Beatrice Murphy has devoted her life to service to blacks, young people, the elderly, and those who are handicapped. Legally blind since the late 1960s, she has worked, and continues to work, as an editor, reviewer, poet, bibliographer, and speaker to further the needs and goals of minorities. Called a "genuine heroine" by the Catholic Standard in 1981, she certainly merits such a plaudit, if only for her role as a popularizer of black literature.

Beatrice M. Murphy was born in Monessen, Pennsylvania, on 25 June 1908, but she was brought up in Washington, D.C., and educated in the public schools there, graduating from Dunbar High School in 1928. While still a student she began publishing poems in Prism, the Harp, and Crisis magazines. Her poem "You, Too" won a second-prize award from Embryo in 1930; her editorial "I Don't Go to Church" was the prize letter of Debate magazine in 1934.

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