Benjamin Griffith Brawley entered the world on April 22, 1882, in Columbia, South Carolina, during a time when the South was still grappling with the aftershocks of Reconstruction and the hardening grip of Jim Crow. The second eldest of nine children born to the Reverend Edward McKnight Brawley and Margaret Saphronia Dickerson Brawley, he grew up in a household that prized education, faith, and quiet dignity amid rac…
“Literature should be not only history but prophecy, not only the record of our striving but also the mirror of our hopes and dreams. The Negro himself is the supreme challenge to American literature.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite entered the world on December 6, 1878, in Boston, Massachusetts, a city pulsing with literary ambition and the lingering echoes of abolitionist fervor. He departed it on June 8, 1962, at his home on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, New York, after a brief illness, at the age of eighty-three. In the eighty-three years between those dates, Braithwaite forged a remarkable life as poet, cr…
“There is an influence more mystical than the average critic gives credit for being which is reshaping the foundation of our poetic ideals and visions.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace
