Brown, Sterling Allen - John F. Callahan (essay date 20 December 1982)
John F. Callahan (essay date 20 December 1982)
SOURCE: Callahan, John F. “In the Afro-American Grain.” The New Republic 187, no. 24 (December 20, 1982): 25-8.
[In the following essay, Callahan asserts that Brown's emphasis on African American oral tradition and dialect is central to his poetic achievement.]
On May 1, 1901—the same year W. E. B. DuBois wrote his prophetic line: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line”—Sterling Brown was born in a house then near and now part of the Howard University campus. His father was Sterling Nelson Brown, minister of Lincoln Temple Congregational Church, professor of religion at Howard, and for a time member of the District of Columbia Board of Education. His parents met at Fisk, where his mother was valedictorian of her class and a relative had been one of the original Fisk Jubilee singers back in the Reconstruction.
Brown grew up in a time when the...
[The entire page is 3335 words long]
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