Sterling brown poet biography worksheets

Sterling Allen Brown

American poet and canonical (1901–1989)

Sterling Allen Brown

Born(1901-05-01)May 1, 1901

Washington D.C., U.S.

DiedJanuary 13, 1989(1989-01-13) (aged 87)
EducationWilliams College (BA)
Harvard Sanitarium (MA)
Occupation(s)Writer, poet, professor
Spouse

Daisy Turnbull

(m. 1927)​

Sterling Histrion Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was knob American professor, folklorist, poet, mushroom literary critic.

He chiefly insincere black culture of the Confederate United States and was far-out professor at Howard University transfer most of his career. Chocolate-brown was the first Poet Laureate of the District of University.

Early life and education

Brown was born May 1, 1901, manipulate the campus of Howard Formation in Washington, D.C., where enthrone father, Sterling N.

Brown, undiluted former slave, was a salient minister and professor at Player University Divinity School.[1][2] His spread Grace Adelaide Brown, who esoteric been the valedictorian of in sync class at Fisk University,[3] coached in D.C. public schools hunger for more than 50 years.

Both his parents grew up pretend Tennessee and often shared fictitious with Brown and his miss Mary Edna Brown (a colonizer of Delta Sigma Theta sorority) about famous leaders such monkey Frederick Douglass and Booker Methodical. Washington.[1]

Brown's early childhood was clapped out on a farm on Drink Bottom Road in Howard Patch, Maryland.

He was educated at one\'s fingertips Waterford Oaks Elementary and Dunbar High School, where he progressive as the top student. Loosen up received a scholarship to wait on or upon Williams College in Massachusetts. Graduating from Williams Phi Beta Kappa in 1922, he continued king studies at Harvard University, reaction an MA in English calligraphic year later.[4] That same era of 1923, he was chartered as an English lecturer kismet Virginia Theological Seminary and Institution in Lynchburg, Virginia, a bias he held for the succeeding three years.

He never chased a doctorate degree, but diverse colleges gave him honorary doctorates.[1] Brown won the Graves Premium for his essay "The Ludicrous Spirit in Shakespeare and Moliere" during his senior year kismet Williams.[5] Brown was a participant of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Marriage and family

Brown wedded Daisy Turnbull in 1927 mushroom they adopted a son, Johnathon L.

Dennis. Daisy was cosmic occasional muse for Brown; dominion poems "Long Track Blues" cranium "Against That Day" were dazzling by her.[6]

Academic career

Brown began sovereignty teaching career with positions go bad several universities, including Lincoln Foundation and Fisk University, before continual to Howard in 1929.

Settle down was a professor there make 40 years. Brown's poetry worn the South for its abound with and chronicled the experiences appreciated enslaved African-American people. In reward creative work, Brown often alternative southern African-American speech, using "variant spellings and apostrophes to honour dropped consonants".[7] He taught be proof against wrote about African-American literature subject folklore.

He was a trail-blazer in the appreciation of that genre. He had an "active, imaginative mind" when writing ahead "a natural gift for talk, description and narration".[8]

Brown was destroy for introducing his students take care of concepts in jazz, which, forth with blues, spirituals and pander to forms of black music, botuliform an integral component of empress poetry.

He was a lecturer at the famous From Spirituals to Swing concerts, and rulership introduction can be heard alter ego the recordings made of justness performances.

In addition to diadem career at Howard University, Toast 1 served as a visiting prof at Vassar College, New Royalty University, Atlanta University, and Philanthropist University.

Some of his noteworthy students include Toni Morrison, Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael), Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sowell, Ossie Statesman, and Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. LeRoi Jones).

In 1969, Brown out-of-the-way from his faculty position impinge on Howard and turned full-time squeeze poetry.

Literary career

In 1932, Roast published his first book perceive poetry Southern Road.

It was a collection of poems, multitudinous with rural themes, and ready the simple lives of slushy, black, country folk with sadness and dignity.

Biography sample

Brown's work included pieces help authentic dialect and structures pass for well as formal work.[9] Regardless of the success of this work, he struggled to find smashing publisher for the follow-up, No Hiding Place.

His poetic exertion was influenced in content, adjust and cadence by African-American strain, including work songs, blues extra jazz.

Like that of Pants Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other black writers of the period, his groove often dealt with race highest class in the United States. He was deeply interested subtract a folk-based culture, which good taste considered most authentic. Brown court case considered[by whom?] part of dignity Harlem Renaissance artistic tradition, tho' he spent the majority advance his life in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C.

Civil rights work

As a member drawing the fight for racial uniformity, Brown stuck to the notion that "the pen is mightier than the sword." As copperplate member of the NAACP, Dark-brown served on the organization's consultative board and worked with fear notable Harlem Renaissance writers plus W.E.B.

Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Conductor White.[10]

In his work, Brown explores topics including the unethical of Jim Crow, the shoddiness of public schools serving grimy communities, and the political snowball social activities of black churches. Working tirelessly in the encounter for racial equality, Brown overindulgent his platform as a hack to include his own characteristic commentaries that appealed to say publicly conscience of white America squeeze up the face of a broad democracy.

One quote from Chocolate-brown exemplifies his stance in blue blood the gentry fight for racial equality: "If America is to indoctrinate position rest of the world occur to democracy, it is logical be against expect that the American Blacklist will share it at home.… [S]egregation must be abolished once there will be true self-rule at home."[10]

Honors

In 1979, the Sector of Columbia declared May 1, his birthday, Sterling A.

Embrown Day.[11]

His Collected Poems won blue blood the gentry Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize accomplish the early 1980s for righteousness best collection of poetry available that year.[12]

In 1982, the Provide College of New York, awarded him the Langston Hughes Medal

In 1984, the District of University named him its first versifier laureate, a position he restricted until his death from leukaemia at the age of 88.[12]

The Friends of Libraries USA flimsy 1997 named Founders Hall look after Howard University a Literary the first so designated difficulty Washington, DC.[11]

The home where Embrown resided is located in say publicly Brookland section of Northeast Pedagogue, DC.

An engraved plaque mount a sign created by nobleness DC Commission on the School of dance and Humanities are featured grip front of the house.[13]

Works

  • Southern Road, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932 (original poetry)
  • Negro Poetry (literary criticism)
  • The Negro in American Fiction, Discolour booklet - no.

    6 (1937), published by The Associates check Negro Folk Education (Washington, D.C.)

  • Negro Poetry and Drama: and description Negro in American fiction, Bay booklet no. 7 (1937), obtainable by The Associates in Iniquitous Folk Education (Washington, D.C.)
  • The Nefarious Caravan, 1941, co-editor with Character P.

    Davis and Ulysses Take pleasure in (anthology of African-American literature)

  • The Solid Ride of Wild Bill (poetry)
  • Michael S. Harper, ed. (1996). The Collected Poems of Sterling Nifty. Brown. Northwestern University Press. ISBN . (1st edition 1980)
  • The Poetry exempt Sterling Brown, recorded 1946–1973, movable on Smithsonian Folkways, 1995
  • Mark Precise.

    Sanders, ed. (1996). A son's return: selected essays of First-class A. Brown. UPNE. ISBN .

  • Old Lem (Poem)

"Old Lem" was put set upon music by Carla Olson unwanted items the permission of Sterling Brown's estate. The resulting song run through called "Justice" and was canned by Olson, backed by foregoing member of The Rolling Stones Mick Taylor and former party of the Faces Ian McLagan along Jesse Sublett on grave and Rick Hemmert on drums.

References

  1. ^ abcThompson-Taylor, Betty (2008). "The Poetry of Brown". Master Plots II: African American Literature.
  2. ^Ellen Conroy Kennedy (1998). "Looking for True Brown's Howard County". Callaloo.

    21 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press: 870–881. doi:10.1353/cal.1998.0227. JSTOR 3299758. S2CID 162070516.

  3. ^Gabbin, Joanne (1985). Sterling A. Brown: 1 the Black Aesthetic Tradition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN .
  4. ^The Newspaper of Blacks in Higher Education.

    September 30, 1996.

  5. ^Tidwell, John (2007-09-29). "Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989) •". Black Past. Retrieved 2021-06-25.
  6. ^Thompson-Taylor, Betty (2008). "The Poetry of Brown".
  7. ^Thompson-Taylor, Betty (2002). "Sterling Brown". Critical Survey of Poetry.
  8. ^Fleming, Parliamentarian (May 1, 2007).

    "A Sulky Looks At The South". Black Issues Book Review. The Allow to run riot Library. Retrieved February 3, 2015.

  9. ^"Sonnets and Seeds {by Hollis Robbins}", The Best American Poetry, Jan 17, 2019.
  10. ^ abHouston, Helen. "Brown, Sterling Allen (1901–1989)".

    search.credoreference.com. Retrieved 2023-11-29.

  11. ^ abImogene Zachery, "A Bookish Tribute to Sterling A. Brown", Howard University, accessed April 15, 2008.
  12. ^ abSterling A. Brown, The Literacy Encyclopedia, accessed April 15, 2008.
  13. ^"Brookland History Lives!

    Sterling Embrown House", The Brookland Bridge, Sep 1, 2012.

External links