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Biography/History:
Lance Jeffers was born on November 28, 1919, in Fremont, Nebraska, the only child of Henry Nelson and Dorothy May Flippin. When he was one year old, he was taken from his parents and reared in Stromsburg, Nebraska, by his maternal grandfather, George Albert Flippin. George Flippin was a black medical doctor who had a profound influence on the life of his young grandson. In the summer of 1929, after the death of his grandfather, Lance Jeffers moved to the home of his mother and step-father, Forrest Jeffers, in San Francisco, California. Forrest Jeffers was a maintenance man in a white apartment building. He also had a strong influence on the young Lance during these formative years.
Lance Jeffers was educated primarily in the public schools of San Francisco, California. In 1937, he spent a year at the Tuskegee Institute High School, Tuskegee, Alabama. He returned to San Francisco, however, to graduate from high school in 1938. After graduation, he attended Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California. In all, he attended three colleges in the San Francisco area and the University of California at Berkeley before deciding to enlist in the army in January 1942.
Jeffers was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army and assigned to the Medical Administrative Corps. He served in Europe from 1944-1945 and was discharged in January 1946.
In May of that year, he married Camille Jones, a Red Cross social worker. They had one son, Lance Jeffers, Jr., born in 1956. In 1958, Jeffers divorced Camille Jones and married Trellie James. They had three daughters: Valjeanne Jeffers Thompson, Sidonie Jeffers, and Honoree Jeffers.
Jeffers returned to the United States in 1946, intent on pursuing an academic and literary career. In 1948, he had a short story, “The Dawn Swings In,” published in The Best American Short Stories-1948. By 1951, he had earned from Columbia University in New York City both a bachelor of arts degree in English and a master of arts degree in English education. He began to teach in 1951 and taught continuously at many different schools and colleges throughout his career. In 1959, he served as the director of Freedom School in Atlanta, Georgia. This school was created to meet some of the English needs of black students who were to become the first to integrate Atlanta public schools. Jeffers’s most significant college assignments from 1964-1973 were at Florida A & M University, Tallahassee, Florida; Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; and California State University, Long Beach, California. In 1973, Jeffers became an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, Durham, North Carolina. He remained at the school throughout the remainder of his teaching career and was appointed a full professor prior to his death.
Jeffers’s poems began to appear in various anthologies in 1962, and he gained significant recognition as an advocate of black American literature when twenty-four of his poems appeared in the anthology of Howard University Poets, Burning Spear, published in 1963. Lance Jeffers made tremendous advances in his career as a writer during the 1970s. The first volume of his poetry, My Blackness is the Beauty of this Land, was published in 1971. A second volume, When I Know the Power of My Black Hand, was published in 1974, and a third volume, O Africa Where I Baked My Bread, appeared in 1976. In that same year, he was invited by officials of The Black Scholar to be one of nine artists and scholars to travel to Cuba and participate in a cultural exchange. Two of his poems, “When I Know the Power of My Black Hand” and “Trellie,” were translated into Spanish and published in December 1977 in Union, Journal of Writers and Artists of Cuba. Jeffers’s collection of narrative poems, Grandsire, came out in 1979. The title poem is a description of Jeffers’s grandfather.
In the 1970s, Jeffers formed a close relationship with Jerry W. Ward, an English professor at Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Madison County, Mississippi. The two worked together to examine the role of the writer in the lives of black students during the Civil Rights Movement and other social upheavals that were occurring throughout the nation at this period. They were particularly anxious to express the feelings of black people through poetry during those turbulent times. In 1980, Jeffers was selected as the Andrew Mellon Scholar In Residence at Tougaloo, and Ward urged him at that time to deposit the collection of his works at the Tougaloo College Civil Rights Archives.
Jeffers was later invited to participate in the United Negro College Fund Distinguished Scholars for the 1982-1983 academic year at Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama. He reached the pinnacle of his career in 1983 with the publication of his novel, Witherspoon. He died in 1985 after a short illness.
Scope and Content:
This collection consists of correspondence, photographs, copies of written works, books, and news clippings of Lance Jeffers. The collection spans the years 1957-1986, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1965-1983.
The collection is divided into six series. Series one contains Jeffers’s writings, reviews of some of these works, and the reviews of the works of other writers. Series two through four contain correspondence, interviews, and personal data. Series five contains documents from the Civil Rights Movement. Series six contains books, journals, pamphlets, and programs.
Series Identification:
This series contains copies and reviews of the works of Lance Jeffers. They include short poems, long narrative poems, copies of a collection of poems, essays, speeches, a one-act play, and the novel, Witherspoon. Reviews of some of Jeffers’s works and two items relating to the works of others are included as well.
Folders 1-3 contain copies of many of Jeffers’s shorter poems. Some of the poems include drafts along with the final copies. Many of these poems are found in various poetic anthologies where Jeffers made significant contributions. The poems are arranged alphabetically by title (folder 1: A-J; folder 2: L-S; folder 3: T-Y).
Folders 4-7 contain copies of long narrative poems, including “Unconscious and Alone: Songs of the Boy and Young Men,” “Crawfish,” “The Future of the Black Nation,” and “The Blues and Rachmaninoff.” Two of the narrative poems include corrected drafts as well as final versions.
