Partner Louise Stevens Bryant
Queer Places:
University of California, Berkeley, CA
Barnard College (Seven Sisters), 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Marshfield, ME
Lura Ella Beam (April 1, 1887 – May 1969) was a writer and teacher who
spent her life studying and writing about what she described as "the poor in
life; minorities, some women, some Causes like education and the arts."
Lura
Ella Beam was born on April 1, 1887, in Marshfield, Maine, the daughter of
George Ellery Beam and Nellie H. Berry.
She
graduated from the local high school in 1904 and from 1904 to 1906 she
attended the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated from
Barnard College in 1908. In 1917, she earned an M.A. from Columbia
University.
From 1908 to 1919
Lura Beam worked at the American Missionary Association (AMA), beginning
here the work that she would pursue, in one form or another, for the rest of
her life. For three years she worked for the American Missionary Association
as a teacher at two black schools: the Gregory Normal Institute in
Wilmington, North Carolina, and then the LeMoyne Normal School in
Memphis, Tennessee. She then became the American Missionary Association's
Assistant Superintendent of Education in charge of the Deep South, visiting
schools and colleges through the South to determine their most successful
teachers and programs. Her reports were sent to all American Missionary
Association schools so that they could improve the quality of education they
offered.
University of California, Berkeley, CA
From 1919 to 1926 Beam
researched and wrote reports for the Association of American Colleges.
The research and travel for "Art in the Liberal College," an extensive study
of art curricula in seven representative colleges, provided a basis for her
later work from 1937 to 1952 for the American Association of University
Women (AAUW), where Beam organized and mounted art exhibitions and surveys
of community art projects.
From 1927 to 1933
Beam worked for the National Committee on Maternal Health, the General
Education Board in New York City, and a Federal Research Project in
Industrial Unemployment.
In 1931, together
with Robert Latou Dickinson, she published ''A Thousand Marriages: A Medical
Study of Sex Adjustment'', followed in 1934, always with Dickinson, by ''The
Single Woman: a Medical Study in Sex Education''.
Since retiring in
1952, Beam continued to write and to organize art exhibitions.
In 1957 she
published ''A Maine Hamlet'', describing the village of Marshfield, near
Machias, Maine, where she was born at the turn of the century and where she
often spent the summer vacations with her longtime partner Louise Stevens
Bryant. It was Bryant that, fascinated by small town life, encouraged Beam
to write the book and the book is dedicated to Bryant's memory.
In 1967 she published the monograph ''He Called
Them by the Lightning; a Teacher's Odyssey in the Negro South, 1908-1919''.
Since 1968, she compiled information and wrote a study on aging and
retirement.
Lura Beam's
romantic partner for almost 35 years was
Louise Stevens Bryant, a public
health specialist, writer, editor and publicist. They met in the
1920s while both were working for the National Committee on Maternal Health
(CMH). After Bryant's death in 1956, Beam published a biography about her,
''Bequest From a Life; a Biography of Louise Stevens Bryant'', published in
1963. According to Jennifer Terry "although they never explicitly
called themselves lesbians, the nature of their relationship was known to
close associates, including Dickinson." At Smith College, Louise Stevens
Bryant Collection, there are letters between from Bryant to Bear: "I love
and adore you and miss you fearfully all the time" (ca. 1922) and "Now I am
a real Amazon. I love you" (January 16, 1925).
Lura Beam died in May
1969, in Bronxville, New York.
The Papers of Lura Beam, 1900-1969 are
hosted at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of
Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard
University.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- {{cite book|last1=Dickinson|first1=Robert
Latou|last2=Beam|first2=Lura|title=A Thousand Marriages: A Medical Study
of Sex Adjustment|date=1931|publisher=Greenwood
Press|url=https://books.google.it/books/about/A_Thousand_Marriages.html?id=mr8ycgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y|accessdate=7
January 2018}}
- {{cite book|last1=Beam|first1=Lura|title=A Maine
Hamlet|date=2000|publisher=Tilbury House
Publishers|url=https://books.google.it/books/about/A_Maine_Hamlet.html?id=KpgDAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y|accessdate=7
January 2018}}
- {{cite book|last=Terry|first=Jennifer|title=An American Obsession:
Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern
Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C6pGoWWLfhEC&pg=PA439|year=1999|publisher=University
of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-79367-2|page=439}}
- {{cite
web|url=http://www.maine.gov/msl/maine/writdisplay.shtml?id=94749|title=
Beam, Lura (1887–1978)|publisher=Maine State Library|accessdate=June 6,
2016}}
- {{cite book|last1=Terry|first1=Jennifer|title=An American Obsession:
Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern
Society|date=1999|publisher=University of Chicago
Press|page=439|url=https://books.google.it/books?id=qRMJ_d-yUWYC&pg=PA439&lpg=PA439|accessdate=7
January 2018}}
- {{cite web|title=Beam, Lura, 1887-1978. Papers of Lura Beam,
1900-1969: A Finding
Aid|url=http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00218|website=Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University|accessdate=7 January
2018}}{{PD-notice}}