Vincent Jubilee letters

1978-1995

Vincent Jubilee, a former dancer, earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1980. Prior to his PhD studies, Jubilee was a dancer in New York City, and shared an apartment with George Mills, another dancer. He also was a professor of American literature at the University of Puerto Rico from the 1970s to the late 1990s. The collection contains nine letters (1978-1995) written to Jubilee. Choreographer and dancer George Mills is the primary correspondent. The subjects of Mills's letters range from Alvin Ailey to Clara Ward, his career in dance, as well as mutual acquaintances including Doug Crutchfield (1938-1989), a Black gay former roommate of Mills in New York who moved to Denmark in the 1960s to teach jazz ballet. Scholar Houston Baker's letters to Jubilee concern Jubilee's dissertation as well as personal matters in the late 1970s. Historian Vincent Harding's letter shares his appreciation for Jubilee's support on the eve of Harding's publication, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (1981).