Lance Jeffers

Lance Jeffers was born on the twenty-eighth of November 1919 at Fremont, Nebraska, the son of a Fremont Black family of the principal early-twentieth-century Nebraska-and-Plains-States Black community. He was raised at the principal Stromsburg-and-Lincoln Nebraska Black community across his early childhood and at the family relocation to San Francisco in the principal early-1930s post-Great-Migration period.

He served in the United States Army from 1942 to 1946 in the segregated Tenth Cavalry across the principal Second-World-War European-and-Pacific-theatre period — and was discharged at the rank of staff sergeant in 1946.

He completed the bachelor's degree at Columbia University at New York in 1951 — and the master's degree in English at Columbia University in 1956.

He taught across the principal late-1950s through 1980s at the principal California State College at Long Beach, the principal Bowie State College at Bowie, Maryland, the principal Howard University at Washington, D.C., and the principal North Carolina State University at Raleigh, North Carolina. He held the principal North Carolina State University English-faculty position from 1974 to 1985.

He published his first poetic volume My Blackness Is the Beauty of This Land at the principal Broadside Press at Detroit in 1970 — at the principal post-1970 Broadside-Press Black-Arts-Movement publishing canon. He was a principal Broadside Press founding-period poet alongside Audre Lorde, Robert Hayden, and Etheridge Knight (all placed in this archive) under the principal Broadside Press founding-publisher Dudley Randall.

He published the principal poetic-volumes When I Know the Power of My Black Hand at the principal Broadside Press at Detroit in 1974, O Africa, Where I Baked My Bread at the principal Lotus Press at Detroit in 1977, and the principal posthumous Grandsire at the principal Lotus Press at Detroit in 1979.

He was a principal Black-Arts-Movement poet of the principal academic Black-Studies-and-historically-Black-college-and-university post-1968 American Black-poetic-canon — at the principal post-1968 academic Black-Studies-and-historically-Black-college-and-university Black-Arts-Movement poetic-canon.

He was the principal mentor of three generations of Black-American poets at the principal Bowie State College, Howard University, and North Carolina State University across his thirty-year academic tenure.

He was awarded the principal 1976 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and the principal 1979 Pulitzer Prize for poetry nomination for the principal Grandsire of 1979.

He died at Raleigh, North Carolina on the nineteenth of July 1985 of complications of stomach cancer, at sixty-five.

He is honored here as the author of My Blackness Is the Beauty of This Land.