seminal text in Black women's studies. She is the editor of the collected works and diaries of Harlem Renaissance writer Alice Dunbar-Nelson and the author of Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (1987), a study of Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimké, and Georgia Douglas Johnson.

In addition to her scholarly work, Hull is a poet and creative writer who has published a poetry collection, Healing Heart (1989), a novel, Niecy (2012), and a book exploring spirituality among Black women, Soul Talk (2001). She was also a member of the Combahee River Collective, which created a framework for Black feminist ideology based on the experiences of "interlocking oppressions" within the lives of queer Black women.

Front and back sides of postcard from Audre Lorde to Akasha Hull. Image on front is a marble bust of a Black man; the back has a short handwritten message.

Postcard from Audre Lorde to Akasha Hull, dated 1978. Akasha Hull papers, Sc MG 977, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

The Schomburg Center acquired Hull's archives in 2021. "I completed a lot of my research on Harlem Renaissance women writers at the Schomburg," said Hull. "For that and many other reasons, I feel like it’s a natural home for these archives. I think I’m doing right by myself and the complex life I’ve lived as an African American woman to launch them at this time, from this place to the public for the good they may ultimately serve.”

Associate curator of Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Barrye Brown said: "The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is thrilled to be the home of the Akasha Gloria Hull papers. This acquisition represents the Schomburg Center's continued efforts to collect the papers of Black feminist authors and activists. By centering the experiences and voices of Black women, Dr. Hull's literary and scholarly work and activism have been extremely influential and transformative in shaping the fields of Feminist Studies, Black Women's Studies, and African American Literature. Her papers stand as a testament to Black feminist thought and praxis and will continue to inspire future generations of scholars, writers, and activists."

The papers, which comprise nearly nine linear feet, were processed by  Brown and archivist Lauren Stark. Photographs, numbering over one thousand in total, were removed from the collection and processed separately by photography cataloger Michael Mery. 

Taken together, both the papers and photographs provide a rich document of Hull's life and career as an educator, poet, writer, and Black feminist scholar.

Highlights from the papers include personal ephemera, Hull's high school yearbook, daily planners, and family correspondence between Hull and her mother Jimmie, sister Maxine, and son Adrian. Other notable correspondents include Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, and Alice Walker. 

The collection also includes correspondence, schedules, reading materials, and notes from several Black feminist retreats organized by the Combahee River Collective. Hull became a member of the Collective when she accepted an invitation sent by Demita Frazier, Barbara Smith, and Beverly Smith to twenty notable, mostly Northeast coast Black feminists for an initial retreat at South Hadley, MA in July 1977. She attended five of the six subsequent retreats, contributing to the discussions, cultural sharing, publication planning, and group play. She also documented the retreat activities in a photo journal and co-organized the seventh and final February 1980 gathering in Washington DC. Association with the Combahee Collective helped firmly establish Hull's path as a social and literary activist.

Three typed letters and one page of handwritten notes.

Combahee River Collective material, Akasha Hull papers, Sc MG 977, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library

Drawing of a feminine face under transparent sheet reading "Healing Heart: Poems by Gloria T. Hull"

Sample cover art for Healing Heart, Akasha Hull papers, Sc MG 977, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

A significant portion of the papers is comprised of drafts, notes, and research files for Hull's books Healing Heart, Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (including Dunbar-Nelson's original diary pages), and Soul Talk (including interview transcripts with Bambara, Walker, Alexis De Veaux, Namonyah Soipan, and others). Drafts of scholarly articles, book chapters, and reviews; poems, both published and unpublished; and the texts of over three dozen speeches and lectures testify to Hull's prolific and varied output.

Hull's academic career is well represented in the collection, with files from her time at the University of Delaware, where she gained tenure and served as acting director of the women's studies interdisciplinary program; the University of the West Indies, where she did a two-year stint as a Fulbright lecturer in the mid-1980s; the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she chaired the Women's Studies department; and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was a distinguished visiting professor in 2003. Administrative documents chart Hull’s role in the development of women’s studies as a field, and course materials, lecture notes, and syllabi point to her work to bring academic attention to the work and thought of Black women.

Akasha Hull as a girl, wearing a white dress and standing outside a wooden building.

Akasha Hull, circa 1950s. Akasha Hull Photograph Collection, Box 1, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

The photographs provide an invaluable complement to the papers, with many photos depicting the lectures, presentations, interviews, workshops, and book signings that are documented in the papers. Additionally, a large number of snapshots offer a more candid look at Hull's personal life, showing her at home, with husbands and family and close male and female friends, and traveling. The photos span six decades of Hull's life, with the earliest dating from the 1950s and showing Hull and her grade school classmates.

Together, the photographs and papers join a number of related collections housed at the Schomburg Center, including the papers of Black feminists Cheryl Clarke and Alexis De Veaux, and the In the Life Archive of Black LGBT collections.