Sterling Brown's A Negro Looks at the South.

* Sterling Brown's A Negro Looks at the South Edited by John Edgar Tidwell and Mark A. Sanders Oxford University Press April 2007, $35 ISBN 0-195-31399-2

One of the icons in black letters, Sterling A. Brown was a poet, teacher, critic, essayist and folklorist in the early part of the last century; and he had a profound effect on generations of post-war African American poets and writers.

Editors Tidwell and Sanders reshaped some of Brown's finest work in A Negro Looks at the South, a series of uncompleted essays about the incredible effect of the World War II upon the post-Depression era blacks dealing with the harsh restrictions of Jim Crow. The professor traveled extensively during the 1920s and '30s, interviewing blacks from all walks of life. The two editors, Tidwell, an associate professor of English at the University of Kansas, and Sanders, an associate professor of African American studies and English at Emory University, gathered these previously unpublished excerpts from Howard University's mammoth manuscript collection.

The topics Brown examines in his book are: the political and social progress of the South under Jim Crow; the traditional symbols of the Old South; white empowerment; the cotton industry; black farmers; inferior black education; black college life; jitterbugs; a Duke Ellington concert; Basin Street and a tour of Old New Orleans; patriotism; black soldiers; the artistry of the blues; the activism of the black church; Booker T. Washington; and countless other subjects. As a chronicler of his day, Brown puts his journalistic skills to full use, surpassing the excellence of oral history tales by Chicago reporter Studs Turkel and even lames Agee's stellar collection of dirt-poor sharecroppers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Whether Brown is in a bus station or inside a one-room schoolhouse or a club car, he effectively depicts the people and surroundings with details of the portraits like the crystalline camera work of Walker Evans or James Van Der Zee.

Brown also speaks of the 2nd World War's incredible demands and the catalyst of change that the conflict provides for the New Negro: "If America is to indoctrinate the rest of the world with democracy, it is logical to expect that the American Negro will share it at home. It may take a long time, but segregation must be abolished before there will be true democracy at home. True democracy will mean the right and opportunity to win respect for human worth."

It is Brown's way with words, their magnificent weight and color, their precision and power, which compels the reader to move from sentence to sentence. His was an active, imaginative mind, capable of sinking into any situation or event. Brown had a natural gift for dialogue, description and narration; and many younger writers--even today--could benefit from his experienced touch. It is a shame that this book was never finished in his words, but we are lucky to have it. Any book by Sterling A. Brown, whenever it is published, is a marvelous literary treat and a national treasure.

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