{"storymap": {"call_to_action": true, "call_to_action_text": "", "map_as_image": false, "map_type": "zoomify", "slides": [{"date": "", "location": {"line": true}, "media": {"caption": "Era Bell Thompson and Newberry President Stanley Pargellis, Chicago, circa 1946. Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/thompson/_images/dacd63b548986baa4e33c91669aee570.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "Era Bell Thompson in the Midwest and Great Plains, 1905-1927", "text": "

\"I would like to be among those who will be given the opportunity, through your library, to write about the Midwest, for I too, have a story to tell,\" wrote Era Bell Thompson in her 1944 application for a Newberry fellowship. \"It is the story of myself, youngest of four children of a rollicking middle class Negro family, lured from the city lights of Des Moines to the prairies of North Dakota...\"

In her resulting memoir, American Daughter, Thompson describes her coming of age in context of the isolation she felt growing up in rural white North Dakota, and the way that upbringing later led to her feelings of estrangement among African American communities in Midwestern cities. Thompson continued to examine themes of race and identity in her travel 1954 travel memoir, Africa: Land of My Fathers, and as a longtime editor at Ebony Magazine.

Book excerpts from: American daughter, 1946. Google Books View online sample | Map: Map of the United States and possessions, 1911. Newberry Library View at Internet Archive

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"}, "type": "overview"}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 76.34152331547648, "line": true, "lon": -63.896484375, "zoom": 5}, "media": {"caption": "Unidentified infant, photograph by Oliver E. Aultman, 1903. History Colorado", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/thompson/_images/20fb5c9f51211c939f42738028477bcb.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "Des Moines, Iowa, 1905", "text": "

\"'My Lord, it's a girl!' Pop stumbled blindly out into the kitchen, slumped into a chair, and again said, 'Oh my Lord!'

\"Now, my Lord had heretofore been very good to my father, for he had three sons: Tom, Dick and Harry.

\"There had been another girl a long time before, a girl with fair skin and blonde hair. My father and mother said she 'took back.' Our white neighbors were taken aback, too. They didn't blame the iceman, exactly, but they strongly suspected there was something in the Thompson woodpile besides a Negro -- and there was...

\"We Thompsons were a constant surprise to the good people of Des Moines.\"

--American Daughter View online sample

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"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 80.96300406055934, "line": true, "lon": -85.3857421875, "zoom": 5}, "media": {"caption": "From A history of Driscoll, North Dakota including family biographies. North Dakota County and Town Histories Collection, North Dakota State Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/thompson/_images/driscoll.JPG"}, "text": {"headline": "Driscoll, North Dakota, 1914", "text": "

\"The Monday after our arrival, Harry and I were bundled off to our first day of rural schooling... At noon the children gathered around the stove to eat lunch from their round syrup cans and their tin tobacco baskets. It was like a picnic back in Iowa when it rained. I choked a little when I thought of Iowa, and ate my half-frozen sandwiches in silence. One of Sue's friends put her arm around me and felt my hair; Tillie stared at the white palms of my hands, and I closed my fists tight until they hurt. For the first time I began to wonder about that and about the soles of my feet and my pink toes, and I was glad she couldn't see my feet where the color ran out. Long before four o'clock I had had enough of school.\"

"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 81.0111942860847, "line": true, "lon": -86.484375, "zoom": 4}, "media": {"caption": "Bismarck Indian School, 1933. State Historical Society of North Dakota (2018-P-062-00022)", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/thompson/_images/bismarck-indian-school-north-dakota-600x330.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "Bismarck, North Dakota, circa 1920", "text": "

\"In between the bluffs along the river was the Indian school for girls. There were no wigwams, no squaws, no warriors, only big wooden buildings with little girls in pale-blue dresses, their faces stolid and sallow, not red; their bobbed hair straight and black. Some of them ran to blue eyes and blonde tresses, and I was glad they couldn't blame my father for that.

\"I liked the Indian girls, but if I found in them a kindred spirit my Cherokee blood didn't sponsor it. Sarah and I baffled them. At first they followed around the yard watching as we played on their swings and iron bars, circling around us when we stood still, closing in on us, never saying a word, then touching us lightly with their fingers and giggling. One Sunday we put on a show in their gym. We did hand-springs and sang and danced and played our ukes. The school faculty stayed discreetly in the background until the show was over, then thanked us for the entertainment and invited us to stay for lemonade and cookies. The whole school followed us to the main road to say goodbye.

\"'You come back,' said one shyly, 'come back, come back soon.'\"

--American Daughter View online sample

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"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 81.59569894043715, "line": true, "lon": -75.673828125, "zoom": 4}, "media": {"caption": "Era Bell Thompson in dress and heels, Bismarck, ND, 1920s. State Historical Society of North Dakota (00262-005)", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/thompson/_images/era.JPG"}, "text": {"headline": "Grand Forks, North Dakota 1925", "text": "

\"It was raining hard when the train stopped at Grand Forks. For a while I was lost in the mob of hilarious students who jammed the platform of the tiny depot. Frat brothers and sorority sisters loudly acclaimed old students, and Big Sister representatives came to the rescue of bewildered freshmen, but nothing happened to me.

\"Cold rain pelted against my Sears, Roebuck coat, and the rabbit-fur hem hung its hairs and wept. The platform was deserted now. Across the street hung the dripping blue sign of the Young Women's Christian Association. Picking up my bag, I walked over to the building and stepped inside. The woman at the desk looked startled.

\"'Could I get...'

\"'We're all filled up. I'm sorry!' she said.

\"They probably were filled up, but I don't think she was sorry.\"

--American Daughter View online sample

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"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 77.0591158825237, "line": true, "lon": -43.0224609375, "zoom": 5}, "media": {"caption": "Chicago street scenes, 1920s. Wacker family papers, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "https://youtu.be/3yR4x7GqNrQ"}, "text": {"headline": "Chicago, Illinois, 1927", "text": "

\"Chicago!

\"My eyes grew big and my heart pounded as the yellow cab weaved in and out of the maelstrom of traffic, turned into Michigan Avenue, and started south. A huge, double-deck bus staggered around a corner, top-heavy and clumsy. I saw a coloured man. Four men in a long black car shot past. Gangsters! They had to be gangsters, Chicago was full of them. A coloured woman, another coloured man. The crowds and the traffic slowly decreased. All around me now were black people, lots and lots of black people, so many black people I stared when I saw a white person.\"

--American Daughter View online sample

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"}}], "zoomify": {"height": 3696, "path": "http://publications.newberry.org/storymap/time-travel/thompson-map/", "width": 4926}}}

The Memoirist: Era Bell Thompson