Abigail Rosen McGrath Passes, and Leaves a Legacy

By Bernice Elizabeth Green
Abigail Rosen McGrath, founder and director of the historic Renaissance House for Artists & Writers on Martha’s Vineyard and direct heir to the Harlem Renaissance, passed on December 20 at 84.

McGrath: writer, artist, producer, actress, entrepreneur, mother, filmmaker, former street performer, Folies Bergère dancer, cook, a neighbor of Basquiat and muse to Andy Warhol – all this and creator of the famous writers’ haven, too.
The list of achievements can stretch from The Martha’s Vineyard Ferry to Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

With her late husband, Tony McGrath, she ran a street-performance operation from the back of truck outfitted with all the equipment necessary for staging a production. Their moving theatre was the first stop for some major actors.
The Bard College graduate was related to Harlem Renaissance stars. Poet Helene Johnson was her mother. “The Wedding” author Dorothy West was her aunt. (In fact, West’s book, “The Wedding,” was based on McGrath’s and Tony’s experiences.)
Several years ago, journalist Fern Gillespie introduced us to the amazing Abigail McGrath for a story to appear in Our Time Press.

It didn’t take too long to discover that McGrath, a regular writer/essayist for the Martha’s Vineyard Times, could write for us, as well. And she did with alacrity.
I noticed that Brooklyn cropped up in her writings, and in conversations. Like visiting a relative in Bushwick, or recalling the time when she performed with a cast in Brooklyn Borough Hall’s garden court.

It took me a while to realize that the Vineyard, where she launched her annual tributes to Frederick Douglass – on the beach group readings of the scholar-abolitionist’s What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? –was not her only home base, she tracked from the Vineyard to Manhattan and the West Coast.
Brooklyn was bedrock, too. She casually mentioned living in the Ft. Greene Houses.
“I was born in New York,” she said in a 2020 interview with writer Kyra Steck for the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

“.. and my mother Helene and her cousin Dorothy were born in Boston. They came here when Helene was 2 years old, and Dorothy was a matter of months. They were always summer residents (in the Vineyard) until the recession of 1933 and then stayed [year-round] because they had to give up their house in Cambridge.

“My mother moved down to New York City just before I was born so that she could say her daughter was born in New York City. She was a member of the Harlem Renaissance, and the key was to be born in New York.”

To writer Gary Comenas, she said in a 2007 interview, “Of all the writers during this period, my mother was the only one to have a child, It is so strange that she should spend her youth during the flapper period in NYC when life was filled with wild abandonment and that I should spend mine during the so-called hippy period in NYC – talk about wild abandonment! Like mirror reflections, only the mirrors were Coney Island fun house mirrors.

“So, here we have a poet mom raising a child on her own, not in NYC as was her dream, but in Brooklyn as was her reality. We are talking educated poor here – think about it, how many wealthy poets do you know? It is easier to get a job as a meteorologist than as a poet.”
Our Time Press is honored to be the recipient of a stream of stories, all original and most all unique to her experiences as seen through the prism of Brooklyn, where she was closest with her mother.

I recall the response to any of my requests like, “Abby, did you know Basquiat? I need a story on him. It’s due in a few days.” So, what we received was always more than a story. It was a love letter to a place and a time.
As an example of her “greatness” as is so apparent in the opening of the Basquiat story request. Blindsided with an impossible deadline, she opened the story with: “Did I ever tell you my Basquiat story? He painted the walls for a disco club in my building. When we left, his murals were still …”

History usually unfolded from her opening lines.
Earlier this month, I sent her a request to set up a video interview with her and a producer. The intent was to approach the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival with another request: to screen my short on Abby—the writers’ writer, the writers’ nurturer. She never informed me that she was in the hospital or that she was even ill.
She wanted to be encouraging without saying anything she thought would be a downer. A week or two later, I was informed of her death.

Martha’s Vineyard and the Renaissance House loomed clearly in my thoughts, with a smiling Abby in front of her abode. There was a gleam in her eye and a smile, looking like she was holding on to a secret.
What I know is her stories in Our Time Press for over the past ten years about 12 in all was her gift to Brooklyn, and she knew we would give it to you. She was the promise of the Renaissance of her mother’s generation to pass on the information and connect it that scholarship to the masses. It was passed to her, and now it was passed on.

But Abby was the connection between the renaissances – then and now – occurring in all the Harlems of the world. We just had to figure out where to go from here.
Note to readers: For more information on Abigail McGrath and to read some of the best writings this side of the Atlantic, please visit, mvtimes.org and vineyardgazette.com.
Our condolences to her sons Benson Hubbell McGrath and Jason Antek McGrath, and all of the artists, writers and crafts persons who ever were taught, worked or mentored by her.