Braithwaite, William Stanley

Braithwaite, William Stanley (Beaumont)

(1878–1962) writer, editor; born in Boston, Mass. (of West Indian parents). Not formally educated after high school, he helped promote American poetry as literary critic of the Boston Daily Evening Transcript (1905–29) and editor of the influential annual Anthology of Magazine Verse (1913–29). He encouraged many young African-American writers who would contribute to the Harlem Renaissance, and he himself wrote poetry, criticism, and essays; his Selected Poems was published in 1948. He won the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's prestigious Spingarn Medal (1918). He joined the faculty of the first African-American graduate school at Atlanta University (1935–45).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.