The Fannie Cook Papers reflect the life and work of a versatile writer who was actively interested in problems of contemporary society and whose literary works of fiction and non-fiction were often based on her political and social attitudes. Soon after receiving her Master's degree from Washington University in 1916 she began part-time university teaching and a career as a public servant, participating in community efforts along educational lines and in the field of race relations. It was not until 1935 that she gave up teaching to begin her professional career as a writer. The bulk of the Fannie Cook Papers pertain to these years, 1935 until her untimely death in 1949, documenting not only her development as a writer, but her active role as a lecturer and civic leader. The papers contain correspondence regarding St. Louis race relations and southern Missouri sharecroppers; records of the St. Louis Race Relations Commission, St. Louis Committee for the Rehabilitation of Sharecroppers, and People's Art Center; correspondence with publishers and literary agents; literary manuscripts including those for articles, essays, poems, short stories and novels; scrapbooks; and photographs. The The Fannie Cook Papers are arranged by form of material into five major series: 1) Correspondence; 2) Literary Productions; 3) Printed Material; 4) Photographic Material; and 5) Scrapbooks. Series I, Correspondence, has been arranged in four sub-series which reflect the major interests of Fannie Cook's life. The subseries are as follows: 1) Family Correspondence (1874-1884; 1909-1949); 2) General Correspondence (1925-1949); 3) Public Service Correspondence (1923-1949); 4) Literary Career Correspondence (1920-1949) Letters from relatives and members of Fannie Cook's immediate family, her husband, Jerome, and two sons, Robert Jerome and Howard Frank Cook, are filed in the Family Correspondence Sub-series of the Correspondence Series. The collection contains only a few letters from each of them as well as two letters written by Fannie Cook's father, Julius Frank, a German Jew who came to the United States in 1881 and settled in St. Charles, Missouri. His letters, written in 1896 to his brother William, discuss the current political scene and financial question of free silver. The greater part of the Family Correspondence Sub-series is a selection of correspondence from relatives in Germany seeking Fannie Cook's help in obtaining affidavits, making it possible for them to come to the United States to escape Hitler's persecution of the Jews. The letters, written between 1937-1940, concern the families of Fannie Cook's two aunts, Bertha Frank Oppenheimer and Adeiheid Frank Lehman. Translations of several of the German letters are available. Additional letters in the subseries are letters of congratulation from relatives on the occasion of the publication of her novels. Family legal documents and memorabilia have also been filed here. The General Correspondence Sub-Series (1925-1949) contains letters of request, letters of appreciation and congratulatory mail. Fannie Cook was a popular lecturer at schools, churches, synagogues, civic organizations and public gatherings when the topics for discussion were interracial, legislative or literary subjects. Correspondence includes letters making arrangements for these talks, often followed by letters of appreciation for her appearances; other letters refer to a variety of civic occasions in which she participated. Letters of congratulation are from friends and the public following the publication of her first novel, The Hill Grows Steeper, and the announcement in 1945 that she had won the George Washington Carver Award for Mrs. Palmer's Honey. Additional letters of congratulations can also be found in several of her scrapbooks. Public Service Correspondence Sub-Series (1923-1949) documents Fannie Cook's involvement over a twenty-five year period with civic organizations and committees, both local and national, which engaged the social and political issues of the day. Material in the sub-series has been arranged according to the name of the committee or organization. The organizational records, when available, such as minutes, financial documents, reports and position papers, have been kept with the correspondence. Her commitment to working for better relations between the races was demonstrated by the leadership roles she assumed with several committees and organizations. For several years she was chairperson of the Department of Race Relations of the Community Council of St. Louis which acted as a clearinghouse to remove misunderstanding among the races, and served as the arbiter for controversial questions in the community. Correspondence, reports, minutes of executive committee meetings and subcommittees provide important information concerning several controversies: the location of hospital #2 (Homer G. Phillips Hospital); the use of Franklin School as a vocational school for Negroes; the question of a consolidated high school for Negroes in the county; and the establishment of training courses for Negro social workers at Washington University. Her short story, "Black Liberty," was based on the experience she had while serving as a chairman of the committee and being charged with the responsibility of getting unanimity on the location for Homer G. Phillips Hospital. In January 1939, following the sharecroppers sit-down strike along south-east Missouri highways, Fannie Cook and fellow novelist Josephine Johnson, organized the St. Louis Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Sharecroppers (sometimes referred to as the Missouri Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Sharecroppers). The committee sought immediate ways to provide relief for the homeless families who were protesting unfair practices in the Sharecropper system. After an initial purchase of 90 acres of land near Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where several hundred of the farm workers settled, the committee continued to work for improved conditions for the sharecroppers and to promote general interest in their welfare. As chairman of this committee for ten years, Fannie Cook's files hold a wealth of primary material documenting the settlement of