Sterling Brown

3 Pages 845 Words

Sterling Allan Brown was one of the most unheralded poets of his time. For Many Years he went unheard of until the later years of his career. His poetry and literary works were also one of the most profound of his day.
Brown was born in May of 1901 in the black middle class of Washington, D.C. His parents were Adelaide Allen and Sterling Nelson Brown. His father was a famous pastor, theologian, and social activist who was friends with other such activists as John Mercer Langston and Blanche K. Bruce. Growing up in the genteel circumstances of Washington, D.C., Sterling went to the prestigious Dunbar High School in Washington. He graduated from Dunbar as his class valedictorian in 1918 and earned a scholarship set aside for minority students to Williams College. Brown studied at Williams for four years before graduating with his B.A. in English with honors. He was also elected to the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity and won the Graves Prize for his essay “The Comic Spirit in Shakespeare and Moliere” which earned him a Clark Fellowship to Harvard for graduate work. At Harvard, Brown received an M.A. degree in English and during this second period of study he developed a sensitive creative writing through formal and folk training. After college Brown began a career of teaching starting out at Virginia Seminary College then Fisk University in Tennessee and Lincoln University in Missouri. Then in 1929 he settled down and began teaching at Howard University where he remained for almost sixty years. At Harvard he worked with and taught some later emerging artists such as actor and playwright Ossie Davis, political activist Stokley Carmichael, and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. During his duration at Harvard, Brown wrote many of his literary pieces.
Sterling Brown’s poetry was influenced by jazz, the blues, work songs and spirituals like many other poets during the Harlem Renaissance. Like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer ,and...