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Alvira Hazzard (1899-1953) Author/Playwright/Actor/Harlem Renaissance Activist. Active from 1920-1953 in the United States.

Alvira D. Hazzard (Marie Alvirah Hazzard) was born an African American in North Brookfield, Massachusetts to John and Rosella Curry Hazzard, a family of nine and the third generation of African American New Englanders. Out of nine children Hazzard wanted to make a difference by using her talented gift of writing to express her true emotions within her and the issues that were going on around her such as racism. Hazzard graduated from Worcester Normal School and moved to Boston to teach in the public schools where she taught English and writing, she also volunteered at the local hospitals. During her spare time Hazzard would write short stories and poems that mainly focused on issues such as racial stereotypes, racial inequality, and discrimination, which gained her recognition when she became a member of The Saturday Evening Quill in 1925. Alvira Hazard also became an active playwright during The Harlem Renaissance Era, which embraced literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to separate “the Negro” apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other.

The Harlem Renaissance was a phenomenon movement that helped set the directions of African American writers and artists would pursue throughout the twentieth century. Its movement name was given because of the social, cultural, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York between the end of World War I and in the middle of the 1930s.During this period Harlem was a cultural center drawing Black artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. Focusing on the literature of The Harlem Renaissance came from a motivation to write about Black heroes and heroic episodes from American history as well as the need for African Americans to express a deeper revelation of the Black man or woman in general. A focus on women and theater The Harlem Renaissance revealed how black women playwrights both relied and contributed to a tradition of self-help and mutual support. These women were integral parts of the Harlem Renaissance for these roles they played as organizers, editors, decision-makers, they helped publicize, support and thus shape the movement. The Harlem Renaissance succeeded by obtaining the sociological level on how the world should view African-Americans that they should be treated equally and they are intelligent human beings. Unfortunately the movement was at its end during The Great Depression and because of the assumptions about the centrality of culture and social realities. Only a few well known-writers came from the Harlem Renaissance Era such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neil Hurston, and W.E.B DuBois, but they still continues the legacy of African American literature.

The Saturday Evening Quill was an annual journal/literary magazine, with African American members who were writers, playwrights, and intellectuals who resided in the Roxbury and Boston area. The publication was a product of The Boston Quill Club, another writers club in the Boston area. Eugene Gordon, president of The Boston Quill Club also worked on the editorial staff of The Saturday Evening Quill and The Boston Post local newspaper. Gordon explained the main purpose of these publications was to serve as a literary outlet for African American writers, since they did not have the freedom to have their work published nationally because of their race. The members including Hazzard had to pay for the publication and production themselves. In June 1928, The Saturday Evening Quill published its first issue which featured poems, short stories, plays, and essays from writers who were also part of The Harlem Renaissance Era such as Joseph S. Mitchell (playwright/writer), Dorothy West (novelist), and Helene Johnson (poet). Eugene Gordon also helped the writes get their worked published in The Boston Post but their names remained anonymous. The annual literary magazine issued three numbers with a limit of 250 copies, it was never offered for sale until the third issue in 1930 during the Great Depression, which issued 300 copies.

Alvira Hazzard had two plays published in The Saturday Evening Quill from 1928-1929. Her first play As Mother Liked It was published in 1928; a play about two young women named Meena Thomas and Alta Fields who were very infatuated of an Indian prince, who turned out to be someone else, a young African American scholar name John Fields. The play mainly focused on racial stereotyping based on the "Indian prince" physical appearance such as his skin color, and his lifestyle that was foreign and wealthy. Hazzard's second play Little Heads was published in 1929. The play was about a young Black woman named Bee, who was invited to a formal party by her colleague Mrs. Edna. Bee is delighted to go to the formal party until she learns that she has to dress old-fashioned (plantation or minstrel style) attire and sing Negro spirituals. Most of Hazzard's plays centered around the issues racial stereotypes, discrimination, and the limiting effects of devaluating individuals within the society. Hazzard also had four of her poems published in The Saturday Evening Quill such as Predestination, To My Grandmother, Beyond, and Blind Alley. Some of her stories and poems were also published in The Boston Post but in a discrete manner with the help of Eugene Gordon because African Americans were under the oppression of racial inequalities and discrimination during the late 1920s. Another issue on why Hazzard had difficulties on getting her work published was the issue of her intelligence and education. During that time, a young black woman who had extended vocabulary and proper articulation was a "threat" to the White people and believed that Blacks should not have the right to be educated.Not only was Hazzard a writer or playwright she was also an actor in plays at the Allied Arts Center that were also produced by Maud Cuney Hare (1874-1936)who was an American pianist, musicologist, writer, and African American activist in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Hazzard continued writing short stories and poems but did not have them published. Some of Hazzard’s plays have been acted by amateur actors in the playhouses in the low income neighborhoods of Roxbury and Boston Massachusetts including Harlem. New York.

After The Harlem Renaissance Era ended in the 1930s Alvira Hazzard gave up writing and started working as a nurse clerk in the Boston local hospitals. Hazzard remained unmarried and died at the age of fifty-four from lymphatic leukemia, a blood cancer that affects the cells in the bone marrow in 1953. One strong factor about Alvira Hazzard was that even though she had limitations as a writer and a playwright she still believed that her stories, poems, and plays would deliver the important messages to her people. Knowing that Hazzard's published work was never highly recognized she and many other African American women played an important role in African American history and in the aspects of African American literature. Women playwrights during this time remained neglected and forgotten when The Harlem Renaissance disappeared, but only a few famous African-American writers such as Dorothy West and Zora Neal Hurston has continued the legacy of African American literature and is the stepping stone for the 21st century.