Waters Edward Turpin
Waters Edward Turpin was an influential African American writer and educator known for his contributions to literature and his role in academia. Born in Oxford, Maryland, he spent his early years there before moving to New Jersey, where his mother worked for the esteemed novelist Edna Ferber. This connection sparked Turpin's interest in writing, which he pursued through higher education, earning degrees from Morgan State College and Columbia University. He began his professional career as a welfare investigator before becoming a teacher and football coach at Storer College in West Virginia, where he wrote his first novel, *These Low Grounds*, which depicts four generations of an African American family.
Turpin later taught at Lincoln University, where he influenced notable students like Kwame Nkrumah, and eventually joined the English department at Morgan State College. Throughout his career, he published multiple works, including novels, plays, and essays, and edited important textbooks in the field. His notable works, including *O Canaan!* and *The Rootless*, explore themes of African American identity and migration, contributing significantly to the narrative of the African American experience. Though he passed away in 1968 before completing his ambitious five-novel saga, he is remembered as a pioneering figure in African American literature.
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Subject Terms
Waters Edward Turpin
Fiction and Nonfiction Writer and Playwright
- Born: April 9, 1910
- Birthplace: Oxford, Maryland
- Died: November 19, 1968
Biography
Waters Edward Turpin, the only child of Simon and Rebecca (nee Waters) Turpin, lived in Oxford, Maryland, until he was 12 years old. In 1922, his family left their small Eastern Shore town, which was near the birthplace of Frederick Douglass and the home of Harriet Tubman, and moved to New Jersey. His mother was employed as novelist Edna Ferber’s household manager and cook at her Park Avenue penthouse. Turpin, who returned to Maryland in order to attend high school at Morgan Academy in Baltimore, worked with his mother on holidays and various weekends at Ferber’s penthouse, and the novelist encouraged Turpin’s interest in writing.
After graduating from high school, Turpin earned a B.A. from Morgan State College (now Morgan State University), a M.A. from Columbia University (1932), and an Ed.D. from Columbia (1960). In the early 1930’s, Turpin was a welfare investigator at the Works Progress Administration. From 1935 to 1938, he taught English and was a football coach at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West, Virginia. During this period, Turpin wrote These Low Grounds, which tells the story of four generations of an African American family. Turpin allowed Ferber to read the novel, and as a result, These Low Grounds was published by Harper with Ferber’s endorsement on the dust jacket. Turpin’s first novel also marked Ralph Ellison’s debut as a writer because he reviewed the novel at the request of Richard Wright, who at the time was editor of New Challenge.
When Turpin left Storer, he began his doctoral studies and published his second novel, O Canaan!, which focuses on African American migration from the South to Chicago during the Depression years. From 1940 to 1950, Turpin taught at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where one of his students was Kwame Nkrumah, who later became Ghana’s prime minister. While at Lincoln, Turpin was awarded the Rosenwald Fellowship in creative writing. In 1950, Nick Aaron Ford, the author of the landmark publication,The Contemporary Negro Novel: A Study in Race Relations (1936) and the chairman of Morgan State College’s English department, invited Turpin to join the department. Turpin’s wife, Jean, whom he had married in 1936 and with whom he had two children, was a faculty member at Morgan. Turpin accepted Ford’s offer and taught at Morgan for eighteen years until his death in 1968.
While at Morgan, Turpin and Ford edited two textbooks: Basic Skills for Better Writing (1959) and Extending Horizons: Selected Readings for Cultural Enrichment(1969). Turpin’s short stories, poetry, essays, and book reviews were published in various periodicals. Let the Day Perish and Saint Michaels Dawn, two of Turpin’s plays, were first produced in 1950 and 1956, respectively. An opera, Li’l Joe, with lyrics by Turpin, was first produced in 1957, the same year Turpin’s third novel, The Rootless, was published. The novel portrays slave life on a Maryland plantation. These Low Grounds, O Canaan!, and The Rootless were the first published works in what Turpin envisioned as an African American family saga of five novels. Although Turpin died before he completed the pentalogy, he is best known for his novels and has been acknowledged as the progenitor of the African American saga.