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Books by Sterling Brown
Southern Road /
The Negro Caravan /
The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown /
The Negro in American Fiction; Negro Poetry and Drama
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Last Ride of Wild Bill and Eleven Narrative Poems
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Books about Sterling Brown
Joanne,Gabbin.
Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (1994)
John Edgar Tidwell,
Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South (2007)
Charles Rowell.
Callaloo's Sterling A. Brown: Special Issue (1998)
Mark A. Sanders.
Afro-Modernist Aesthetics & the Poetry of Sterling Brown
(1999)
Mark A. Sanders.
A Son's Return: Selected Essays of Sterling Brown (1996)
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Part
1:
An
Archival Search for Sterling Brown
Maria Syphax, Historical Revision, or a Communist
Plot
By Rudolph Lewis
Part 2 and Part
3 and Part 4 )
I knew nothing of Maria Syphax (1803-1886) of
Arlington, Virginia, nor anything of her story or the stories
that politicians or literary theorists, or historians may have
made of her life. I stumbled onto pieces of her story
about seven years ago in the unprocessed papers of Sterling
Brown at Howard University. I copied ten to fifteen documents
that tied together Sterling Brown's literary relationship to the
story of Maria Syphax and Wisconsin Congressman Frank B. Keefe's
accusation of a communist plot directing activities in the
Federal Writer's Project.
Maria Syphax was the colored
great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, Sterling Brown wrote
rather matter-of-factly as if the facts of the assertion were
self-evident. In a 1 March 1939 letter, Franke B. Keefe made a
formal attempt to contact Professor Brown:
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Frank B.
Keefe
6th District Wisconsin
Congress
of the United States
House
of Representatives
Washington, D.C.
March 1, 1939
Professor Sterling Brown,
Howard University,
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir:-
I am advised
that you are the author of the essay: "The Negro in
Washington", which appears in the Government
Publication "Washington, City and Capital",
issued by the Works Progress Administration.
As a student
of Washington history I am impressed and interested by
the following statement which appears in this essay,
to-wit:
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They were settled in
Arlington in a place known as Freedman's
village, very near a tract left by George
Washington Parke Custis [1781-1857] to his colored daughter
Maria Syphax [1803-1886]. |
The above
quoted statement appears on page 75 of "Washington,
City and Capital", and I would appreciate it if you
would furnish me with the source of information on which
you base the assertion made by you and the Works
Progress Administration that George Washington Parke
Custis had a colored daughter.
Thanking you, I am
Very truly yours,
(signed)
Frank B. Keefe |
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Brown did not respond to Keefe's letter, immediately. One
wonders about his six-week delay. Brown must have immediately
called to mind his intellectual defenses against all kind of
fears -- the fallout that this matter would have on him
professionally. He probably wanted to know who was Frank B. Keefe and his
interest in this story. He was a southern. But Keefe was indeed
a Republican of Wisconsin and from a small rural community
(Winnebago County, maybe 70,000 residents). A lawyer, and
firs-time congressman, probably out trying to make a name for
himself.
Keefe pointed out that government money
had sponsored the publication of Brown's article on the Negro,
so what impact, Brown must have asked, his paternity assertion,
would have on FWP funding..
Though he was an English
professor at Howard University, Brown
was no longer an independent scholar (covered under academic
freedom), he was a government employee,
the Negro Affairs officer of the Federal Writers Project of the
WPA, and thus answerable to the government for his writings and
political positions. Brown must have found himself indeed in a
curious intellectual state.
By the summer of 1937, Sterling Brown had
made plans to write the definitive book on the
Negro in America, based on materials he was collecting or would
collect through his
office from the various states that had Negroes on their rolls doing research
and writing on materials that they found locally in their
states. This book project too would suffer if the FWP went
south. This "independent" Negro project was an
addition to the initial plans of the FWP. (See Sterling Brown's
form letter used to seek Negro
advisers to the FWP.) But now it had grown to have more
importance than they imagined. (See letter Walter
White to Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
My first hint of this Negro FWP operation came through the discovery of
letters between Brown and Marcus Bruce Christian, a New Orleans
poet and then a member of the Dillard Project of the LA-Federal
Writers' Project, headed by Lyle Saxon, a Louisiana writer with
a more sentimental view of the Southern past than that which a
conscientious "New Negro" would allow or feel fully
comfortable (See Selected Letters). The Dillard FWP writers
aimed at writing a "history of the Negro in
Louisiana," which was finished but never published. There
were indeed a Negro in Virginia and a Negro in
Illinois published.
