There were seven siblings, who by birth order were Elizabeth (teacher), Hope (clergyman), Alva (politician), Morris (lawyer), Grace (writer), and Katharine (academic).
Lumpkin had been publishing stories in college and other school magazines since 1908, but it was not until her mother's death, in 1925, that she decided to take seriously her career as a writer.
Lumpkin moved to New York City when she was twenty-five and began to write short stories, becoming involved in liberal and radical politics.
"[10] In 1929 she was sent to the south by the Communist Party to organize among black sharecroppers and to observe and participate in the Communist-led Gastonia textile strikes.
[5] Lumpkin first met Michael Intrator, a close friend of Chambers, who was very involved in the Communist movement, in the late 1920s.
The toughest crisis Lumpkin experienced (mid- to late-1930s) was her pregnancy with Intrator's child and decision to have an abortion, which she regretted, followed soon afterwards by divorce.
[5] In the 1930s, Lumpkin's literary agent was Maxim Lieber, whom Chambers later named as part of his spy ring during that same period.
Close to the time of Chambers' defection from the Soviet underground (April 1938), Lumpkin began rejecting Communist Party functions; soon she became actively anti-Communist.
She was then living on Gramercy Park in New York City and working as a proofreader for a printing firm called the Golden Eagle Press.
[21] Lumpkin provides modern readers with a window into the past of the building of the southern working class and the changes to its patriarchal values and women's roles.
[22] Lumpkin's writings give cultural historians and scholars an important body to consider when considering this period and the movements to which she contributed.
They have noted both her historical and literary accomplishments, particularly prominent as a figure in the early feminist movement and for promoting worker's rights.
Recent literary scholarship has noted Lumpkin's ideals of progressive representations of race relations and how she incorporated these into her writings.
For example, the characters in To Make My Bread illustrate the importance of alliances between white and black women workers, and how these can be based on mutual understanding and need.