Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989)

September 29, 2007 
/ Contributed By: John Edgar Tidwell

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Sterling A. Brown

Courtesy Smithsonian Institute

Born on the campus of Howard University on May 1, 1901, Sterling Allen Brown was the last of six children and the only boy born to the Rev. Sterling Nelson, a former slave and prominent professor in the Howard Divinity School, and Adelaide (Allen) Brown.ย  Sterling Allen Brown grew up on the Howard campus but graduated as the top student from Washingtonโ€™s renowned Dunbar High Schoolย  in 1918.ย  His success enabled him to accept the token gesture of an academic scholarship Williams College annually extended to Dunbarโ€™s valedictorian.ย  At this prestigious small, liberal arts school in Massachusetts, from 1918โ€“1922, Brown set aside his own feelings of isolation and performed with distinction: election to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year, winning the Graves Prize for his essay โ€œThe Comic Spirit in Shakespeare and Moliere,โ€ and receipt of highest honors from the English Department his senior year.ย  These accolades won for him a scholarship to study at Harvard University, where he graduated with an MA degree in English in 1923.

As valuable as the formal education was, it arguably served as preparation for the work to which he was ultimately called: that of insightful, vigorous advocate for those people Langston Hughes affectionately named โ€œthe low down folks.โ€ย  From them, he gained a deep and abiding informal education, one that enabled him to represent their lives, language, and lore in remarkably cogent ways.ย  In a series of teaching positions at Virginia Seminary and College, Lincoln University (Missouri), and Fisk University, Brown complemented his formal study by seeking โ€œinstructionโ€ in the world of Calvin โ€œBig Boyโ€ Davis, Mrs. Bibby (โ€œilliterate and somehow very wiseโ€), Slim Greer, and many other black folk.ย  His immersion into and absorption of their lives, language, and lore made possible the distinctive folk-based aesthetic and poetic voice he used to celebrate a people too long burdened by misrepresentation and racial stereotype.

In three different but interrelated ways, this folk-based aesthetic figures in and shapes nearly all of Brownโ€™s writings.ย  First, as poet, he probed the humanity that lay beneath the stereotypical representation of black people.ย  Second, as a literary historian, music critic, and a folklorist, Brown was the first critic to define with clarity the nature of the problematic representations of blacks in American literature.ย  His longest early foray into this literary fray, the nearly monographic essay โ€œNegro Character as Seen by White Authorsโ€ (1933), became the methodological foundation he used to refute black racial stereotypes in the Federal Writersโ€™ Project, the Carnegie-Myrdal Study, and in American literary and cultural studies.ย ย  And third, his A Negro Looks at the South, published posthumously, was a collage of scholarly work, personal interviews, personal narratives, and historical documents astutely capturing Southern black folk talking, doing, and being.ย  Together, his poetry and prose reveal an intelligence, a sensitivity, and a compassion rarely found among his contemporaries.ย  As many have testified, Brownโ€™s work was foundational in studies of identity politics, representational issues, oral history, folkloristics, and more.ย  Fundamentally he considered himself a teacher; however, his classroom was considerably broader and more influential than his modest self-assessment maintains.

Brown spent almost all of his career teaching at Howard University but he also was a visiting professor at Vassar College, New York University, Atlanta University, and Yale University.ย  He died on January 13, 1989 in Washington, D.C. at the age of 87.

About the Author

Author Profile

John Edgar Tidwell is a native of Independence, KS.ย  After graduating from Independence High School in 1964, he matriculated at Washburn University, where he earned a bachelorโ€™s degree in English (1969).ย  This degree was followed by a masterโ€™s and a doctorate in English at, respectively, Creighton University (1971) and the University of Minnesota (1981).ย  For his life of scholarship, teaching, and service, Washburn awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Literature degree in 2014.ย  He retired from the University of Kansas in 2018, who showed its appreciation by bestowing on him the honor of Professor Emeritus of English.ย  His areas of research include American and African American literatures.ย  He has published numerous books, includingย Livinโ€™ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poetย (1992);ย After Winter: The Art and Life of Sterling A. Brownย (2009); Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice of the Black Pressย (2007); Montage of a Dream: The Art and Life of Langston Hughesย (2007);ย Sterling A. Brownโ€™s A Negro Looks at the Southย (2007); and, with Carmaletta M. Williams,ย My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughesโ€™s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926-1938ย (2013).ย  His essays, book reviews, literary dictionary entries, interviews, and bibliographies have appeared inย African American Review,ย Callaloo,ย Journal of American History, among many other publications. In 2001-2002, he served as Project Director for โ€œReading and Remembering Langston Hughes,โ€ a series of KHC-funded poetry circles, where Hughesโ€™s poetry was discussed in various sites around the state. ย Since 1996, he has been a member of the now Humanities Kansasโ€™s Speakersโ€™ Bureau and Talk About Literature in Kansas (TALK) program.ย  With several colleagues, he made the KHC-funded short documentary filmย Langstonโ€™s Lawrence, a brief, focused look at Hughesโ€™s adolescent years in Kansas.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Tidwell, J. (2007, September 29). Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/brown-sterling-1901-1989/

Source of the Author's Information:

Sterling A. Brown, The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1980); Sterling A. Brown,ย  A Negro Looks at the South, eds. John Edgar Tidwell and Mark A. Sanders (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Joanne Gabbin, Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985); and Mark A. Sanders, Afro-Modernist Aesthetics and the Poetry of Sterling A. Brown (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999).

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