Artists
& Writers in Brookland
This is
a partial listing writers and artists who lived in Brookland.
One of the seminal poets in American history, and D.C.'s first Poet Laureate, Sterling Brown lived the majority of his life in Brookland in a home on Kearney Street.
A poet, essayist, and teacher at Howard University, Brown was born in Washington, D.C. in 1901. He was educated at Dunbar High School and received a bachelor's degree from Williams College where he was Phi Beta Kappa and received a Masters at Harvard University. He taught at Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg, Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri and at Fisk University in Nashville before he going on to his great work at Howard University in 1926.In 1932 his first book, Southern Road, was published. His poetry was influenced by jazz and the blues and, like Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and other Black poets of the period, his writing expresses his concerns about race in America. Brown was considered part of the artistic tradition of the Harlem Renaissance although he spent the majority of his life in Washington, DC. What is not acknowledged enough is that the "Harlem" renaissance was firmly seeded in Washington, DC through the work of DC-based authors like Brown, Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, and others.
Brown turned to writing essays and focused on his career as a teacher at Howard, where he taught until his retirement in 1969. He finally published his second book of poetry, The Last Ride of Wild Bill, in 1975.
Sterling Brown died in 1989 of Leukemia. He was eulogized in the nation's papers as having "helped to establish Afro-American literary criticism" and having "taught many of the nation's black scholars and writers." His many students included Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, Paula Giddings, Toni Morrison, psychologist Dr. Kenneth B. Clark and Ossie Davis. Brown is rightly credited with having edited the 'first comprehensive anthology of African-American writing" and having designed and taught the first course in Afro-American literature.
Brookland lovers should note Brown's amazing response in 1974 to a column published in the old Washington Star. His letter reveals his profound love for Brookland.
After his death a memorial plaque was placed outside of his house naming it "The Poet's House."
JEAN KERR
One of
the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is
that Marrying
a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a
long Life with
Mary was like being in a telephone booth with an open umbrella If you
can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's
If you
have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes
Hope is
the feeling that the feeling you have
WALTER
KERR
MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS
Other significant
artists and writers who lived in Brookland include
Pearl Bailey and Ralph Bunche.
Novelist
and playwright Jean Kerr lived in the Brookland in the 1930s and
studied at Catholic University. She is best known for her plays
and collections of essays including the bestseller "Pulling Up
The Daisies" and the Broadway success "Mary Mary." She is also
remembered for her acerbic and insightful wit:
"I'm tired
of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep.
That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?"
Jean Kerr
assumption on the part of the staff that because you have
lost your gall bladder
you have also lost your mind. Jean Kerr
time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home,
but it doesn't
always go with everything else in the house. Jean Kerr
-no matter which way you turned, you got it in the eye. Jean
Kerr
just possible you haven't grasped the situation. Jean Kerr
along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together,
leaving you
with only one definite piece of information: french-fried
potatoes are out. Jean Kerr
isn't permanent. Jean Kerr
Walter
Kerr taught in the Drama Department of Catholic University,
during which time he wrote, directed and adapted plays.
He began his career as a critic at Commonweal, before moving
to the New York Herald Tribune. When the Tribune ceased
publication in 1966, he moved to the New York Times, where
he remained for seventeen years until his retirement. He
won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for the body of his work.
A spokeswoman for the League of New York Theaters said that
"his opening night dispatches, overflowing with vivid reportage
and wry wit, are our best accounts of Broadway's last great
era."
Best known for her books The
Yearling and Cross Creek Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings was born August 8, 1896, in Washington and
grew up in Brookland. At the age of eleven she won her
first writing contest for a story published in the Washington
Post. Her book about her South Florida home in the is
considered an environmental masterpiece. Rawlings also
became a civil rights advocate and formed relationships
with Indira Gandhi, Mary McLeod Bethune and Zora Neale
Hurston. Rawlings died from a cerebral hemorrhage on
December 14, 1953. Several of her books were made into
movies.
It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway… to
step inside the garden gate and close it behind. .
. One is now inside… Out of one world, and in the
mysterious heart of another… and after long years
of spiritual homelessness, of nostalgia… Here is that
mystic loveliness… Here is home… An old thread, long
tangled comes straight again… ~ Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings, Cross Creek