Folders 8 and 9 contain copies of a typescript entitled “Man with a Furnace in His Hand” and of two published books of poems, My Blackness is the Beauty of This Land and When I Know the Power of My Black Hand.
Folder 10 contains copies of Jeffers’s essays and a response letter. Included are two photocopies of “The Potentialities for Moral Grandeur” (both of which include handwritten corrections) and a letter sending one of the copies to Jerry Ward. Also included are two copies of “Look to the Stars,” one of which is annotated by Jeffers; a photocopy of “The Potentialities of Man, the Potentialities of Blackfolk;” two complete photocopies of “Afro-American Literature, the Conscience of Man (one complete copy from The Black Scholar, January 1971, and one mimeographed excerpt); a typescript copy of pages 2-3 of “The Age in General;” a photocopy of “Poetry of the Afro-American Future: Mwatabu Okantah,” and a typescript copy of “Lance Jeffers’s reply to Brother Amann.”
Folder 11 contains copies of two speeches. The first speech is a photocopy with corrections; it is untitled but annotated as follows: “Lance Jeffers delivered 5 May 1977.” The second speech is entitled “Keynote Speech,” and the typescript includes a cover letter to the Coleman library stating that the speech was delivered to the Fifth National Convention of Afro-American Writers at Howard University on February 9, 1983. A second and earlier draft of this speech contains corrections made by Jeffers and incorporated into the typescript.
Folder 12 contains a photocopy of Jeffers’s one-act play entitled “The Black Father.” A typescript copy of Jeffers’s novel, Witherspoon, is located in folder 13, while folder 14 contains a typescript of his introduction to the novel; his application for copyright to the work; and photocopies of two sections of the novel with corrections. Folder 15 holds brief reviews of the novel and one of his books of poetry. Folder 16 has a review by an unknown author of Ann Petry’s novel, The Street, and three pages of commentary about Alice Walker’s novel, Meridian.
Box 1
Box 7 (restricted; fragile originals and duplicates)
This series contains general correspondence of Lance Jeffers and correspondence between Jeffers and Jerry Ward. The general correspondence, in folders 1-4, dates from 1971-1986 with a few items undated, and includes letters between Jeffers and his wife, Trellie; faculty at North Carolina State University; and personal and professional friends such as David Dorsey and Mwatabu Okantah. The letters cover many different aspects of Jeffers’s life, including family responsibilities, professional issues, and intellectual conversations with colleagues. The correspondence with Jerry Ward, in folders 5-7, dates from 1975-1984 with some undated items, and shows the close personal and professional relationship of Ward and Jeffers. In the correspondence, they discuss various aspects of writing, conferences on black writers, the plight of black students, and the development of their literary careers.
Box 2
Box 7 (restricted; fragile originals and duplicates)
Folder 1 contains three versions of the transcription of an oral-history interview of Jeffers by Jerry Ward on September 3, 1981. The interview is entitled “Lance Jeffers on the Art and Act of Fiction” Included is the original transcription from cassette tape, Jeffers’s corrections to the transcription, and two copies of the final version. One audiocassette, probably a portion of the interview, is included with the collection.
Folder 2 contains a copy of a typescript of an interview of Jeffers by Doris L. Laryea in 1980, the version of the interview published in the CLA Journal, XXVI (June 1983), and a handwritten note, unsigned but probably from Laryea. Both versions include the title, “A Black Poet’s Vision: An Interview With Lance Jeffers.”
Folder 3 contains a questionnaire for writers (including Jeffers), entitled “The Question of Influence.”
Box 3
Box 7 (restricted; fragile originals and duplicates)
Folder 4 contains a draft of Lance Jeffers’s biography that appeared in Vol. 41 of Dictionary of Literary Biography (1985). In addition, the folder contains four yearly updates of Jeffers’s vita (1975-1977), a professional profile, two copies of his funeral program, and two copies of David Dorsey’s remarks at Jeffers’s funeral.
Folder 5 contains two bibliographies of Jeffers’s works. The earlier bibliography includes works from 1962-1979. The later one includes the whole of his work through the completion of his novel in 1983.
Folder 6 contains photographs of Jeffers and members of his family as well as some scattered snapshots of Jeffers and professional colleagues. All of the photographs are identified.
Folder 7 contains three of Jeffers’s business documents dating from the 1970s and 1980s.
Box 3
Box 7 (restricted; fragile originals and duplicates)
This series contains copies of documents that reflect Jeffers’s interest in the Civil Rights Movement. Folder 1 contains a transcript of speeches of the Tuskegee Civic Association, Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama. A copy of a revised curriculum, grades IV-VI, for an elementary program for a Freedom School, and a copy of a suggested profile for a new city school superintendent for Durham, North Carolina, are found in this folder as well. In folder 2, there are reports of incidents involving “Negroes” in Mississippi and other parts of the Southeast as well as a report of the attempt by “Negroes” to participate in the Democratic Party in Mississippi in 1964.
Box 4
Box 4
This series contains magazines, programs, books, journals, and other printed materials that are associated with Jeffers, his life and his career. Nine of the books have poems written by Jeffers and some books have been autographed by their writers.
Box 4: Programs and magazines
Box 5: Academic journals and poetry anthologies
Box 6: Readers, poetry anthologies, reprinted essays, and other publications
Box 7 (restricted; fragile originals and duplicates)