SOURCE: "Literature, 1895-1890," in The Negro Genius: A New Appraisal of the Achievement of the American Negro in Literature and the Fine Arts, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1937, pp. 100-23.

Brawley is considered one of the most influential critics of Harlem Renaissance literature. An educator, historian, and clergyman, Brawley's literary contributions are largely concerned with black writers and artists, and with black history. In the following excerpt, Brawley briefly describes and compliments Harper's books of poetry.

Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911) was distinctly a minor poet, though sometimes her feeling flashed out in felicitous lines. To account for her reputation one must recall that she was more than a writer. For six years before the Civil War she was an anti-slavery agent in the East, and for more than three decades thereafter a lecturer in the South on temperance and home-building. Her prime concern was with moral and social reform...