Brown, Sterling (Allen) (1901–1989)

US poet, teacher, and writer. He is known as a poet and a founder of black literary criticism, as in Negro Poetry and Drama (1937), but above all he was an influential teacher and encourager of black American writers before they were widely recognized.

He was born in Washington, DC. He graduated from Williams College in 1925, then studied at Harvard for his masters degree, and was based in Washington, DC. He taught primarily at Howard University 1929–69.