Redding, J(ay) Saunders (1906–1977)

US educator, literary critic, and author. In various critical works, he set forth his views, often at odds with both the white and black establishments. He wrote over one thousand reviews of books by writers of all colours and his many books include To Make a Poet Black 1939, They Came in Chains 1950, and The Lonesome Road 1958.

In Stranger and Alone 1950, he exposed conditions in the USA's all-black colleges, charging that the students were trained to be submissive and thus were being educated for failure. Although he became known as ‘the dean of Afro-American studies’, he himself preferred the word ‘Negro’ and distrusted ‘Black Studies’: he wanted to free African-Americans from all special categories and achieve a truly pluralistic and assimilationist society.

He was born in Wilmington, Delaware. After beginning at Lincoln University, he took his degrees at Brown (BA 1928, MA 1932). As both a professor of literature and an astute observer of the situation of African-Americans, he taught at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia 1928–31, the Louisville Music Conservatory 1934–36, Southern University, New Orleans 1936–38, and the Hampton Institute 1943–66. He was a director of the National Endowment for the Humanities 1966–70 and he went on to teach at Cornell until his death.