Lena Beatrice Morton, from a 1922 publication.

Lena Beatrice Morton (1901 – January 10, 1981) was an American educator and literary scholar.

Early life

Lena Beatrice Morton was born in Flat Creek in Bath County, Kentucky, the daughter of Susie Morton and William Morton. Her family moved to Ohio so that she could attend secondary school.[1] She attended the University of Cincinnati, where she was a founding member of the school's first black sorority.[2] She graduated in 1922.[3] She completed doctoral studies in the English department at Case Western Reserve University in 1947.[4]

Career

Lena Beatrice Morton taught high school and college-level English courses. She was head of the humanities division at Texas College, where she held the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Chair.[5] She was a life fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters in Switzerland.[6] She also taught at Lane College in Tennessee,[7] and at Langston University in Oklahoma.[8]

Books by Lena Beatrice Morton include Negro Poetry in America (1925),[9] Farewell to the Public Schools, I'm Glad We Met: A Handbook for Teachers (1952),[10] Man Under Stress (1960),[11] Patterns of Language Usage, My First Sixty Years: Passion for Wisdom (1965),[12] and The Influence of the Sea Upon English Poetry from the Anglo-Saxon to the Victorian Period (1976).[13][2]

Personal life

Lena Beatrice Morton died in 1981, aged 79 years.[14]

Her memoir was one of six considered in Stephanie Y. Evans's Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (2007).[15]

References

  1. ^ George C. Wright, A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980 (University Press of Kentucky 1992): 122. ISBN 9780916968212
  2. ^ a b "Lena B. Morton" Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, University of Kentucky.
  3. ^ "Negro Higher Education in 1921-1922" The Crisis (July 1922): 108-109.
  4. ^ Case Western Reserve University, Convocation for Conferring Degrees (1947): 13.
  5. ^ "People" Jet (June 8, 1967): 44.
  6. ^ "For the Record" Jet (March 8, 1962): 40.
  7. ^ Laneite (1954): 18.
  8. ^ Langston University Catalog (1950-1951): 9.
  9. ^ Lena Beatrice Morton, Negro Poetry in America (Stratford 1925).
  10. ^ Helen Adele Whiting, "A Teacher's Wisdom", Phylon 14(1)(1953): 115.
  11. ^ "For the Record" Jet (January 12, 1961): 38.
  12. ^ Lena Beatrice Morton, My First Sixty Years: Passion for Wisdom (Philosophical Library 1965).
  13. ^ Lena Beatrice Morton, The Influence of the Sea Upon English Poetry from the Anglo-Saxon to the Victorian Period (Revisionist Press 1976)
  14. ^ "Scholar Lena Morton Succumbs at Age 79" Cincinnati Enquirer (January 15, 1981): 53.
  15. ^ Elisabeth I. Perry, review of Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (University Press of Florida 2007), H-SHGAPE (April 2008).
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