Today’s post was written by Christina Violeta Jones, Archivist with the Special Access and FOIA Program at the National Archives at College Park, MD
“For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language, by which we speak it.” -Audre Lorde[1]
Audre Lorde (Audrey Geraldine Lorde) was born in Harlem on February 18, 1934. She was a poet, essayist, feminist, and activist. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Hunter College and a master’s in library science from Columbia University. In 1962, she married Edwin Rollins and they had two children. They divorced in 1970, and in 1972 she entered a long-term partnership with Frances Louise Clayton. Throughout her poetry and other writings Lorde tackled topics that were important to her as a woman of color, a lesbian, a mother, and a feminist. She received many honors throughout her career including the National Endowment for the Arts grant in poetry in 1968 and became the Poet Laureate of the State of New York for 1991-1993. Lorde was the author of several publications, including The First Cities (1968), The Black Unicorn (1978), The Cancer Journals (1980), Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) and Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (1984).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case file on Lorde, which is available in the National Archives Catalog 100-NY-12142, vol. 1 (NAID 12568140), is brief and mostly involves Lorde being questioned on several occasions regarding her and her friends’ ties to the Communist Party (CPUSA). The investigation started in 1954, when Lorde was a twenty-year old college student living and studying in Mexico.[2] Agents questioned why she was in Mexico, what her ties were to the CPUSA, and who her friends were, particularly Frederica Martin, Mary Francis Hope Wooley, Cornelia Newton, and Helen and Manny Baskir.[3] Although Lorde claimed not to be a member of the CPUSA, she did give the impression to the FBI that she followed the party’s philosophy.[4]
While her rationale for doing so was not discussed in the FBI case file, Lorde had left the United States for Mexico for various reasons. She had been active in the progressive politics scene in New York and was a member of the Committee in Defense of the Rosenbergs.[5] When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted for espionage and were executed by the federal government in 1953, Lorde became concerned about the political climate in the United States. At the same time, she personally felt belittled and dismissed by several African American writers who were members of the Harlem Writers Guild.[6] Many had expressed to her that she was spending too much time with white women and were critical of her lesbian lifestyle. Moveover, her friends who were aligned with progressive politics also became increasingly small-minded regarding her lesbianism. It was around this time, Lorde had heard from her friend, Al Sandler, about the American exile community of writers and artists that were living in Mexico.[7]
By the mid-1950s, Lorde had returned to the United States. The FBI continued with their investigation by visiting her apartment on June 11, 1957. They questioned her for twenty-five minutes about two specific roommates – Joan Alexander and Ruth Heit (later Ruth Baharas).[8] Both Alexander and Heit were activists who were involved in the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born and worked in the International Workers Organizations (IWO).[9] According to a memo, dated June 12, 1957, the agents indicated that during the interview Lorde was friendly. She expressed to the FBI that “she disliked Communism but she would be unable to bring herself to the point where she would report on them.”[10] She also continued by indicating that the only person she considered a Communist was her former roommate, Heit. According to the memo, Heit was the subject matter of past associates of the subject who may have been members of the CPUSA.[11]
A few days later, Lorde was interviewed again by the FBI. According to the memo, dated June 17, 1957, she was friendly but would not confirm if Heit was actually a member of the Party. Furthermore, Lorde emphasized that she (herself) “was never a member of the Communist Party and wondered why the FBI was interested in her for this work.”[12] The agents indicated to her that it was because she was associated with Communists. She then assumed it was because Heit was a former roommate. It was clear to the FBI agents that Lorde would not provide further information regarding Heit or any of her friends that were under investigation or associated with Communism.[13]
Even though the FBI file does not include any copies of her writings, there are two works of Lorde’s cited in the file that shed some additional light on the FBI’s interest in her.
The first appeared in the Harlem Quarterly: A Magazine Enlightenment and Entertainment, a literary magazine founded in 1949 and edited by Benjamin A. Brown. The magazine was created with the intention of highlighting the many elements of African American life in the United States, while also promoting literary accomplishments of well known writers at the time from Langston Hughes to John Henrik Clarke. In the Summer/Fall issue of 1950, Lorde had submitted one of her poems titled “Recompense.”[14] According to the FBI, the issue would be available in all progressive bookshops.[15]
Another publication cited is Freedomways (also known as Freedomways: A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement). According to the FBI file, Freedomways was created by the CPUSA, as a journal that “develops theory and positive criticism of currents in the Negro movement and projects a socialist and pro-Soviet orientation to these matters.”[16] The literary journal centered on African American culture and history by reporting on the civil rights and Black freedom movements beginning in the early 1960s.[17] Lorde had submitted one of her poems for publication in 1972 titled “Prologue.” Below is the first stanza of the poem:
Haunted by poems beginning with I
Seek out those whom I love who are deaf
to whatever does not destroy
or curse the old ways that did not serve us
while history falters and our poets are dying
choked into silence by icy distinction
death rattles blind curses
and I hear even my own voice becoming
a pale strident whisper
At night sleep locks me into an echoless coffin
sometimes at noon
I dream
there is nothing to fear; [18]
The investigation on Lorde ended in 1972. Her background information was transferred to the New York City Police Department.[19]
In 1968, Lorde was a writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College, a historically Black college in Jackson, Mississippi. While at Tougaloo, she met and fell in love with Frances Louise Clayton, an exchange professor in psychology from Brown University.[20] They were together for seventeen years.[21] Lorde battled cancer throughout most of her adult life. In 1978, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She documented her illness in The Cancer Journals. Published over 40 years ago, Lorde’s memoir on her breast cancer diagnosis and mastectomy still remains one of the most powerful stories today on pain, disease, body image, and the female struggle. She writes “for me, my scars are an honorable reminder that I may be a casualty in the cosmic war against radiation, animal fat, air pollution, McDonald’s hamburgers, and Red Dye No. 2, but the fight is still going on, and I am still part of it. I refuse to have my scars hidden or trivialized behind lambs wool or silicone gel. I refused to be reduced in my own eyes or in the eyes of others from warrior to mere victim.” [22] Lorde’s narrative brought light, awareness, and unity to the disease and uplifted those who underwent any form of struggle or oppression. She questioned the rules of conformity for women’s body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthetics. Lorde’s struggle with the disease continued in 1984, when she was diagnosed with liver cancer and again in 1987 with ovarian cancer.[23] She spent the remaining years of her life living in St. Croix with her then life partner, writer and activist Gloria Joseph. Lorde passed away on November 17, 1992 at the age of 58.[24]
Thank you to Jeffery Hartley, NARA’s Librarian for providing access to secondary resources and to the Special Access and FOIA staff.
