Marian Minus

Minus was born in South Carolina and raised in Dayton, Ohio, the daughter of Laura Whitener Minus and Claude Wellington Minus.^[2] Her mother was a seamstress who worked for the WPA; her father was a pharmacist and taught at Wilberforce University. Her maternal grandmother, Laura Lyles, was white, and the model for a character in Dorothy West's 1995 novel The Wedding.^[3] Minus won an award for perfect grades in 1932,^[4] and graduated at the top of her class at Fisk University in 1935,^[5][6] and began graduate studies in anthropology, on a Rosenwald Fund fellowship,^[3][7] at the University of Chicago.^[2]

At Fisk, Minus was the first woman elected to Sigma Upsilon Pi honor society,^[6] and the president of the Alpha Beta chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.^[8]

In Chicago in the 1930s, Minus became a member of the South Side Writers Group with Richard Wright.^[2][9] With Wright and her partner, Dorothy West, she was co-editor of Challenge, a literary magazine,^[10] and of its more political successor, New Challenge.^[11][12] "The only prejudice editors Dorothy West, Marian Minus, and Richard Wright own to is a distinct anti-fascist prejudice and they mix no words in saying so," noted one reviewer in 1937.^[13]

Minus wrote short stories,^[14] typed manuscripts for West,^[15] and worked for Consumers Union.^[7][16] In 1942, she gave an anthropology lecture at the School for Democracy in New York City.^[17] She won an award from Simon & Schuster to write a novel, Time is my Enemy, in 1946.^[18] In 1958, she became personnel director for Consumers Union, based in Mount Vernon, New York.^[3][19]

• "The Negro as a Consumer" (1937, Opportunity, article)^[16]
• "The Fine Line" (1939, short story)^[20]
• "Girl, Colored" (1940, The Crisis, short story)^[21]
• "Half-Bright" (1940, Opportunity, short story)^[22]
• "The Threat to Mr. David" (1947, short story, Woman's Day)^[23]