ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output The strange disappearance of Sterling A. Brown: literature, social science and the representation of Black Americans, 1930-1945 https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40146/ Version: Full Version Citation: Beecher, Ruth Ann (2015) The strange disappearance of Ster- ling A. Brown: literature, social science and the representation of Black Americans, 1930-1945. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email The Strange Disappearance of Sterling A. Brown: Literature, Social Science and the Representation of Black Americans, 1930-1945 Ruth Ann Beecher Department of History, Classics and Archaeology Birkbeck College, University of London Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, October 2014 1 I declare that the following thesis is my own work. 2 Abstract This thesis examines the strange career of Sterling Brown, a poet, literary critic and civil rights activist who was highly acclaimed between 1930 and 1945. In this period, he chose to sideline his creative writing and involved himself instead in social research. He turned to folklore, the Federal Writers’ Project, the Carnegie Myrdal Study of the Negro in America, and to reportage of the wartime South. This thesis is distinctive in examining these endeavours and provides new perspectives on Brown’s efforts to transform the national discourse about black Americans. Increased migration of black southerners to northern cities after World War I led to a dialogue about race relations, black identity, and the future of the South that intensified during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Brown was central to debates during the New Negro Renaissance, within the Popular Front, and in investigations of black life sponsored by the New Deal government and philanthropic foundations. This thesis argues that the projects in which Brown involved himself in these years expose a tangled interracial debate on whose opinion would dominate in the representation of black character, identity, and culture. Brown and his black contemporaries in the social sciences influenced the building and dissemination of knowledge about African Americans within a challenging context. Their shared efforts to change the national dialogue about the ‘race problem’ have been under examined. Prevented by segregation and discrimination from gaining access to a wide audience, their desire to surmount these barriers helps to explain why Brown made this strange career choice. This thesis demonstrates that where he differed from his intellectual allies was in his conviction that black culture was a dynamic force that was as important as the ‘harder’ components of politics, class or economics. Brown’s prescient insights made him a founding figure in the fields of American cultural history and black studies. 3 Table of contents Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Sterling A. Brown, the New Negro Renaissance and the Popular 9 Front Literature Review 14 A Partial Recovery 20 Sources and Methodology 26 Terminology 28 Chapter Outline 29 Conclusion 31 Chapter 1. The Making of a ‘New Negro’ Introduction 32 Work as the ‘Core of the Moral Life’ 34 Race Leadership – Making ‘the Best Possible Man’ 38 Growing up with Jim Crow 41 The South and the ‘Opening for Larger Service’ 45 Taking Part in the New Negro Renaissance 49 Brown and the ‘Howard Radicals’ 55 Conclusion 70 Chapter 2. New Definitions of American Folklore: Sterling A. Brown and Benjamin A. Botkin Introduction 73 Creating a ‘Direct and Organic Connection with Actual Life’ 76 ‘The Fast Vanishing Remains of Folk-Lore’ 81 Dust on the Folklorists 87 New Creations of American Lore 90 Folk Culture, Mass Culture 95 The Worker-Writers 98 The New Regionalism 102 Conclusion 110 Chapter 3. ‘The Portrait of the Negro as American’ – Sterling A. Brown and the Federal Writers’ Project Introduction 115 The Establishment of the Federal Writers’ Project 119 The American Guide Series 123 ‘The Negro in Washington’ 129 The Ex-Slave Narratives 132 Africanisms – Brown’s Objections to Drums and Shadows 137 The Negro in Virginia 145 ‘Toppling and Cracking’ – the Demise of the Federal Writers’ 151 Project 4 Conclusion 156 Chapter 4. Revealing the ‘Truth of Negro Experience’ – Sterling A. Brown’s role in the writing of An American Dilemma Introduction 158 Setting up the Study 162 ‘The Negro in American Culture’ 167 Myrdal’s Understanding of the ‘Moral Dilemma’ 171 Myrdal’s Intentions 177 ‘The Size of the Job’ 180 Brown’s Submission to the Study 185 Brown on the Spirituals 186 The Blues and Ragtime 190 Brown on Jazz 196 Conclusion 199 Chapter 5. Miles Apart: The Southern Journeys of Jonathan W. Daniels and Sterling A. Brown Introduction 202 Setting the Scene 205 Daniels Sets Out to ‘Discover’ the South 209 The ‘Naturally Undramatic Growth of Better Relations’ 214 Inclusions and Omissions 219 ‘Preserving Racial Integrity’ 222 ‘South on the Move’ 228 Brown’s Fragmented Journeys 232 ‘A Brave Light Against the Damp and Wind’ 238 ‘Putting on the Brakes’ 243 Conclusion 249 Conclusion 252 Black Activism and Reaching a Wider Audience 253 Interracial Alliances and the Representation of Black American 258 Character and Identity Brown’s Fall from Public View 266 ‘An Integer is a Whole Number’ 274 Bibliography 277 5 Acknowledgements My supervisor Marybeth Hamilton inspired and encouraged me in equal measure. She consistently pushed me to think harder and write with greater clarity and I cannot thank her enough. Hilary Sapire is also an amazing supervisor, providing gentle support and critical guidance without which I would not have reached the finishing post. I am also grateful to Adam Shapiro his reading and insights. Birkbeck is a wonderful place to learn and to teach. William R. Ferris was a most gracious host at the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. It was an honour to meet a scholar who has excelled in fieldwork and writing in the tradition of Sterling Brown, and who most generously shared his own memories of meeting Brown. I am grateful to the staff at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Centre at Howard University for providing access to Sterling Brown’s papers. Similar thanks go to the staff at the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina where I consulted Jonathan Daniels’ papers, and to staff at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Ailsa Russell has not only been the most wonderful best friend, but also a dedicated assistant on our short trips to the American archives, during which time she developed an unhealthy obsession with Will Marion Cook. Without my friends and family I could not have completed this thesis. Thanks to Kim for her love and kindness, her tolerance of household chaos, and her curious questions. To the rest of my family: Amy, Alice, Shannon, Joe, Ian, Mum and Dad, you are amazing and I’m so grateful for your love and support. Thank you Professor Brown for besting them all like Slim Greer, Unc’ Joe and Joe Meek: He threw the hand grenades back With a outshoot drop. An’ evvytime he threw They was one less cop. 6 The Strange Career of Sterling A. Brown: Literature, Social Science and the Representation of Black Americans, 1930-1945 Introduction This study explores the strange career of Sterling Allen Brown. Described by critic Henry Louis Gates as “the last of the great ‘race men,’ the Afro- American Men of Letters,”1 Brown was at his creative peak as a poet, literary critic and civil rights activist between the onset of the Great Depression and the end of the Second World War. Through his association with the New Negro Renaissance (circa 1919-1935), he was well known across black and white literary, academic and intellectual circles and his reputation spread into the black elite and beyond. Brown’s poetry was published in a range of black journals and anthologies in the late 1920s, and his first collection Southern Road appeared to widespread acclaim in 1932. He was admired as an outspoken, evenhanded and insightful critic, reviewing a wide range of material by white and black intellectuals who were writing about race relations. Brown was deeply interested in African American folklore both in terms of providing a more accurate picture of black life and as a creative well for his poetry and this drew him into the world of professional folklorists in the 1930s. He began to consider new ways of collecting and understanding black folklore and history. His interest in the representation of African Americans as citizens and active participants in mainstream American life rather than as peculiar stereotypes, led him to efforts to ensure the accurate representation of their lives as Editor of the Negro Affairs section of the Federal Writers’ Project. The Federal Writers’ Project was established in 1935 by the Roosevelt administration to provide employment to journalists, writers, historians and other white-collar workers as part of the Works Progress Administration’s relief programmes. A similar impulse was behind his agreement to participate in the immense Carnegie Study of the Negro in America; and to accept a publishing deal to collate a 1 Henry Louis Gates, "Book Review: The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown: The National Poetry Series," Black American Literature Forum 15, 1 (1981). 7 black response to white southern liberal journalist Jonathan Daniels’ travelogue, A Southerner Discovers the South. Hence, during the 1930s, he turned away from creative writing and towards innovative social research. Whether making incursions into folklore, sociology, history or a sort of journalistic ethnography, Brown’s penetrating eye fixed on the way race relations operated across America, especially in the economically and democratically retrograde South.