ETHEL RAY NANCE:

Ethel Ray Nance was born in Duluth, Minnesota on April 13, 1899, the daughter of William Henry Ray and Inga Nordquist. The Rays, among the few interracial couples in the area, had two sons (William and Oscar) and two daughters (Ora and Ethel).

Ethel Ray graduated from Central High School in Duluth in 1917 and began her career as a stenographer for the Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission (1918-1922) and as the first Black stenographer hired to work in the Minnesota Legislature (1923). She lived in Harlem (N.Y.) during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, where she worked as an assistant to Charles S. Johnson at Opportunity Magazine, 1924-1926. Illness in the family brought her back to Minnesota, where she became assistant head resident at the Phyllis Wheatley House in Minneapolis (1926-1928). In April, 1928 she joined the Women's Bureau of the Minneapolis Police Department. In late 1932 she resigned, in part to raise two sons (her first marriage was to a man named Williams and her second to a man named Nance), but within two years she was back in the work force. For the next few years she worked for the Minneapolis Urban League, a second stint at the Minnesota Legislature, the St. Paul Office of the Public Works Administration, and the State Department of Education. During 1931 she was associate editor, along with Cecil Newman, of the Timely Digest, a magazine of Black affairs. She was active also with the Minnesota Negro Council and edited its newsletter (1937-1938).

In 1940 Nance went to work for Dr. Malcolm Mclean at Hampton Institute in Virginia. In 1943 she moved to Seattle where she worked for the War Department, as a deputy clerk for the U.S. District Court, and for the Federal Public Housing Authority. In 1945 she became secretary to Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, who at the time was consultant to the United States Delegation to the United Nations Organizing Conference at San Francisco. From 1945 to 1953 Nance was administrative assistant to the regional director for the West Coast Office of the NAACP in San Francisco. In the 1950s and 1960s she worked for the San Francisco Board of Education and was active in researching black history and in the affairs of the African-American Historical Society. In 1978 she received a B.A. degree from the University of San Francisco, the oldest person at that time to earn such a degree from that institution. Nance, over the years, also served on many voluntary boards and has written for various publications.

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The collection is arranged alphabetically by subject and contains newspaper clippings, correspondence, and publications. The first file contains clippings on Black artist Henry Bannarn, while the second is a biographical file on Nance containing résumés, clippings, and photographs (1975, 1978). Several folders contain publications edited by Ethel Ray Nance or articles written by her. These include the Council for Minority Rights newsletter, the Minnesota Negro Council's News and Views, the United Nations: Women at San Francisco file, and the Negro History Bulletin (April 1968), which contains an article by Nance on the Harlem Renaissance.

Several folders document her employment with the Minneapolis Police Force, the Minnesota Legislature, and with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The latter folder contains the 47th Annual Convention program from 1956. Other files contain or concern letters of recommendation, correspondence with David Taylor of the Minnesota Historical Society (concerning a Black history project), her father's restaurant in Two Harbors, and the Black studies program at San Francisco State College. The final two folders contain newsletters, pamphlets, and clippings concerning the Phyllis Wheatley House in Minneapolis, where Mrs. Nance was assistant head resident, 1926-1928.

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Ethel Ray Nance Papers. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 11,669; 12,606

Processing Information:

Processed by: Richard Apri, December 1991.

Catalog ID number: 990017294630104294

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The transcript and audio recording of an oral history interview (1974 May 25) with Nance are in the Minnesota Historical Society sound and visual collections.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

African American arts.

African American police -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis.

African American women -- Minnesota.

African Americans -- Social conditions.

African Americans -- Study and teaching -- California.

African Americans -- Minnesota -- Social conditions -- To 1964.

Persons:

Bannarn, Henry W.

Organizations:

Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House (Minneapolis, Minn.)

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