Of course, Franke B. Keefe was fully in his rights as an officer of the
government to ask another officer of the government, in
particular Professor Brown, who has
made a public statement concerning the family of a well-beloved
president and a revered father of the country, George
Washington. The small matter ("incidental") was more than merely a simple
statement that Maria Syphax (1803-1886)was the daughter of George
Washington Parke Custis (1781-1857).
Despite all the arguments regarding evidence,
a factual statement on the paternity of Maria Syphax was an attack,
however subtle, on the moral hypocrisy of America's founders,
their moral duplicity, their closets of skeletons, and,
naturally, their
"jumping
fences." The Negro writers wanted, in the words of Brown, to give "Negro's contributions to the economic and
cultural development of America" an "extensive
treatment." How could one indeed avoid altogether the
touchy subject of
miscegenation?
Doubtless, Brown himself must have known that he was
making use of a government funded program to promote a revised sense of American
history. He hade mad the point himself in his enlisting of Negro
advisers: Negro writers were there on the FWP to ensure that
"Negro subject-matter" receive "fair
treatment" and presented as "unbiased and as accurate
as possible."
In that two ideas cannot occupy the same place of
predominance, this plan of using FWP Negro materials to
constitute "a more true picture" of the Negro (the
words of Walter White to FDR) and "to establish that mutual
respect which is necessary if democracy is to survive" is,
in short, quite an undertaking, and indeed a lot of weight to be
placing on a single government program.
The expectation of such program seems in all
out proportion to the initial notion of providing employment and
the collecting and documentation of material. This kind of
social engineering would indeed and did threaten the traditional image Americans
possessed regarding the Fathers of their country and the Negro
himself, and other more sentimental versions of slavery and
Reconstruction. But to drag
through the mud the name of Jefferson is however of a lesser magnitude
than that of efforts to smear George Washington and his
family.
So Brown's 10 April apology fails to reveal to Keefe his mind
and thinking on what the purpose and intent of his article
"The Negro in Washington." Brown condescended a
response to Keefe only
after the Wisconsin congressman made the matter public on the
floor of Congress:
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Howard
University
Washington,
D.C.
April 10, 1939
The Honorable
Frank B. Keefe
Washington, D.C.
My dear Mr. Keefe:
In the Congressional
Record for Thursday April 6, 1939 I read your
statement that I had not acknowledgement your letter of
march 1, 1939. That statement was true.
I apologize
for my negligence. The source of information which you
requested had already been sent to you, however, and there
was nothing that I could at that time add to it. Waiting
for new information, and working on a very rigorous
schedule, I postponed replying to you, until the matter
slipped my attention. I realize that this is no excuse
fo[r] my discourtesy.
Concerning the
repeated telephone calls I an [sic] quite at a loss. There
is generally someone in the English office who will take
down the telephone numbers of those calling, or their
messages. perhaps you called the history department. I am
not a member of their staff, but of the English
department.
I apologize for
my negligence.
Very truly yours,
(signed)
Sterling A. Brown |
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Maybe Brown hoped that his "incidental
reference" would fade away in the mind of the
Congressman Keefe. But it did not. The Republican organized
an opposition in both the House and the Senate and made Brown's
"literary crime" ("libelous" assertions) public. The
Baltimore Sun reported the story and the Honorable Robert R.
Reynolds of North Carolina had the SUN article "W.P.A.
Guidebook Arouses Fuss" entered into the Appendix of the
Congressional Record.
The argument that Sterling Brown presents in two
memos to Henry Alsberg, the head of the FWP, is indeed a curious
defense. I will present those in yet another file: Henry Alsbery (Memo
1) and Sterling to Henry Alsbery
(Memo 2). Maria
Syphax Case Table Part 2
and Part 3)
Part 4 )
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Weep Not, Child
By
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
This is
a powerful, moving story that details the
effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the
African nationalist revolt against colonial
oppression in Kenya, on the lives of
ordinary men and women, and on one family in
particular. Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau,
stand on a rubbish heap and look into their
futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has
decided that he will attend school, while
Kamau will train to be a carpenter. Together
they will serve their country—the
teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya
and the times are against them. In the
forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against
the white government, and the two brothers
and their family need to decide where their
loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau the
choice is simple, but for Njoroge the
scholar, the dream of progress through
learning is a hard one to give up.—Penguin
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 29 June 2008
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