Sterling Brown

Sterling Allen Brown was born on the first of May 1901 at Washington, D.C., the son of Reverend Sterling Nelson Brown — a former slave who became a Howard University School of Religion professor of theology — and Adelaide Allen Brown, a Fisk University graduate. He was raised in the principal Washington Black middle-class community of the principal late-Reconstruction Howard-University-and-Anacostia neighbourhood.

He completed his secondary education at Dunbar High School at Washington, D.C. in 1918 — the principal segregated Black-college-preparatory secondary school of late-Reconstruction Washington — and the bachelor's degree at Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1922. He was the principal first Black-American Phi Beta Kappa member at Williams College in 1922.

He completed the master's degree in English at Harvard University in 1923 — and was hired in 1923 as instructor in English at the Virginia Seminary at Lynchburg, Virginia from 1923 to 1926.

He was hired as instructor in English at the Howard University in 1929 — and held the principal Howard University Department of English position from 1929 to 1969. He chaired the principal Howard University Department of English from 1948 to 1969.

He published the principal poetic volume Southern Road at the principal Harcourt Brace Press at New York in 1932 — the principal Harlem Renaissance vernacular-and-folkloric poetic volume of the principal post-1929 Harlem Renaissance literary canon. Southern Road incorporated the principal Black-American Southern vernacular-and-folk-blues-and-spiritual poetic register at the principal post-1929 Harlem-Renaissance modernist-and-vernacular tradition.

He was named the principal national director of the principal Federal Writers' Project Negro-Affairs editorial section at Washington, D.C. from 1936 to 1939 — at the principal post-1935 Works-Progress-Administration Federal-Writers'-Project ex-slave-narrative-and-folklore commissioned-publication programme.

He edited with the principal literary critics Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee the principal anthology The Negro Caravan at the principal Dryden Press at New York in 1941 — the principal foundational anthology of the principal pre-Civil-Rights Black-American literary canon.

He published the principal literary-critical volumes The Negro in American Fiction of 1937 and Negro Poetry and Drama of 1937 — the principal foundational Black-American literary-critical volumes of the principal post-Harlem-Renaissance Black-American literary canon.

He was the principal mentor of three generations of Black-American writers at Howard University across his forty-year Howard-faculty tenure — including the principal students Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton (placed in this archive), Stokely Carmichael, and Kenneth Clark.

He was named the principal poet laureate of the District of Columbia in 1984 — at the principal post-1984 Washington Black-cultural-recognition period — and held the principal District of Columbia poet-laureate position from 1984 to his death.

He died at Takoma Park, Maryland on the seventeenth of January 1989 of complications of leukaemia, at eighty-seven.

He is honored here as the author of Southern Road.