Katherine Garrison Chapin (September 4, 1890December 30, 1977), sometimes known by her married name Katherine Biddle, was an American poet, librettist, and playwright. She is best known for two collaborations with composer William Grant Still: And They Lynched Him on a Tree (1940) and Plain-Chant for America (1941). Chapin began publishing poems in the late 1920s, in the popular press and in literary journals including Poetry. Many of her works, including her two joint compositions with Still, were musical libretti. Her corpus covers a variety of subjects, but evinces a particular fascination with politics and racial justice. Critics regarded her work as skilled, traditional, and somewhat lacking in feeling. Life Family Katherine Garrison Chapin was born to a wealthy, well-connected family in Gilded Age New York. Her mother Cornelia Garrison Van Auken (1865–1925) was an actress. Her father Lindley Hoffman Chapin (1854–1896) was a Manhattan lawyer who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1874. Her parents were married on February 14, 1888, at 421 Fifth Avenue, Cornelia's family home. Her sister Cornelia became a sculptor. Her brother Lindley Hoffman Paul Chapin was the father of Schuyler Chapin. Her older paternal half-sister was the publisher Marguerite Caetani. New York Chapin was born on September 4, 1890, in Waterford, Connecticut—the location of Rock Lawn, the Chapins' ancestral summer home. She grew up in Manhattan. As a child, she often attended operas at the old Metropolitan Opera House on 39th Street, which was near her family's brownstone at 5 West 37th Street in Murray Hill. Her elementary education was at Miss Keller's School, a private school scholar Laurie Dennett calls "less-expensive and more socially inclusive" than St. Mark's, to which her brother was sent. An 1896 article in The Illustrated American describes Miss Keller's as an exemplar of cutting edge educational methods, noting that "[p]racticality is the motto of the school, and the lessons are invariably taught with relevant illustration". Reflecting on her education, Chapin called Miss Keller's "somewhat experimental". Chapin also attended a drama school called the Theatre Guild School, presumably run by the Theatre Guild. Chapin later attended Columbia University for "postgraduate work", where she studied under Franz Boas, Max Eastman, and Kurt Schindler. By her time at Columbia, she was engaged to Francis Biddle. Biddle would serve as a judge at the Nuremberg trials and Attorney General under Franklin D. Roosevelt. They married on April 27, 1918. Philadelphia and Washington