Cropperville (the name given to the sharecropper camp) and the succeeding years as a cooperative homesteading community. Correspondence with businessmen and church leaders, as well as political and government officials, including Eleanor Roosevelt and members on the staff of the Farm Security Administrations (FSA) tells of the organizing effort of the St. Louis Committee and the continued struggle to address the inequities in the sharecropping system. Extensive information may be found regarding FSA's cooperative farm projects in southeast Missouri. Correspondence with Owen Whitfield, the black minister-union official who led the sharecroppers in their exodus on to the highway, provides candid details of the sharecroppers' plight and the role of the Southern Tenant Farmer's Union and The United Cannery, Agricultural Packing and Allied Workers of America Union in addressing the situation. Subsequent letters to Fannie Cook throughout the decade from Owen, his wife Zella, and other camp leaders provide excellent commentary on the day-to-day living in Cropperville. The building of a clinic and bathhouse/laundry facility are well documented in the correspondence with officials of the American Friends Service Committee. This organization conducted summer work camps at Cropperville in 1941 and 1942, and their reports and a journal kept by Holland Hunter, a summer camp worker, are of particular interest. Additional organizational material belonging to the committee includes financial records, minutes and legal documents. Some of Fannie Cook's writings which reflect her experience with the sharecroppers are her novel Boot-Heel Doctor, and "A Killer's Knife Aint Holy," "Zorella's Hat," and "Seeds Without Soil," stories which appeared in national magazines. From 1943-1946, Fannie Cook served on the St. Louis Race Relations Commission, a committee of 72 black and white citizens, active in civic affairs, appointed by the mayor. Its purpose was to promote good will between racial groups, and to adopt measures which would bring greater equality of opportunity in the field of housing, health, employment, education and recreation. An active member of the commission's Executive Committee and Public Relations Committee, Fannie Cook's papers reveal her continuous effort to abolish segregation in public accommodations. Correspondence with committee members and minutes and progress reports of sub-committees provide significant information regarding the effort of the commission to integrate the St. Louis department store lunch counters and to have St. Louis Board of Aldermen adopt a Fair Employment Practice Ordinance. Correspondence also describes her efforts to end segregation of hotels and theaters: it was because of her determination to see the commission make a stand for full integration of the theaters that the chairman of the commission asked for her resignation, which she tendered, September 26, 1946. Her third novel, Mrs. Palmer's Honey, published in 1946, is a treatment of the race issue and segregation practices in St. Louis. Several other committees occupied Fannie Cook's time and attention during the 1930s-1940s, but her involvement with these committees were usually for shorter periods of time. The quantity of material in the collection is limited generally to one or two folders for the following committees: Committee on Household Service Problems (Urban League); Missouri Citizens for Wallace; National Committee to Aid Victims of German Fascism; National Wallace for President Committee; Permanent Council on Relief Needs; Progressive Citizens of America; Progressive Party of Missouri; and St. Louis Citizens' Committee on Displaced Persons. Another significant group of material in this subseries is Fannie Cook's files concerning her work as a member of several civic organizations. Records and correspondence from her early involvement with the League of Women Voters of St. Louis in the 1920s focus on her work as chairperson of the Education Committee and the League's interest in the Forest City Manufacturing Company's strike. In the mid-forties, she became involved with the Liberal Voters League of St. Louis, serving on the Board of Directors as well as the Political Action Committee. These files contain material concerning the 1944 Congressional elections, local membership drives, and the debate concerning the St. Louis chapter's affiliation with a national progressive organization. In 1946 she was selected to serve on the Executive Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), hut there is little in the collection concerning her involvement with the group. There is more extensive material, however, pertaining to her involvement with the People's Art Center, an organization begun in 1942 as part of the Missouri WPA Art Project, and on whose Board of Directors Fannie Cook served for several years. Her collection of correspondence, organizational reports, and minutes provide a fairly comprehensive account of the center's work and effort to survive as a place in St. Louis where people of all races could study art in the 1940s. Additional correspondence pertaining to Fannie Cook's own personal effort to better race relations in her community, outside of her committee and organizational responsibilities, have been filed at the end of the subseries in Letters to the Editors and Race Relations. Among these files is correspondence with Irving Dillard and Ralph Coghlan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Henry Wheeler of the St. Louis American, Bishop William Scarlett of the Diocese of Missouri, and George L. Vaughn, the attorney in the celebrated Shelly vs. Kraemer case. Fannie Cook's professional correspondence as a writer is filed in the Literary Career subseries. In the summer of 1935, realizing her desire to write was greater than the work she was doing, she gave up teaching and lecture courses, and for a few years organizational affiliations, to devote the better part of each day to writing. She attended the Writer's Conference at the University of Colorado, and at the end of a year had her first major encouragement: she won one of the ten first prizes, ($1,000) in the Reader's Digest contest for new writers. A versatile writer, over the next decade she produced