Mary "MC" Richards

Mary Caroline “M.C.” Richards was hired by Black Mountain College in the fall of 1945 to teach literature and writing. She remained at the college through the summer of 1952 except for the summer of 1946, a sabbatical from the fall of 1948 through the 1949 summer session, and the 1952 spring semester. Richards’ husband Albert William Levi, whom she married in 1945, taught philosophy and social sciences.

Richards was born in Weiser, Idaho in 1916 and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She received a B.A. degree in literature and languages from Reed College in 1937 and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. The catalyst for Richards’ application to Black Mountain was disenchantment with traditional academic teaching methods.

A popular teacher at Black Mountain, she began to write poetry, was active in theater and dance, and studied pottery with Robert Turner. She translated and participated in plays by Cocteau, Satie and Yeats, among others. Levi left the college in 1951, after his separation from Richards. In the December 1951, Richards traveled with David Tudor and Katherine Litz on a dance tour. This was the beginning of a long liaison with Tudor. She was granted a leave-of-absence for the 1952 spring term and resigned at the end of the summer session. She remained in close touch with the college until its closing.

In 1954, Richards was a founding member of the Gatehill Cooperative Community (“The Land”) with David Tudor, John Cage, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib and Paul and Vera Williams near Stony Point, N.Y. Richards lived there for a decade, working in a studio with Karnes where they developed a form of flame-proof clay to make ceramic cookware.

In 1984 Richards became a resident co-worker at Camphill Village in Kimberton Hills, Pennsylvania, a community for adults with special needs. She maintained a studio at Camphill and worked in ceramics until her death there in September 1999. A retrospective of her work was held at the Worcester Center for Crafts in Massachusetts in October 1999.

Richards printed and bound her first book Poems at Black Mountain in December 1947. She is also author of the influential Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person (1964), The Crossing Point (1973), Toward Wholeness: Rudolph Steiner Education in America (1980), Imagine Inventing Yellow (1991), and Opening Our Moral Eye (1996).

Biography written by Mary Emma Harris for the Black Mountain College Project.

Relationships

Husband: Fellow BMC faculty, Albert Levi

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed MC in 1998 and the transcript is available from Appalachian State University under The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project, Inc. Oral History collection.

Topics: Reed College and University of Chicago – interest in BMC – BMC community – unstructured form – Max Dehn – marriage to Bill Levi – infusion of arts in BMC community – first meeting when students selected courses – financial problems – current interest in BMC – remembering Buckminster Fuller, Charles Olson, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, David Tudor – meeting of kindred spirits – Camp Hill community – Holy Names College, Oakland