Unsung History22 Sep 2025

Marguerite Cartwright

Dr. Marguerite Phillips Dorsey Cartwright, born May 17, 1910, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a journalist, sociologist, educator, and actress, who served as a correspondent for the United Nations, attended and wrote about both the Bandung Conference and the All-African People's Conference, and was appointed to the Provisional Council of the University of Nigeria, where she became one of five trustees. Joining me in this episode to discuss both Marguerite Cartwright and Black women’s leadership in the fight for human rights is Dr. Keisha N. Blain, Professor of History and Africana Studies at Brown University and author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “Down South blues,” written by Fletcher Henderson, Alberta Hunter, and Ethel Waters, and performed by The Virginians, in New York City, on September 25, 1923; the audio is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox and is in the public domain. The episode image is “Portrait of Marguerite Cartwright wearing a dashiki, undated,” by John Schiff; the photograph is courtesy Leo Baeck Institute and is used under fair use guidelines.

Additional Sources:

“Marguerite Cartwright and African-American Internationalism [video],” Society of Southwest Archivists, August 13, 2021.
“M. P. CARTWRIGHT,” The New York Times, May 9, 1986, Section D, Page 22.
“Introducing Marguerite Cartwright,” Amistad Research Center.
“Cartwright, Marguerite, 1910-1986,” Biographical Note, Marguerite Cartwright papers, Amistad Research Center.
“Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference), 1955,” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State.
“AAPC Background,” Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.

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