author
J. Saunders (Jay Saunders) Redding
1906–1988
A pioneering literary critic and teacher, he helped bring African American literature into the center of academic life. His work blended scholarship, memoir, and cultural criticism with a clear, thoughtful voice.
1 Audiobook
On Being Negro in America
by J. Saunders (Jay Saunders) Redding
About the author
Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1906, he studied at Brown University after transferring from Lincoln University and later earned a master's degree in literature from Brown. Over a long teaching career, he worked at institutions including Morehouse College, Hampton Institute, and Cornell University, building a reputation as an important scholar of American and African American letters.
He is widely remembered as a pioneering critic of African American literature and as the first African American faculty member in the Ivy League, through his appointment at Brown. Alongside criticism and essays, he also wrote memoir and fiction; his best-known books include To Make a Poet Black, No Day of Triumph, and On Being Negro in America.
He died in 1988. His career is often seen as a bridge between earlier generations of Black writers and the broader academic recognition that African American literature would later receive.