Thompson, Era Bell

Impact on the world

The only Black child in the small farming town of Driscoll, North Dakota, for much of her childhood, Thompson channeled her outsider experience into a celebrated 1946 autobiography, American Daughter, that won a Newbery Fellowship and led directly to a job offer from Johnson Publishing Company; she became Negro Digest’s managing editor in 1947, moved to Ebony as associate editor in 1951, and was named the magazine’s international editor in 1964, a position she held for more than two decades. Her 1954 book Africa, Land of My Fathers, based on an 18-country tour of the continent, was among the earliest popular accounts by a Black American journalist connecting African American readers to postwar African independence movements, and she went on to report from and about dozens of countries across Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America for Ebony well into her final years. Thompson was honored with a National Press Club citation, honorary degrees from Morningside College and the University of North Dakota, North Dakota’s Roughrider Award as its highest civilian honor, and induction into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2020, more than three decades after her death.

Life & background

Born August 10, 1905, in Des Moines, Iowa, to parents who had been born enslaved, Thompson moved with her family to Driscoll, North Dakota, in 1914 and, after her mother’s death, to Bismarck, where she starred in track and field at the University of North Dakota until illness ended her athletic career; she later graduated from Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. She moved to Chicago, worked a series of clerical jobs before her 1946 memoir’s success brought her to Johnson Publishing Company, and remained associated with Ebony as an editor for nearly 40 years, still listed on the masthead as late as 1985; she died in Chicago on December 30, 1986, at age 81.

Sources

1. Encyclopedia.com; North Dakota Office of the Governor; Chicago Public Library