Lura Beam spent her life studying and writing about what she described as "the poor in life; minorities, some women, some Causes like education and the arts." Born in Marshfield, Maine, in 1887, she attended the University of California, Berkeley (1904-1906), and graduated from Barnard in 1908. In 1917, she earned an M.A. from Columbia. She worked at the American Missionary Association (AMA), 1908-1919, beginning here the work that she would pursue, in one form or another, for the rest of her life. For three years she worked for the AMA as a teacher at two black schools: the Gregory Normal Institute in Wilmington, North Carolina, and then the LeMoyne Normal School in Memphis, Tennessee. She then became AMA's Assistant Superintendent of Education in charge of the Deep South, visiting schools and colleges throught the South to determine their most successful teachers and programs. Her reports were sent to all AMA schools so that they could improve the quality of education they offered.
From 1919 to 1926 Beam researched and wrote reports for the Association of American Colleges. The research and travel for "Art in the Liberal College," an extensive study of art curricula in seven representative colleges, provided a basis for her later work for the American Association of University Women (AAUW), 1937-1952, where Beam organized and mounted art exhibitions and surveys of community art projects. First, however, Beam worked for the National Committee on Maternal Health (1927-1933), the General Education Board in New York City, and a Federal research project in industrial unemployment.
Since retiring in 1952, Beam has continued to write and to organize art exhibitions; since 1968, she has been compiling information and writing a study on aging and retirement.
From the guide to the Papers, 1900-1969, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