Featured image of Audre Lourde from Flickr
[1] Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Crossing Press, 1984. p. 43. This phrase was from a paper titled “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” that Lorde delivered on December 28, 1977 at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel” in Chicago, Illinois.
[2] In the 1940s and 1950s, Mexico became a destination for a number of progressive writers, artists, and filmmakers from the United States who fled in reaction to government harassment and obstacles they faced in creating, exhibiting, and distributing their work. Lorde studied at the National University of Mexico. For more see Schreiber, Rebecca Mina. Cold War Exiles in Mexico : U.S. Dissidents and the Culture of Critical Resistance / Rebecca M. Schreiber. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
[3] Martin, Woodey, and Newton were also investigated by the FBI.
[4] Serial 1, NY [New York]-100-122142 [Classification-Domestic Security] [Audre Lorde] (NAID 12568140 ) (FOIA Tracking Number RD 54212); Series: Classification 100 (Domestic Security) Field Office Case Files (Entry P 184); Record Group 65: Records of the Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[5]Schreiber, Rebecca Mina. Cold War Exiles in Mexico : U.S. Dissidents and the Culture of Critical Resistance.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. pgs. 13-14. De Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. W.W. Norton & Company, (2004). pgs. 44-45. According to De Veaux, same-sex relationships/marriages were highly problematic within the left-wing movement. Lorde briefly addressed this in her memoir Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. See Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Crossing Press (1982). p. 149.
https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2014/03/31/this-week-in-universal-news-the-rosenberg-verdict-1951/; https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/tag/ethel-rosenberg/; https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/tag/julius-rosenberg/; https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/julius-and-ethel-rosenberg ; https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2321340
[6]Lorde was a member of the organization; see https://www.nypl.org/blog/2023/02/23/when-harlem-writers-guild-came-home-schomburg-center
[7] For biographical information on the organization see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Writers_Guild
[8] See https://archive.org/stream/HUACEBF4148/HUAC-EBF-4148_djvu.txt; Lorde briefly lived with Alexander in 1953 and with Heit in 1955.
[9] De Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. W.W. Norton & Company, (2004). p. 42.
[10] Serial 5, NY [New York]-100-122142 [Classification-Domestic Security] [Audre Lorde] (NAID 12568140) (FOIA Tracking Number RD 54212); Series: Classification 100 (Domestic Security) Field Office Case Files (Entry P 184); Record Group 65: Records of the Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Serial 6, NY [New York]-100-122142 [Classification-Domestic Security] [Audre Lorde] (NAID 12568140) (FOIA Tracking Number RD 54212); Series: Classification 100 (Domestic Security) Field Office Case Files (Entry P 184); Record Group 65: Records of the Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[13] Ibid.
[14]. Harlem Quarterly: A Magazine of Enlightenment and Entertainment. (1950) Summer/Fall Issue. p. 29. Also see https://www.nypl.org/research/research-catalog/bib/b20760573
[15] Unrecorded serial, NY [New York]-100-122142 [Classification-Domestic Security] [Audre Lorde] (NAID 12568140) (FOIA Tracking Number RD 54212); Series: Classification 100 (Domestic Security) Field Office Case Files (Entry P 184); Record Group 65: Records of the Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[16] Serial 7, NY [New York]-100-122142 [Classification-Domestic Security] [Audre Lorde] (NAID 12568140) (FOIA Tracking Number RD 54212); Series: Classification 100 (Domestic Security) Field Office Case Files (Entry P 184); Record Group 65: Records of the Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[17] See https://daily.jstor.org/a-new-civil-rights-movement-a-new-journal/
[18] Freedomways. (1972). Freedomways, 12(1). p. 31.
[19] Serial 8, NY [New York]-100-122142 [Classification-Domestic Security] [Audre Lorde] (NAID 12568140) (FOIA Tracking Number RD 54212); Series: Classification 100 (Domestic Security) Field Office Case Files (Entry P 184); Record Group 65: Records of the Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[20] De Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. W.W. Norton & Company, (2004). pgs. 96-99.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. Penguin Random House, (1980). p. 53. Lorde’s memoir explored her experience with breast cancer and its impact on a black feminist lesbian’s life at a time when conversations regarding a woman’s body image, illness, and pain were silent and not discussed in the 1970s.
[23] Steif, W. (1991, 01). Audre Lorde. The Progressive, 55, p. 32. Lorde stated in a 1991 interview with William Steif for The Progressive that she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978. She was then diagnosed with liver cancer, 1984 and in 1987, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. DEATHS: AUDRE LORDE POET. (1992, Nov 19). The Washington Post (1974-); Gomez, J. (1993, 05). Audre Lorde: Passing of a Sister Warrior. Essence, 24, 89.
[24] Ibid.