Dear Ms. Norris,

I would like to add three nominations to what promises to be a slew for your Native New Yorkers Hall of Fame.

I'm a resident of northeastern Dutchess County and have in the past few years learned that the town of Amenia in the earlier 20th century was the scene of events critically important to the civil rights movement and thus to state and national society and politics: the Amenia conferences of 1916 and 1933. The conferences came to be held in Amenia because Troutbeck, the country home of Joel E. Spingarn, was located there.

Spingarn was a true renaissance man: a poet, professor, literary critic, and editor; a founder of Harcourt Brace publishers; and, most notably, a social and civil rights activist who was president of the NAACP from 1915 until 1939.  He established the Spingarn medal, and the NAACP survived probably because of his efforts.  W.E.B. Du Bois called him "knight" in the dedication to one of his books. Meanwhile Joel became known worldwide as an expert on the clematis (!) and known more locally as the "father of field days" (or something to that effect) for having founded an annual community sports day in Amenia.  He had a one-room schoolhouse built near Troutbeck and supported the community in numerous other ways. He even has a cypress species named for him.  (You may not be surprised to hear that I'm gathering materials to write about him.) Born in New York City.

I'd also propose his brother, Arthur Barnett Spingarn, who succeeded him as president of the NAACP (1940-1966) and before that was responsible for the NAACP's adoption of a legal strategy to pursue civil rights: he was vice president and chairman of the national legal committee. As president of the NAACP Legal and Educational Fund, Inc., he was largely responsible for the legal cases that laid the groundwork for "Brown v. Board of Education." Arthur's donation of his notable collection of African American literature and ephemera to Howard University helped form its Moorland-Spingarn Collection.  Arthur, too, was born in New York City.

Joel gathered a very distinguished group of artists and intellectuals around him at Troutbeck, perhaps most notably Lewis Mumford, of whom you know much without any notes from me.  He was born in Flushing and is my third candidate.

Massachusetts gets Du Bois.  I'd also propose Joel's wife, Amy Einstein Spingarn, who was a poet and artist as well as a philanthropist herself--but I think she was born in New Jersey.  (My sources are at home.)

Joel Spingarn, Arthur Spingarn, and Lewis Mumford all, of course, have entries in "American National Biography" and elsewhere.