Since his retirement in 1969 from Howard University's English department, Sterling Allen Brown has become known among colleagues and associates as "the dean" of black American critics, an epithet first used by Darwin Turner. "No other black critic," comments Turner, "has inspired as much admiration and respect from his students and his successors in the field. In every stream of creative black literature, Sterling Brown is the source to which critics return." As poet, scholar, teacher, and critic, Brown profoundly influenced American black literary theory and practice.

Born in Washington, D.C., on 1 May 1901, Brown was the only son and youngest child of Adelaide Allen and the Reverend Sterling Nelson Brown. His father taught in the department of religion at Howard University and was pastor of Washington's historic Lincoln Temple Congregational Church. Among the minister's associates were black leaders Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, senators B. K. Bruce...