STERLING A. BROWN 1965
Brown was not only a poet but a folklorist and historian and his lecture contains both poetry and scholarship. On this recording he shares critique of contemporary trends in history and literature, reads his poems, the writing of others, and tells stories of his life. The lecture traces a series of books that had recently been published and in particular returns to a critique of Robert Penn Warren. The lecture ends with readings of Sterling Brown’s poetry.
In the second recording, which is an informal Q&A, Brown lectures and answers questions about politics, traveling, shares stories of his journalism and his folklore collection, and gives a lecture about Martin Luther King Jr.
LECTURE
0:00:13 Recording Starts, introductions. The introduction indicates Brown was a frequent visitor at UMass during this period.
5:28 Sterling Brown takes the stage; lecture begins
7:44 Speaking to the lecture being titled by others on his behalf (in the introduction: “Continuity and Discordance in the Civil Rights Movement in Modern America”)
31:00 Thoughts on leadership, critique of Robert Penn Warren’s book. This conversation drifts and picks up again around 45:0 speaking about great thinkers, legacies, and
48:00 “I don’t know who speaks for me, but will you let me, an English teacher, and a person who has at one time written poetry, will you let me have some poets not speak for me, but speak for themselves, and talk about me?”
52:12 Remembering Nat Turner (poem by Brown)
57:45 “Slim In Hell” (published as “Slim Greer in Hell” 1980)
1:02:04 Old Lem