Olivia Ward Bush-Banks: Anchored in Her Ancestry

Posted in Articles, Book Giveaway, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States, Women on 2020-11-03 21:47Z by Steven

Olivia Ward Bush-Banks: Anchored in Her Ancestry

Three Village Historical Society
Setauket, New York
2020-07-12

Tara Mae

Everyone is influenced by their cultural background, either through acceptance, rejection, or some combination of the two. Olivia Ward Bush-Banks was a writer, journalist, historian, and dramatist. Her relationship with her Black and Montaukett lineage, and her ties to Long Island, informed and inspired her work. In her writing and much of her other work, Bush-Banks amplified her cultural identity.

During her life, Bush-Banks was a respected and valued figure in Black and Indigenous communities. Throughout her many travels, her ties to her heritage kept her grounded in her history even as her writing and outreach relayed it to a larger audience. Sustained by her familial ties, her work was driven by the need to provide for her family, and it elevated the effort of her pursuits.

Born on May 23, 1869, in Sag Harbor, she was the youngest of three daughters. Her parents, Eliza Draper and Abraham Ward, were each of Black and Montaukett descent. It was not uncommon for Blacks and Indigenous people to intermarry: such unions and their resulting families faced racism and discrimination. Her mother died when she was around 9 months old, and her father moved the family to Providence, Rhode Island. Upon Abraham’s remarriage, he gave Bush-Banks to be reared by her maternal aunt, Maria Draper, who raised her as her own. She studied nursing in high school but, encouraged and supported by Maria, developed a passion for drama and poetry…

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Olivia Ward Bush-Banks and the Dualism of African and Native American Identity

Posted in Articles, Biography, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States, Women on 2020-11-02 18:50Z by Steven

Olivia Ward Bush-Banks and the Dualism of African and Native American Identity

Amistad Research Center
Tilton Hall, Tulane University
6823 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118

2014-09-24

Chianta Dorsey

The birth of the African American literary condition occurred in 1773 with the publication of Phyllis Wheatley’s book of poetry and has evolved into a thriving apparatus within American literature ever since. Olivia Ward Bush-Banks is amongst this tradition and the presence of her literary work offers a view into the complex identities of Americans—Black, Native American, and a woman, Bush-Banks had plenty to pull from when she began her writing career at the turn of the 20th century…

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