numerous short stories, articles, poetry and five novels, relying extensively on her experience in the life of the community for subject matter. Her work contains much that was actual though the material was frequently adopted to fictional form. Occasionally she worked up a theme into more than one type of literary form, both as short story and as article. Her professional correspondence with literary agents, publishers, and editors of numerous magazines and journals have been arranged accordingly. Not only do they record the negotiations regarding the sale of her manuscripts, but the letters document the progress of her work and are a glimpse of an emerging writer learning her craft. Of particular interest is her extensive correspondence with two literary agents, Ann Watkins (1937-1944) and Maxim Lieber (1944-1949). They provided generous remarks on her works-in-progress to which Fannie Cook responded in kind. Also of note is the correspondence with editors at G.P. Putnam's Sons (publisher of The Hill Grows Steeper, 1938), Dodd, Mead & Company (publisher of Boot-Hill Doctor, 1941), and Doubleday & Company, Inc. (publisher of Mrs. Palmer's Honey, 1946, Storm Against the Wall, 1948, and The Long Bridge, 1949). These letters, too, offer critical support of manuscripts as well as business information relating to publication of her novels. Correspondence with editors of more than 70 magazines and journals provide a thorough accounting of her publishing career documenting her submissions, rejections, and publications of articles and short stories from 1920 to 1949. Her short stories (usually humorous accounts of situations containing pathos) and articles appeared in several national magazines, among them the New Republic, Common Ground, Southwest Review, New Anvil, Coronet, and Mademoiselle. Also included in the subseries is correspondence with literary colleagues and organizations, young writers seeking advice and encouragement, and two manuscript repositories, the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and the Missouri Historical Society. Series II, Literary Productions, consists primarily of Fannie Cook's manuscripts towards her novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and articles whose themes generally reflect her involvement in contemporary political and social issues. Included in her papers are manuscripts for three of her published novels: Mrs. Palmer's Honey, Storm Against the Wall, and The Long Bridge. Manuscripts for several unpublished novels are also in the collection: Beyond the Clinic Window, My Father's Family and several sets of drafts for a novel about the 19th century U.S. Army surgeon William Beaumont, variously titled With Passion and With Pride, Great Ajax!, In Astor's Empire, and Surgeon William Beaumont, U.S.A. Her manuscripts include all stages of drafts from notes to the final version. Typescripts and carbon typescripts, with numerous autograph revisions and corrections, comprise the bulk of the material. Final versions for two of her novels, Mrs. Palmer's Honey and Storm Against the Wall, include the publisher's copy edited manuscript and galley proofs. The material has been arranged according to literary form and includes work for her novels, 62 short stories, 40 poems, 45 articles, 22 book reviews, and several editorials and radio scripts. Also among Fannie Cook's literary productions are autograph notes and typescript drafts for 23 speeches and six radio interviews. The radio interviews generally occurred following the publication of the author's novels. While some of the interviews were given from a prepared script, the papers show that frequently Fannie Cook worked from an outline or set of questions with autograph notes in the margins. Her speeches reflect her interest in education, literary and interracial issues, and include those delivered over the radio, at conventions, and before church and civic groups. Again, it appears she was comfortable working not only from a prepared text, but from note cards as well. Series III, Printed Material, contains ephemera, reports, periodicals, newsletters and newspaper clippings found among Fannie Cook's papers which support and document her interest and work in the community. A significant portion of the material refers to the sharecroppers and the issue of race relations in the community. Other items pertain to her literary career or are personal belongings such as her 1947-1948 engagement calendar or membership cards. To assist the researcher, brochures, flyers, memorandums, monographs, press releases, reports, periodicals and newsletters have been listed by title on the container list. Subject matter and dates of newspaper clippings are also listed. Series IV, Photographic Material, includes photographs and cartes de visite of Fannie Cook's relatives in Germany. Those that are identified include her paternal grandmother, Fannie von Beisenfeld Frank; her father, Julius Frank; two aunts, Bertha Frank Oppenheimer and Adeiheid Frank Lehman; and twin boys, Hans and Bernard Leienthal. The twins, Sons of Fannie Cook's cousin, Fannie Oppenheimer and her husband Kurt, were the children Fannie Cook was asked to secure affidavits for during World War II. Also in this series are two photographs of Fannie Cook posing with unidentified groups of St. Louis citizens, ca. 1948, and 17 photographs of the Friends Summer Work Camp at Cropperville in 1941. Series V is a collection of 11 scrapbooks whose individual themes reflect Fannie Cook's interest in writing, race relations, her community, her state, and the sharecroppers of southeast Missouri. Scrapbooks for each of these interests contain numerous clippings, brochures, programs, circulars and articles, either of events in which Fannie Cook participated (often as the featured speaker), or which provide information related to her special interests. Scrapbooks for each of the four novels published in her lifetime contain telegrams, letters, clippings and memorabilia pertaining to the publication of the book. Clippings and tear-sheets of Fannie Cook's early publications of short stories, poems, book reviews and letters to the editors are arranged in another scrapbook. Dates and titles of each book are listed in the container list of the register.