1975, before becoming professor emeritus, 1975
to 1988. Redding was also a visiting professor at
Brown University, 1949 to 1950, and the first black
appointed to the faculty. He was a lecturer at sev-
eral universities and colleges abroad, including in
India, Africa, and South America.
A prolific writer, Redding wrote several schol-
arly works on the black experience in America.
DARWIN T. TURNER calls Redding’s groundbreaking
volume of literary criticism, To Make a Poet Black
(1939)—which was preceded by the pioneering
scholarly contributions of such major 20th-cen-
tury scholars as Benjamin Brawley’s The Negro
in Literature and Art (1910), Vernon Loggins’s
The Negro Author (1931), Nick Aaron Ford’s The
Contemporary Negro Novel (1936), and STERLING
BROWN’s The NEGRO CARAVAN (1941)—the “best
single volume of criticism by a black” (69). Red-
ding divides his book into categories such as “The
Forerunners,” “Let Freedom Ring,” “Adjustment,”
and his final chapter, “Emergence of the New
Negro.” In the last, he offers both praise and ridi-
cule of the writers of the HARLEM RENAISSANCE and
the period itself. In his introduction to a more re-
cent edition of To Make a Poet Black, critic HENRY
LOUIS GATES, JR., notes that Saunders attempted “to
bring together certain factual material and critical
opinion[s] on American Negro literature in a sort
of history of Negro thought in America” (xxix)
through the 1930s.
Redding followed his first book of criticism
with social histories and personal narratives,
chronicling the story of black literature in America
from its beginnings to the contemporary period.
Redding’s works address the dominant themes of
courage, achievement, and at times betrayal. They
include the autobiographical No Day of Triumph
(1942), his first novel, Stranger and Alone (1950),
and social histories and observations: They Came
in Chains: Americans from Africa (1950; revised
1973), On Being Negro in America (1951), An
American in India: A Personal Report on the Indian
Dilemma and the Nature of Her Conflicts (1954),
The Lonesome Road: The Story of the Negro’s Part in
America (1958), The Negro (1967), Of Men and the
Writing of Books (1969), and Negro Writing and the
Political Climate (1970).
Redding received numerous awards, including
the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1939–40),
the Mayflower Award for No Day of Triumph
(1942), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1944–45
and 1959–60), the New York Public Library cita-
tion for outstanding contribution to interracial
understanding (1945 and 1946), the National
Urban League citation for outstanding achieve-
ment (1950), and a Ford Foundation fellowship
(1964–65). He also received honorary degrees from
Virginia State College, Hobart College, the Univer-
sity of Portland, Wittenberg University, Dickinson
College, Brown University, and the University of
Delaware. Redding’s scholarly articles have ap-
peared in such journals as North American Review,
American Mercury, Atlantic Monthly, Antioch Re-
view, Publishers’ Weekly, American Scholar, Phy-
lon, Saturday Review, The Nation, Survey Graphic,
American Heritage, New Leader, COLLEGE LANGUAGE
ASSOCIATION JOURNAL, Massachusetts Review, Negro
Digest, African Forum, William and Mary Review,
Contemporary Literature, Boston University Jour-
nal, and American Studies.
Hailed as one of the first serious and influen-
tial black critics to contribute to his race, Redding,
whose literary career spanned the Harlem Renais-
sance, the Great Depression, the two world wars,
and the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, championed
African-American literature as a subject for seri-
ous academic study in the context of American
literature. Although he criticized much of African-
American literature for its artistic shortcomings,
and although he spent the latter part of his life
revising and refining his views, he, like Darwin T.
Turner, STEPHEN HENDERSON, HOUSTON A. BAKER,
JR., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., set the bar high. He
valued specific criteria by which to judge writers
and their work. Redding died of heart failure on
March 2, 1988, in Ithaca, New York.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower: Afro-American
Writers, 1900–1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1974.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Introduction. In To Make a
Poet Black, edited by J. Saunders Redding, vii–xxiv.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988.430 Redding, Jay Saunders