Tarry, Ellen (b. 1906)

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Tarry, Ellen (b. 1906)

African-American writer. Born 1906 in Birmingham, Alabama; attended Alabama State College for Negroes and Bank Street College Writers' Laboratory; children: Elizabeth.

Journalist, teacher, social worker, and writer, 1st served as deputy assistant to the Regional Administrator for Equal Opportunity, Department of Housing and Urban Development; co-founded Friendship House (Chicago); worked for Archdiocese of New York; wrote weekly column, "Negroes of Note," for the Birmingham Truth; contributed to many Catholic periodicals; writings, which were heavily influenced by her involvement in the civil-rights movement, include Janie Belle (1940), Hezekiah Horton (1942), (with Marie Hall Ets) My Dog Rinty (1946), The Runaway Elephant (1950), Katharine Drexel: Friend of the Neglected (1958), Martin de Porres: Saint of the New World (1963), Young Jim: The Early Years of James Weldon Johnson (1967), The Other Toussaint: A Modern Biography of Pierre Toussaint, a Post-Revolutionary Black (1981), and Pierre Toussaint: Apostle of Old New York (1998); was one of the 1st authors to use African-Americans as main characters in books for children.

See also The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman (McKay, 1955); and Women in World History.