Sterling brown artist biography
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Sterling Allen Brown
American poet and academic (1901–1989)
Sterling Allen Brown | |
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Born | (1901-05-01)May 1, 1901 Washington D.C., U.S. |
Died | January 13, 1989(1989-01-13) (aged 87) |
Education | Williams College (BA) Harvard University (MA) |
Occupation(s) | Writer, poet, professor |
Spouse | Daisy Turnbull (m. 1927) |
Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was an American professor, folklorist, poet, and literary critic. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a professor at Howard University for most of his career. Brown was the first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia.
Early life and education
[edit]Brown was born May 1, 1901, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where his father, Sterling N. Brown, a former slave, was a prominent minister and professor at Howard University Divinity School.[1][2] His mother Grace Adelaide
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Sterling A. Brown's Life and Career
John Edgar Tidwell
Sterling Allen Brown was born on May 1901 into some have called the "smug" or even "affected" respectability of Washingtons African American middle class. He grew up in the Washington world of official segregation, which engendered a contradiction between full citizenship and marginalized existence. The son of a distinguished pastor and theologian, Brown graduated with honors from the prestigious Dunbar High School in 1918. That fall, he entered Williams College on a scholarship set aside for minority students. By the time he left in 1922, he had performed spectacularly: election to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, the Graves Prize for his essay "The Comic Spirit in Shakespeare and Moli�re," the only lärling awarded "Final Honors" in English, and cum laude graduation with an AB degree.
At Harvard University from 1922 to 1923, Brown took an MA grad in English. In r
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About Sterling A. Brown
Sterling Brown was born in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1901. He received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College and in 1923, a master’s degree from Harvard University. Three years later, Brown began teaching at Howard University, and in 1932 his first book, Southern Road, was published. Brown’s poetry was influenced by jazz, the blues, work songs, spirituals and other Black poets of the period. Along with Langston Hughes, Brown became part of the artistic tradition of the Harlem Renaissance. Some of Brown’s renowned students included the writers Toni Morrison and Lucille Clifton. Brown is known for his frank, unsentimental portraits of Black people and their experiences, and the incorporation of African-American folklore and contemporary idiom into his verse. He died in 1989.
Eady, the direct poetic descendant of Brown’s lineage, has brought his work shockingly alive by lovingly, painstakingly setting Brown’s words to music. With arrangements by the