Melvin B. Tolson

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Melvin Beaunorus Tolson (February 6, 1898–August 29, 1966) was an American Modernist poet, educator, columnist, and politician. His work concentrated on the experience of African Americans and includes several poetic histories. He was a contemporary of the Harlem Renaissance and, although he was not a participant in it, his work reflects its influences. Liberia declared Tolson as its poet laureate in 1947.

1 Life
2 Literary works
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Life

Born in Moberly, Missouri, Tolson was the son of a Methodist minister and an Afro-Creek mother. His family moved between various churches in the Missouri and Iowa area until finally settling in the Kansas City area. He graduated from Lincoln High School in Kansas City in 1919 and enrolled in Fisk University. He transferred to Lincoln University, PA that year for financial reasons. Tolson graduated with honors in 1924, then moved to Marshall, Texas, to teach speech and English at Wiley College. While at Wiley, Tolson built up an award-winning debate team; during their tour in 1935, they competed against the University of Southern California. ^[1]. Oprah Winfrey produced the film The Great Debaters, based on this event, released on 25 December 2007 (although in the movie, they debate Harvard, not USC). The film was directed by Denzel Washington.

Tolson mentored students such as James L. Farmer, Jr. and Heman Sweatt at Wiley. He encouraged his students not only to be well-rounded people but also to stand up for their rights, a controversial position in the U.S. South of the early and mid-20th century.

He took a leave of absence to earn a Master's degree from Columbia University in 1930-31, but didn't complete it until 1940. Tolson began teaching at Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma, in 1947; that year, Liberia declared him its poet laureate. He also entered local politics and served four terms as mayor of Langston from 1954 to 1960. One of his students at Langston was Nathan Hare, the black studies pioneer, who later became the founding publisher of The Black Scholar.

Tolson was a man of impressive intellect who created poetry that was “funny, witty, humoristic, slapstick, rude, cruel, bitter, and hilarious,” as Karl Shapiro had said of the Harlem Gallery. He was a dramatist and director of the Dust Bowl Theater at Langston University. Langston Hughes described him as “no highbrow. Students revere him and love him. Kids from the cotton fields like him. Cow punchers understand him ... He’s a great talker.”

In 1965, Tolson was appointed to a two-year term at Tuskegee Institute, where he was Avalon Poet. He died in the middle of his appointment after cancer surgery in Dallas, Texas, on August 29, 1966. He is buried in Guthrie,Oklahoma.

[edit] Literary works

From 1930 on, Tolson began writing poetry, and in 1941, Dark Symphony, often considered his greatest work, was published in Atlantic Monthly. Dark Symphony compares and contrasts African-American and European-American history. In 1944 Tolson published his first poetry collection, Rendezvous with America, which includes Dark Symphony. The Washington Tribune hired Tolson to write a weekly column, Cabbage and Caviar, after he left his teaching position at Wiley in the late 1940s.

His Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), another major work, is in the form of an epic poem.

In 1965, Tolson's final work to appear in his lifetime, the long poem Harlem Gallery, was published. The poem consists of several sections, each beginning with a letter of the Greek alphabet. The poem concentrates on African American life and is a drastic departure from his first works. The poems he wrote in New York were published posthumously in 1979 as A Gallery of Harlem Portraits. It is a mixture of various styles as well as free verse. The racially diverse and culturally rich community presented in A Gallery of Harlem Portraits may be based on or intended to be Marshall, Texas. He is also a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.