Eloise Greenfield
Eloise Greenfield was an influential African American author and poet, born on May 17, 1929, in Parmele, North Carolina. The second of five children, Greenfield’s early life was shaped by her family's resilience during the Great Depression and the racial tensions of the era. She pursued education at Miner Teachers College and spent seven years working in the US Patent Office before transitioning to writing. Greenfield published her first picture book in 1972, marking the beginning of a prolific career that included notable works such as *Honey, I Love: And Other Love Poems* and biographies of significant figures like Rosa Parks and Paul Robeson. Her writing often explored themes of family, community, and the African American experience, earning her various accolades, including the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award and the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Beyond her writing, Greenfield contributed to the literary community as a director of workshops and served as a writer-in-residence. She passed away on August 5, 2021, leaving behind a rich legacy in children’s literature and poetry that continues to resonate.
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Subject Terms
Eloise Greenfield
- Born: May 17, 1929
- Birthplace: Parmele, North Carolina
- Died: August 5, 2021
- Place of death: Washington, DC
Biography
Eloise Greenfield was born on May 17, 1929, in Parmele, North Carolina, the second of five children of Weston W. Little and Leslee Little Jones. In her autobiography, Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir, written with her mother, Greenfield writes that her father left Parmele when she was three months old and went to Washington, DC, in hope of finding a permanent job. Her father had just graduated from Parmele Training School and had been working seasonally as a farm laborer or occasionally as a house mover. His determination and hard work eventually resulted in a position with the federal government and work as a truck driver. Greenfield’s mother, who had taught school in Parmele before Greenfield’s birth, became a clerk typist and writer.
In Childtimes, Greenfield recounts how her parents’ hard work carried the family through the Depression and also describes her public school education and childhood neighborhood. Even in her fondest memories she is always aware of the racism of the times: “Washington was a city for white people. But inside that city, there was another city. It didn’t have a name and it wasn’t all in one area, but it was where black people lived.”
From 1946 until 1949, Greenfield attended Miner Teachers College. She worked for seven years in the US Patent Office as a clerk typist. During that time, she married Robert Greenfield; the couple had a son and a daughter, Steven and Monica, before they divorced. From 1956 to 1960, Greenfield was a supervisory patent assistant.
In the early 1970s, Greenfield began to publish fiction and nonfiction books for adult and juvenile readers. In 1972, she published her first picture book, Bubbles, followed by She Come Bringing Me That Little Baby Girl two years later. Easy-reader biographies of Rosa Parks, Paul Robeson, and Mary McLeod Bethune appeared between a succession of picture books and her first novel, Sister. She also began contributing to anthologies, including The Journey: Scholastic Black Literature (1970).
Greenfield’s work won recognition almost as soon as it was published. In 1974, Rosa Parks won the National Council for Social Studies’ Carter G. Woodson Award; She Come Bringing Me That Little Baby Girl won the Bank Street College of Education’s Irma Simonton Black Award; and Sister garnered a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year Citation.
From 1971 to 1973, Greenfield served as codirector of adult fiction for the District of Columbia’s Black Writers Workshop, and from 1973 to 1974 she directed a children’s literature group. She served her first term as writer-in-residence for the District of Columbia’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 1973 and served another term from 1985 to 1986.
Greenfield also found success as a poet. Her breakout collection of poems for children, Honey, I Love: And Other Love Poems (1978), included a tribute to Harriet Tubman as well as poems about family, church, and simple joys like car rides and laughter. The poems in that collection have been anthologized many times and used in classrooms around the country. Later, she published a poetry collection called The Women Who Caught the Babies: A Story of African American Midwives (2019).
As her body of work grew, so did the awards she received, culminating in numerous lifetime achievement awards, beginning with the 1981 National Black Child Development Institute Award. In 1993, she was honored for her literary achievements at the Ninth Annual Celebration of Black Writing, and in 1997 she received the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children for the body of her work. She also received the Hurston/Write Foundation’s North Star Award for Lifetime Achievement and an award from the Moonstone Celebration of Black Writing. In 2018 she received another lifetime achievement award, the prestigious Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award from the American Library Association. She is included in the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, and she received an honorary doctor of education degree from Wheelock College.
Greenfield died in Washington, DC, on August 5, 2021. She was ninety-two years old.
Bibliography
Bishop, Rudine Sims. "Eloise Greenfield: Profile." Language Arts, vol. 74, no. 8, 1997, pp. 630–34. cdn.ncte.org/nctefiles/about/awards/greenfield.pdf. Accessed 12 Sept. 2022.
Maughan, Shannon. "Obituary: Eloise Greenfield." Publishers Weekly, 10 Aug. 2021, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/87113-obituary-eloise-greenfield.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2022.
Sandomir, Richard. "Eloise Greenfield, Who Wrote to Enlighten Black Children, Dies at 92." The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/books/eloise-greenfield-dead.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2022.