Dargan, Olive Tilford, 1869-1968

American poet, dramatist, and novelist.

Olive Tilford Dargan (1869-1968), was an Appalachian poet and novelist, who lived in North Carolina from 1906 until her death. Under the pseudonym Fielding Burke, she wrote two novels about the Gastonia, North Carolina textile workers' strike of 1929, Call Home the Heart (1932) and A Stone Came Rolling (1935). Rose Pastor Stokes (1879-1933) was widely published socialist and communist. Born in Russian Poland in 1879, Stokes immigrated in 1882 to England and in 1890 to the United States where she worked in a cigar factory. In 1903 she became an assistant to the editor of the Jewish Daily News in New York. In 1905 she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, a wealthy socialist and reformer. By 1912 Stokes was an active socialist participating in labor actions in New York City and writing proletarian poetry and plays, including The Woman Who Wouldn't (1916). In 1918 she was sentenced to ten years in prison under the Espionage Act but the conviction was overturned on appeal in 1921. During this period she became a member of the Communist Party and in 1922 was an American delegate to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. In 1925 she and James were divorced and two years later she married Jerome Isaac Romaine. She died in 1933 of cancer in Germany, where she had sought treatment. I Belong to the Working Class: The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes, was published in 1992.

Olive Tilford Dargan (1869-1968), was an Appalachian poet and novelist, who lived in North Carolina from 1906 until her death. Under the pseudonym Fielding Burke, she wrote two novels about the Gastonia, North Carolina textile workers' strike of 1929, Call Home the Heart (1932) and A Stone Came Rolling (1935). Rose Pastor Stokes (1879-1933) was a widely published socialist and communist. Born in Russian Poland in 1879, Stokes immigrated in 1882 to England and in 1890 to the United States where she worked in a cigar factory. In 1903 she became an assistant to the editor of the Jewish Daily News in New York. In 1905 she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, a wealthy socialist and reformer. By 1912 Stokes was an active socialist participating in labor actions in New York City and writing proletarian plays and poetry, including The Woman Who Wouldn't (1916). In 1918 she was sentenced to ten years in prison under the Espionage Act but the conviction was overturned on appeal in 1921. During this period she became a member of the Communist Party and in 1922 was an American delegate to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. In 1925 she and James were divorced and two years later she married Jerome Isaac Romaine. She died in 1933 of cancer. I Belong to the Working Class: The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes, was published in 1992.

Olive Tilford Dargan (1869-1968) was an author and poet of Asheville, N.C. Born near Litchfield, Ky., she attended Peabody College and Radcliffe College, and later married Louis Peagram Dargan of Darlington, S.C. In 1906 the Dargans moved to Almond, N.C. After the drowning death of her husband in 1915 and a fire at her Almond home in 1923, Dargan moved to Asheville, N.C., where she lived the remainder of her life.

Olive Tilford Dargan published two volumes of short stories, four volumes of plays, four volumes of poetry, and three novels under the name Fielding Burke. Among her best known works are her first volume of plays, Semiramis and Other Plays, 1904; From My Highest Hill, a collection of short stories about the Appalachian mountains, 1941; and her first novel, Call Home the Heart, 1932, about the Gastonia, N.C., textile strike. Her last collection of short stories, Innocent Bigamy, was published in 1962.

Dargan received numerous awards for her writing including an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina in 1925. She also served as a trustee of the consolidated University of North Carolina.