I spoke too soon and take back my earlier snarky and wistful comments. Our man Stainforth had in his collection a piece written by Adah Isaacs Menken who was a nineteenth-century actress, artist and poet. I am not familiar with her story and will research this further, but her VIAF record identifies her as an African American as does the Wikipedia entry. Stainforth records Spirit Vision in his catalogue but I find no such title in Worldcat. In her 2005 Legacy article, Karen Kilcup referenced Cheryl Walker’s 1992 anthology, American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century, which I checked out from the Internet Archive and I came across Adah in the table of contents. Noticing that no one on Team Stainforth had worked on her to date, I began to explore further and quickly found her VIAF record. She has an interesting life story that makes me wonder if Josephine Baker knew of Adah.

Stay tuned.