Dr. Sterling A. Brown: Dialect Poet and Professor

As we have discussed so far in African American Literature, one of the chief concerns of African American writers of the Renaissance was the positioning of the folk within the literary heritage. That is, whether one should consider dialect poetry and the acknowledgment of the folk aesthetic as part of an evolving African American art form. Gates points out that during the Harlem Renaissance, that critics relegated dialect poetry to the "expression of humor and pathos" . Poets like Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar, to relative effect, insisted dialect verse as a vital art form, and elevated the spoken word of African American 'folk' as a recognized and legitimate artistic expression. Perhaps to even greater extent, poet Sterling A. Brown, has been heralded as the master of dialect poetry--particularly in the estimation of James Weldon Johnson(1248).

Howard University's website informs us that "Professor Brown devoted his life to the development of an authentic black folk literature. He was one of the first scholars to identify folklore as a vital component of the black aesthetic and to recognize its validity as a form of artistic expression"(1). True to this form, Brown's poetry engages a sympathetic rendering of spoken dialect and draws from recognizable African American folk heroes.


Born on Howard University campus in 1901, Sterling A. Brown came into the world under privileged circumstances. His father was an accomplished professor at University, and was a personal friend to Frederick Douglass and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The younger Brown continued in his father's footsteps and was surrounded by African American intelligentsia throughout his life, encountering well-known and prominent figures Jessie Fauset and Angeline Grimke. He studied at Williams College and later at Harvard; but despite his illustrious education asserted that 'the best teachers' he had 'were the poor black folk of the South,' referring to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he taught at the Virginia Seminary (Gates 1248). Brown later became a faculty member at Howard, like his father. He published several seminal works that included The Negro in American Fiction and The Negro Caravan. Additionally, Brown enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a professor, receiving an honorary doctorate from Howard in 1969. He was also offered a position at the private Vassar College--a noteworthy event in which a black professor was invited to teach at a predominantly white college. However, Brown turned down the offer, preferring to remain with his students at Howard.