Writings
After retiring from her teaching career, Dr. Putney turned to writing, focusing on the achievement of African Americans in the military. Her first book, Black Sailors: Afro-American Merchant Seamen and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War, published in 1987 by Greenwood Press, was described by one reviewer as "A welcome contribution to what amounts to a new field of study, black history and the American maritime service."
Her second book, When the Nation was in Need: Blacks in the Women's Army Corps During World War II (Scarecrow Press, 1992), drew not only on the author's personal experience in the army but also from "archival records, manuscripts, documents, contemporary newspaper accounts and interviews, statements, and the personal files of those who served". It received the 1993 Outstanding Book on Human Rights award of the Gustav Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in America.
Dr. Putney was the editor of Blacks in the United States Army: Portraits Through History (McFarland, 2003), a pictorial collection whose paintings and sketches "depict black army personnel at war, as war casualties, at prayer, in peacetime assignments, in training, at play and at leisure, and as military musicians." Each illustration is accompanied by a narrative along with the artist's name, medium used, location of the original, and other information.
Dr. Putney published numerous articles in scholarly journals including the Maryland Historical Magazine, Journal of Negro History, Negro History Bulletin, and the Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.
She also was a frequent contributor to the Northeast News, a community newspaper.
Read more about this topic: Martha Settle Putney
Famous quotes containing the word writings:
“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Accursed who brings to light of day
The writings I have cast away.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)