SOURCE: Callahan, John F. “In the Afro-American Grain.” The New Republic 187, no. 24 (December 20, 1982): 25-8.

In the following essay, Callahan asserts that Brown's emphasis on African American oral tradition and dialect is central to his poetic achievement.

On May 1, 1901—the same year W. E. B. DuBois wrote his prophetic line: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line”—Sterling Brown was born in a house then near and now part of the Howard University campus. His father was Sterling Nelson Brown, minister of Lincoln Temple Congregational Church, professor of religion at Howard, and for a time member of the District of Columbia Board of Education. His parents met at Fisk, where his mother was valedictorian of her class and a relative had been one of the original Fisk Jubilee singers back in the Reconstruction.

Brown grew up in a time when the flavor of...