Ariel Williams Holloway was an African American poet active during the Harlem Renaissance. She was born Lucy Ariel Williams, but would publish her works under the name Ariel Williams, later Ariel Williams Holloway after her marriage to postal worker Joaquin M. Holloway in 1936, choosing not to user her first name professionally. She was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama to Fannie Brandon and pharmacist and physician Dr. H. Roger Williams. She was surrounded by music and a love for education all of her life, especially through her mother who was a teacher and a singer in a choir. Holloway studied music at several schools throughout her young adulthood with the hopes of becoming a concert pianist. After graduating from Talladega College in 1922, she then attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where she received a B.A. in Music in 1926. She received another B.A. in Music, studying piano and voice, from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1928. In addition to these degrees, she would continue studying music during the summers between semesters at Columbia University with musician, bandleader, and entertainer on radio and television Fred Waring. Despite all of her professional training, Holloway was unable to find work as a concert pianist, and eventually decided to pursue a career teaching music. She taught at numerous schools throughout her life including North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, Dunbar High School in Mobile, Fessenden Academy in Florida, and Lincoln Academy in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. She held multiple positions as a teacher including director of music, and was the first to hold the position of supervisor of music within the public-school district of Mobile. It was during her teaching career that Holloway began to write professionally. She wrote numerous poems as well as a volume of verse Shape Them into Dreams (1955) that were published to critical acclaim. Her poems appeared in the magazines Opportunity and Crisis: A Records of the Darker Races, both well known for publishing authors associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Her most renowned poem titled Northboun’ was first published in 1926 and has since been added to multiple anthologies over the years, including Golden Slippers (1941), edited by Countee Cullen and Arna Bontemps, and Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950 (1996), by Lorraine E. Roses and Ruth E. Randolph. The short poem, noted as one of the finest pieces written during the Harlem Renaissance, tells of the Great Migration and the division that continues to be seen in society in the United States. Story derived from alchetron.com.

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