author
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
1882–1939
A pioneering scholar of African American literature and history, he helped bring Black writers and cultural life into college classrooms at a time when that work was often overlooked. His books and teaching made him an important voice in early twentieth-century American letters.
4 Audiobooks
A Social History of the American Negro Being a History of the Negro Problem in the United States. Including A History and Study of the Republic of Liberia
by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Women of Achievement Written for the Fireside Schools
by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Your Negro Neighbor
by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States
by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
About the author
Born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1882, Benjamin Griffith Brawley became an American author, literary critic, historian, poet, and educator. He studied at Atlanta Baptist College, later Morehouse, and continued his education at the University of Chicago and Harvard.
Brawley taught at several historically Black institutions, including Morehouse, Howard University, and Shaw University, and he also served as dean at Morehouse. He was especially known for writing about African American literature and culture in a serious, scholarly way when that field was still fighting for recognition.
Among his best-known books are The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States (1918) and A Social History of the American Negro (1921). During his lifetime, some of his works were widely used as college texts, and his career helped shape how Black literary and historical study developed in American education.