Regina M. Anderson Andrews (1901–1993) was a multiracial playwright, librarian, and patron of the arts. Born in New York into an upper middle class family, she studied Librarian Science at Columbia University and became a librarian at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library. With roommates Ethel Ray Nance and Louella Tucker, Anderson hosted gatherings in her apartment in the Sugar Hill district in Harlem at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue, which eventually became known as the “Harlem West Side Literary Salon” or “580”. The trio’s salon was said to rival the A’Leila Walker’s salon. The apartment described in Carl Van Vechten’s novel, “Nigger Heaven,” was Anderson’s salon, and he modeled a character after her. David Levering Lewis’ book “When Harlem was in Vogue,” also devoted some pages on Anderson and her influence.

Anderson, with Gwendolyn Bennett, helped to organize the Civic Club dinner of 1924 for black New York intellectuals and writers. Attended by 110 guests, including Countee Cullen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, the dinner was one of the coalescing events of the Harlem Renaissance. While working as assistant librarian at Harlem Public Library, she hosted events with readings by black authors and distributed digests to spread interest in their work. She also organized drama series and art exhibitions. Anderson was one of the few African American women to become a supervisor. Her work “A Public Library Assists in Improving Race Relations,” contributed to changing perceptions about race and positions of management in academia.

She supported W.E.B. Du Bois with the founding of the Krigwa Players, a company of black actors performing plays by black authors, located at 135th Street Public Library. It later became the Harlem Experimental Theatre. She wrote a play about lynching called Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, as well as Underground, telling stories of the Underground Railroad. She used the pseudonym, Ursula Trelling. Anderson was also one of the only African-American women to be recognized at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. She was also a professional advocate for the National Council of Women and the National Urban League. In 1969, she became involved with the controversial exhibition, “Harlem on My Mind”, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as a member of the advisory panel.

Anderson traveled to Germany in the 1950s as part of the post-WWII Marshall Plan. She was invited alongside other accomplished professional women from the United States. She noticed that she might have been used to reinforce a positive image of the U.S. because of her constant placement in the center of the photographs taken abroad.


SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_M._Anderson
http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/jul/27/regina-anderson-andrews-librarian-playwright-and-p/
https://digibooklibrarian.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/hello-world/
https://kreativeyoungmillionaire.net/2013/03/01/womens-history-month-meet-my-mentor-regina-m-andrews/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQRE1egQZI