author
Robert Thomas Kerlin
1866–1950
A minister, teacher, and outspoken advocate for racial justice, he used his writing to confront violence and prejudice in the United States. His books and anthologies helped preserve Black voices and document the moral crises of his time.
2 Audiobooks
The Camp-life of the Third Regiment
by Robert Thomas Kerlin
Negro Poets and Their Poems
by Robert Thomas Kerlin
About the author
Born in Missouri in 1866, Robert Thomas Kerlin became an American educator, minister, and writer whose career crossed literature, religion, and public activism. He taught English at several schools and colleges, and he is remembered not only for his teaching but also for the way he brought social questions into public view.
Kerlin is especially associated with books that centered Black life and writing in the early twentieth century. He edited The Voice of the Negro in 1920 and Negro Poets and Their Poems in 1923, works that gathered important testimony and literature at a time when such voices were too often ignored. His writing showed a strong moral urgency, and he became known for speaking out against racial injustice even when that stance cost him professionally.
That combination of scholarship and conviction gives his work a lasting interest today. He was not simply an observer of his era, but someone who tried to use books as a form of witness, record, and protest. Kerlin died in 1950, leaving behind a body of work tied closely to the struggles and conscience of his generation.