Gertrude P. McBrown

Gertrude Parthenia McBrown was a writer, educator, and performer born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1898. She attended Curry School of Expression in Boston before attending Emerson College of Oratory, also in Boston, from October 5, 1918, through May 1922, where she was a member of the children’s theater and the debating team. She continued her education at Boston University, where she received an MEd in 1926. 

McBrown’s career in literature began with her submission of children’s poems to the Saturday Evening Quill and The Crisis. Her first book of poetry, The Picture-Poetry Book (Associated Publishers, 1935) featured illustrations of the daily life of Black children by artist Lois Mailou Jones. In the book’s preface, McBrown writes that “poetry is the language of childhood.” Following the release of her first and only poetry collection, McBrown’s work began to appear in numerous other journals and magazines, including Opportunity, Popular Educator, Black Opals, Negro Women’s World, and International Poetry Magazine. 

McBrown became a board member of the Negro History Bulletin, headed by scholar Carter G. Woodson, where she published her first plays: Bought With Cookies (1949), about poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Birthday Surprise (1953), about the life of Frederick Douglass. In 1970, she received the Carter G. Woodson Award from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. 

McBrown also served as the managing editor of children’s literature for Parent-Teacher Magazine and a feature writer on drama for the Associated Negro Press. In addition to her writing, she also worked as an educator and in the performance arts. After graduating from Emerson, she was hired as an instructor of English and dramatic art at Virginia State College. She also taught in Boston’s public schools and was the director of productions of the choral group at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She later traveled throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa, performing her one-woman dramatic recitals and impersonations of famous Black American heroines. 

McBrown died in 1989.