Washington was, at that time, the hub of black intellectual activity, much of it centered around Howard University and its distinguished faculty. It was in Washington that Carrie Clifford began to write and to work in earnest for her people. She counted a mong her personal friends and close associates such literary figures as W.E.B. DuBois, Charles Chestnutt, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Alain Locke. The group of colleagues who gathered in her home of a Sunday evening included the most vital figures of the day. Mary Church Terrell, William L. Hunt, Amanda Hilyer, Harry T. Burleigh, Will Marion Cook, B. K. Bruce - such persons as these were creating the cultural and political heritage for black Americans that preceded and gave impetus to the so-called "Harlem Renaissance" of the 1930's.
Carrie Clifford was a member of the Niagara Movement from which the N.A.A.C.P. emerged. She was a spokesman for women's rights. She was a black woman who lived and spoke
and wrote and worked ceaselessly for the rights of all black people. Her poems, though written at the turn of the century, have a very special relevance today when there is such a widespread awakening of interest in what Dr. Du Bois called the "souls of b
lack folk" for these are truly black poems -- with soul.
Rosemary Clifford Wilson - introduction to _The Widening Light_(1971).
"The Business Career of Mrs. M.E. Williams" _Colored American Magazine_ 1905 pp. 477-481.
