"B" is for Brawley, Benjamin Griffith [1882-1939]

"B" is for Brawley, Benjamin Griffith [1882-1939]. Educator, author, editor, clergyman. A native of Columbia, Brawley was a gifted and enthusiastic student—earning degrees form the University of Chicago and Harvard. In 1921 he was ordained a Baptist minister. Between 1902 and 1939, he taught English at various predominantly black colleges in the South and East—including Atlanta Baptist College [now Moorehouse], Shaw University in Raleigh, and Howard University in Washington. Brawley was a prolific writer and published in North American Review, Sewanee Review, and other national periodicals. In 1913, he published the first of seventeen books, A History of the American Negro. In his work, he articulated the presence and plight of blacks in America. Benjamin Griffith Brawley insisted on expressing a positive black self-awareness, which was not typical of literature about African Americans at the time.