Mary Elizabeth Vroman

1925–29 A

Mary Elizabeth Vroman was born in Buffalo, New York, probably in 1925, although reported birth dates vary between 1924 and 1929. Her father was Charles Cunningham; her mother was one of three generations of women in her family who were teachers. Vroman grew up in the West Indies and returned to the United States to attend and graduate from the Alabama State Teachers’ College in Montgomery. Vroman became a teacher at the Camden Academy in Camden, Alabama, and later taught in Sylacauga and Montgomery, Alabama, and in Chicago and New York City over a twenty-year career. She married dentist Oliver M. Harper. In 1951, when she was teaching third grade in a segregated school, her first story “See How They Run” was published in the June issue of the Ladies Home Journal. Its critical reviews and enthusiastic reader response got the attention of Hollywood, and in 1953 the story was adapted for a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie, Bright Road. Vroman wrote the screenplay and served as technical advisor on the film. Working on the movie, she became the first African American woman to belong to the Screen Writers Guild. Other than short stories, Vroman wrote three books between 1961 and 1967. The first, Esther: A Novel, is a novel about a young black woman living in the rural South; it recounts the hardships she endures as the descendant of slaves. The second book is a history of the second-oldest African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, of which Vroman was a member. Titled Shaped to Its Pu

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