STERLING BROWN

Sterling A. Brown was born May 1, 1901, into a black middle-class Washington, D.C. family. His father was a pastor at a local church and a teacher at Howard University’s School of Religion. His mother was a graduate of Fisk University. Brown attended Dunbar High School where writer Jessie Fauset taught him. In 1918, he graduated with honors and received a scholarship to Williams College. After graduating cum laude in 1922, he began Harvard University where he received his master’s degree in English in 1923.

During the Harlem Renaissance, Sterling took a unique approach to his style of writing. Unlike the majority of other black poets and writers, he chose to write in the dialect of country black folk. Even though at the time this was an unpopular style, his extraordinary talent and his ability to reveal humanity in his poetry won over the most ardent critics of this style.

After graduating from Harvard, Brown accepted a teaching position at Virginia Seminary and College. It was during this three-year time in Lynchburg that Brown began learning and studying the dialect of the town’s rural black residents. He spent time with local residents and listened to blues music and spirituals. These first hand accounts with rural blacks later influenced his use of dialect poetry.
After returning to Washington to teach at Howard in 1929, Brown’s poetry was published a few years later. Not surprisingly, his poetry reflected rural black speech patterns. Black writers who considered it demeaning often dismissed this type of poetry. However, Brown’s use of the voice of black folk in traditional forms of sonnets, ballads, and villanelle, proved successful in his work Southern Road (1932). Even writer and opponent of this style, James Weldon Johnson declared that Brown had successfully replicated rural black dialect.

His other important work included The Negro in American Fiction (1937), Negro Poetry and Drama (1937), and The Last Ride of Wild Bill and Eleven Narratives (1975). Brown was a contributor of poetry and reviews to Opportunity, The New Republic, Phylon, and the Journal of Negro Education. In the 1930s, he served as editor of Negro affairs for the Roosevelt Federal Writers Project. In 1969, Brown retired from his position at Howard. He died on leukemia on January 13, 1989.

Sterling Allen Brown defied popular black poetry. Instead of writing in the voice an intellectual, Brown’s poetry captured the dialect of rural black folk. Brown’s poetry was an artistic expression that revealed the humanity of the characters of his poetry.

Sterling Brown crossed over on January 13, 1989