NAACP secretary urged African Americans to re-
alize that their race made it especially important
that they develop histories—fictional and other-
wise—of their race.
Like W. E. B. DUBOIS, whom he considered to
be a friend, Braithwaite taught at Atlanta Univer-
sity. He was a professor of creative literature for 10
years and continued publishing into his 90s.
Bibliography
Clairmonte, Glenn. “He Made American Writers Fa-
mous,” Phylon30, no. 2 (1969): 184–190.
Fleming, G. James, and Christian E. Burckel, eds. Who’s
Who In Colored America: An Illustrated Biographical
Directory of Notable Living Persons of African Descent
in the United States. Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.:
Christian E. Burckel & Associates, 1950.
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois: The Fight For
Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963.New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
Brass AnklesDuBose Heyward(1931)
A play by DUBOSEHEYWARDabout a woman who
is tortured by her black heritage. When she gives
birth to a dark-skinned child and learns that her
ancestry includes black grandparents, she decides
that death would be better than the shame accom-
panying any confession to her husband. She taunts
him with a lie about her adultery, and he kills her
and their child. The title, inspired by a southern
folk expression, refers to individuals who invoke
Native American heritage, rather than African de-
scent, to explain their color.
Bibliography
Slavic, William H. Dubose Heyward.Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1981.
Brawley, Benjamin (1882–1941)
A social critic, historian, and teacher who found
the Harlem Renaissance distasteful. Born in
Columbia, South Carolina, Brawley attended
MOREHOUSE COLLEGE, the UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO, and HOWARDUNIVERSITY. During the
years of the Renaissance, Brawley published sev-
eral works of nonfiction including A Short History
of the American Negro(1913), The Negro in Litera-
ture and Art(1918), A Social History of the Ameri-
can Negro(1921), and A Short History of the English
Drama(1921). His essays appeared in THECRISIS,
and he was one of the well-known personalities
chosen to judge the entries to the OPPORTUNITY
literary contest in 1927.Bibliography
Brawley, Benjamin. Early Negro American Writers; Selec-
tions with Biographical and Critical Introductions.
1935, reprint, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries
Press, 1968.
———. The Negro Genius: A New Appraisal of the
Achievement of the American Negro in Literature and
the Fine Arts.1939, reprint, New York: Biblo and
Tannen, 1972.
Johnson, Abby Arthur, and Ronald Maberry Johnson.
Propaganda & Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of
African American Magazines in the Twentieth Cen-
tury.Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1979.“Bride of God”Octavia Wynbush(1938)
An OCTAVIAWYNBUSHshort story about a young
woman who recovers from the betrayal of her fi-
ancé by devoting herself to God.
Published in the October 1938 issue of THE
CRISIS,“Bride of God” was one of several stories
that Wynbush set in Louisiana. Leah Sommers, the
protagonist, is reveling in the natural splendor that
has blessed the day of her wedding. The rich im-
agery of the garden just beyond her Aunt Sabriny’s
red cottage is highly evocative of a prelapsarian
Eden. Leah, whose name recalls the biblical
woman whose own marriage involved trickery and
disappointment, “moved lightly, gayly among the
flowers, caressing the leaves with her long, slender
brown fingers, stooping to press her nostrils close
to the velvety red, white and delicately pink and
yellow roses, bending over the white jasmine
throned in their dark green leaves.” Yet, while she
delights in the “cool fragrance of the clambering
honeysuckle vines,” Leah’s friends and family come
to learn that her beau Aleck has married another
woman and “done gone ’way wid her.”
Leah contemplates suicide, but her aunt
catches her on the banks of the Gulf and con-
vinces her that no man is worth dying for and that
she may have the chance to fulfill some other plan62 Brass Ankles