Omega Psi Phi’s Sterling A. Brown Was a Legendary Poet and the First Poet Laureate of Washington, D.C.

Did you know that one of the most important poets and scholars in Black literary history was a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.? His name was Sterling A. Brown, and he spent his life celebrating the voices, music, and folk traditions of Black America.

Sterling Allen Brown was born on May 1, 1901, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C. He came from a distinguished family. His father, the Reverend Sterling Nelson Brown, was a respected minister and a professor at Howard University, and his mother, Grace Adelaide Allen Brown, was a graduate of Fisk University who taught in the District’s public schools for decades. His sister, Mary Edna Brown Coleman, made history of her own as one of the twenty-two founders of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. at Howard University in 1913, where she graduated as both valedictorian and class president. She later married Frank Coleman, one of the founders of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the very brotherhood her younger brother Sterling would go on to join.

Brown earned a scholarship to Williams College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and went on to earn a master’s degree from Harvard University. According to Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Brown is counted among the fraternity’s most notable members.

Brown made his greatest mark at Howard University, where he joined the faculty in 1929 and taught for roughly four decades. There he shaped generations of Black students and thinkers, becoming one of the most beloved and influential educators in the history of the university. His students included the playwright and actor Ossie Davis, the activist Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, and the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.

As a poet, Brown changed the sound of Black literature. His landmark 1932 collection, Southern Road, drew on the blues, spirituals, work songs, and everyday speech of the Black South, replacing tired stereotypes with authentic, fully human folk heroes. As the Poetry Foundation documents, he mined the rich traditions of Black Southern culture to create poetry drawn from the real voices of his people.

Brown was also a towering scholar and critic. He co-edited The Negro Caravan in 1941, an anthology that helped define African American literature as a serious academic field, and he served as the national editor of Negro affairs for the Federal Writers’ Project. In 1984, he was named the first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia, a fitting honor for a son of the city.

Sterling A. Brown died on January 13, 1989, in Takoma Park, Maryland. From the classrooms of Howard University to the pages of Southern Road, Omega Psi Phi’s Sterling A. Brown gave Black poetry and scholarship a voice that was authentically its own.