James d corrothers biography sample

(–), writer and minister.

Born in Michigan, James D. Corrothers was raised in the predominantly white community of South Haven by his paternal grandfather, a man of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish ancestry. He moved to Muskegon at age fourteen, supporting himself and his grandfather. Shortly thereafter he moved to Indiana, then to Springfield, Ohio, working as a laborer.

There, in his teens, he began his literary career, publishing a poem, “The Deserted School House”, in the local newspaper.

Corrothers's literary career received a boost when, at eighteen, he relocated to Chicago. Working in a white barber shop, he met journalist-reformer Henry Demarest Lloyd and showed him some poems.

Lloyd arranged for their publication in the Chicago Tribune, getting Corrothers a custodial job in the Tribune offices. Corrothers was soon asked to do an article on Chicago's African American elite. He was chagrined when the story appeared, rewritten by a white reporter in a way that stereotyped its subjects; he was equally chagrined when the paper's editor refused to pay him for his efforts.

Corrothers returned to day labor and even did some boxing, but remained dedicated to writing.

James d corrothers biography sample pdf In other projects. Toggle the table of contents. Corrothers's Literary Quest for Black Leadership. Works [ edit ].

In he appeared before Thomas Fortune's National Afro-American League, reading his poem “The Psalm of the Race”, a work protesting American discrimination but predicting a brighter future.

Beginning in , Corrothers furthered his education. An aunt in Chicago helped him enter Northwestern University, where, with additional support from Lloyd and temperance activist Frances Willard, he studied from to He also spent a brief period at Bennett College, in North Carolina.

Leaving Northwestern, Corrothers did freelance reporting for Chicago dailies.

Influenced by humorist Finley Peter Dunne, Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, and dialect poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, he also began writing dialect poetry and sketches for the Chicago Journal, focusing on working-class African American urban life. These pieces brought him his first popularity; nevertheless, within a year, aware that racism limited his opportunities in journalism, he entered the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) ministry, subsequently taking posts in Bath, New York, and in Red Bank and Hackensack, New Jersey.

Forced by scandal from the AME Church in , he soon reentered the field as a Baptist.

James d corrothers biography sample Leaving Northwestern, Corrothers did freelance reporting for Chicago dailies. Through his sermons, Corrothers encouraged his congregation to remain steadfast in their faith and to persevere in the face of adversity. Personal Profile. Contents move to sidebar hide.

In the last two years of his life, he became a Presbyterian, pastoring a church in Westchester, Pennsylvania.

Corrothers's ministerial career did not exclude further literary work. He continued to find success in dialect. His sentimental “‘Way in de Woods, an’ Nobody Dar” appeared in one of America's leading magazines, Century, in , quickly followed there by other dialect pieces.

He also collected and published his newspaper sketches in book form as The Black Cat Club ().

The Black Cat Club was, and has remained, Corrothers's most noted work, its urban setting marking him as an innovator within the dialect tradition. Corrothers also integrated authentic folk materials into his sketches, although his “dialect” came more from literary than from folk sources.

James d corrothers biography sample format The autobiography also explored the challenges he faced as a Black writer in a predominantly white literary world, shedding light on the racial discrimination and prejudice that shaped his career. His legacy endures as a reminder of the challenges faced by African American artists in a racially divided society and the resilience required to overcome them. On February 12, , James D. Authority control databases.

The book's real strength was its satire, including a thinly veiled attack on Booker T. Washington and even on the uncritical vogue for dialect within African American letters. Corrothers was ambivalent about dialect and later said he regretted having written the book; he was no less ambivalent about the African American working classes, whose lives the book portrayed.

Still, along with his earlier work, The Black Cat Club gave him a national audience, one he continued to cultivate through such poems as the self-reflective “Me ‘N’ Dunbar” () and “An Awful Problem Solved” (), which turned the form toward protest.

[]