bitter dimension of the blues, which he links with a
view of humankind that he shares with writers like
Sandburg, Frost, and Edwin Arlington Robinson...
and he extends the literary blues without losing their
authenticity” (Henderson, 32). The volume presents
what scholar Charles Rowell has aptly described as
“a kaleidoscopic picture of black folk character and
life in America—a picture that is constant with the
folk themselves.” The volume’s testament to
African-American ambition, fortitude, romance, and
endurance made it one of the seminal publications of
the Harlem Renaissance era. Unfortunately, it would
be some 40 years before Brown published another
volume. Intolerance for his investment in the folklife
by his professional colleagues at Howard, coupled
with the financial upheaval of the GREATDEPRES-
SION, made it difficult for him to secure a publisher
for the next volume that he completed shortly after
Southern Roadappeared.
Bibliography
Brown, Sterling. Southern Road: Poems by Sterling A.
Brown.1932; reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.
Gabbin, Joanne V. Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black
Aesthetic Tradition.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1985.
Henderson, Stephen. “The Heavy Blues of Sterling
Brown: A Study of Craft and Tradition,” Black Amer-
ican Literature Forum14, no. 1 (spring 1980): 32–44.
Johnson, James Weldon. Introduction to Southern Road:
Poems by Sterling A. Brown.1932, reprint, Boston:
Beacon Press, 1972.
Rowell, Charles. “Sterling A. Brown and the Afro-
American Folk Tradition.” In Harlem Renaissance
Re-Examined: A Revised and Expanded Edition,
edited by Victor Kramer and Robert Russ. Troy,
N.Y.: The Whitson Publishing Company, 1997.
Sanders, Mark. Afro-Modernist Aesthetics & the Poetry of
Sterling A. Brown.Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1999.
Southern Workman
The official publication of the Hampton Folk-Lore
Society, one of the earliest professional groups dedi-
cated to the collection of American folk materials.
The society and the journal were both based at
Hampton Institute, a historically black institution
founded in 1872 and located in Hampton, Virginia.
The journal, which was published monthly
from 1872 through 1939, included regular profiles
of educational practices at Hampton Institute. In
addition, it included detailed articles about and in-
formative images relating to African-American and
Native American folklife, practices, and history.Bibliography
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman. The Founding of the
Hampton Institute.Boston: Directors of the Old
South Work, 1904.
Engs, Robert. Educating the Disenfranchised and Disinher-
ited: Samuel Chapman Armstrong and Hampton Insti-
tute, 1839–1893.Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1999.
Schall, Keith. Stony the Road: Chapters in the History of
Hampton Institute.Charlottesville: University Press
of Virginia, 1977.“South Lingers On, The”Rudolph Fisher
(1925)
Published in the historic March 1925 Harlem issue
of SURVEYGRAPHIC,this short story by RUDOLPH
FISHER offered a series of moving portraits of
southerners grappling with the realities and temp-
tations of life in the urban North.
Divided into five sections, the stories focus on
generational differences, the hopes of the older
generations, and the frustrated goals and realized
aspirations of youth. “The South Lingers On” be-
gins with the evocative story of Reverend Ezekiel
Taylor, a humble southern minister who, on the in-
vitation of his former community, has traveled
north to HARLEM. Taylor’s efforts to establish a
church have failed as the young people have suc-
cumbed to the evils of the city. Taylor, almost con-
vinced that Harlem is a godless place with
numberless souls in need of salvation, stumbles
upon a brownstone church that is peopled in part
by some of his former southern neighbors. Much to
the distress of the current pastor, a “reformed”
gambler who profits from his congregation, Taylor
is welcomed and immediately embraced by congre-
gants who desire to establish a new church with
him as their pastor.
Other portions of Fisher’s profile of city life in-
clude the unsuccessful efforts of Jake, a young
farmer from Virginia, who is unqualified for much488 Southern Workman