“B” is for Brawley, Benjamin Griffith (1882-1939)

“B” is for Brawley, Benjamin Griffith (1882-1939). Educator, author, editor, clergyman. Born in Columbia, Brawley earned degrees from the University of Chicago and Harvard. Between 1902 and 1939 he taught English at predominantly Black colleges in the South and East, including Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina and Howard University in Washington, D.C.  He developed into a prolific writer contributing works to major periodicals such as Sewanee Review and North American Review. However, it was his writing and editing of books about the African American experience that he pioneered. In 1913 he published his first of twenty books, A Short History of the American Negro. Perhaps Benjamin Griffith Brawley’s chief significance as a writer lay in his ability to articulate what he referred to as “the Negro problem”—the presence and plight of Blacks in America.