Gwendolyn Bennett Bennett was born July 8, 1902, in Giddings, Texas, to Joshua Robbin Bennett[1] and Mayme F. (Abernethy) Bennett. She spent her early childhood in Wadsworth, Nevada, on the Paiute Indian Reservation. Her parents taught in the Indian Service for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In 1906, when Bennett was four years old, her family moved to 1454 T Street NW, Washington D.C.,[2] so Joshua could study law at Howard University and Mayme could train to be a beautician.[3]
Gwendolyn's parents divorced when she was seven years old. Mayme gained custody of Gwendolyn; however, Joshua kidnapped his daughter. They lived in hiding, along with her stepmother, Marechal Neil, in various places in the East, including Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn, New York, where she attended Brooklyn Girl's High School from 1918 to 1921.[4]
While attending Girls' High, Bennett was awarded first place in a school wide art contest, and was the first African American to join the literary and dramatic societies. She wrote her high-school play and was also featured as an actress. She also wrote both the class graduation speech and the words to the graduation song.[5]
After her graduation in 1921, Bennett took art classes at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute.[6] In her undergraduate studies, her poem "Heritage" was published in The Crisis, magazine of the NAACP, during November 1923; in December of the same year, "Heritage" was included in Opportunity, a magazine published by the National Urban League.[7] In 1924, her poem "To Usward" was chosen as a dedication for the introduction of Jessie Fauset's novel There Is Confusion at a Civic Club dinner hosted by Charles S. Johnson.[1][8]
Bennett graduated from Columbia and Pratt in 1924 and received a position at Howard University, where she taught design, watercolor painting and crafts.[9] A scholarship enabling her to study in Paris, France, at the Sorbonne, was awarded to Bennett during December 1924. She then continued her fine arts education at the Académie Julian and the École du Panthéon in Paris.[10] During her studies in Paris, Bennett worked with a variety of materials, including watercolor, oil, woodcuts, pen and ink, and batik,[11] which was the beginning of her career as a graphic artist. However, most of her pieces from this period of her life were destroyed during a fire at her stepmother's home in 1926.[12]
