This is an ethnohistorical and literary biography of Olivia Ward Bush (Banks), 1869-1944, an Afro-American/Native American poet, playwright, teacher, and journalist. From her birth in Sag Harbor, New York to her residence in Providence, Boston, Chicago, and New York, the work explores Bush's aesthetic response to events such as the accommodationist-integrationist controversy, the Great Migrations, provitivism, Negritude, and the Great Depression. The sources consulted include Bush's published and unpublished works and memorabilia, studies in linguistics, anthropology, literature, and interviews with Bush's family and with Native Americans. One concludes Bush concurrently adhered to a Montauk and Afro-American identity and contributed to the Negro Renaissance movement of the 1920's-1930's. Her life was a microcosm of America's change from a rural to urban industrial society at the turn of the century
