Undated photo taken when Allen was a faculty member at Boston University
Samuel Washington Allen (December 9, 1917 – June 27, 2015), sometimes publishing as Paul Vesey, was an American writer, literary scholar, and lawyer.
Samuel Washington Allen was born on December 9, 1917, in Columbus, Ohio.[1] He graduated as valedictorian of Fisk University in 1938 with an AB in sociology.[1][2] At Fisk, he studied with James Weldon Johnson.[3] He received a JD from Harvard Law School in 1941 and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942.[2][3] He was an officer in the Army, which was then segregated.[4]
After World War II ended, Allen studied at The New School for a year and then went to Paris on the G.I. Bill, studying at the Sorbonne from 1948 to 1949.[1][2][3] His first poems appeared in 1949 in Présence africaine and his first book of poetry was published in 1956.[1][3] He edited English writing in Présence africaine after Richard Wright left France.[4] His 1959 essay "Negritude and Its Relevance to the American Negro Writer" was published in the journal and widely reprinted.[4] He worked as a lawyer in government and private practice from the 1940s to 1960s, before being appointed as the Avalon Professor of Humanities at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in 1968.[2] From 1971, he taught literature at Boston University.[2]
Allen's work was not well known in the United States until the 1960s, when it was published in anthologies edited by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes.[4] His 1975 poetry collection Paul Vesey's Ledger "traces the long history of oppression against African Americans".[5]
Allen died on June 27, 2015, in Norwood, Massachusetts.[6][7]
Books[]
- Elfenbein Zähne (Wolfgang Rothe, 1956)[8]
- Ivory Tusks and Other Poems (Kriya Press, 1968)[8]
- Paul Vesey's Ledger (Bremen, 1975)[8]
- Every Round and Other Poems (1987)[7]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Mitchell, Verner D. (2019-05-15). "Allen, Samuel W. (Paul Vesey)" (in en). Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-1-5381-0146-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=dSyKDwAAQBAJ.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Something about the Author. 9. 1976. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-8103-0066-8. OCLC 705262432.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "Allen, Samuel W. 1917–". Contemporary Black Biography. 38. https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/allen-samuel-w-1917.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Brookhart, Mary Hughes (2001). "Allen, Samuel W." (in en). The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press. pp. 3–4. Digital object identifier:10.1093/acref/9780195138832.001.0001. ISBN 0-19-513883-X. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195138832.001.0001/acref-9780195138832-e-7.
- ↑ Encyclopedia of African-American Writing (2d ed.). Grey House Publishing. 2009. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-59237-291-1. OCLC 173807586.
- ↑ "Allen, Samuel Washington". The Boston Globe. October 4, 2015. p. B8. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/88711117/obituary-for-samuel-washington-allen/.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Bates, Jennifer (2016). "Samuel W. Allen, 97". p. 77. https://www.bu.edu/bostonia/static-assets/issues/summer16/faculty-obituaries.pdf.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Selected Black American, African, and Caribbean Authors: A Bio-Bibliography. Libraries Unlimited. 1985. p. 4. ISBN 0-87287-430-3. OCLC 11811937.
The original article can be found at Samuel W. Allen and the edit history here.