William Braithwaite

Who was William Braithwaite?

William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite was an American writer, poet and literary critic.

Braithwaite was born in Boston, Massachusetts. At the age of 12, upon the death of his father, Braithwaite was forced to quit school to support his family. When he was aged 15 he was apprenticed to a typesetter for the Boston publisher, Ginn & Co., where he discovered an affinity for lyric poetry and began to write his own poems.

From 1906 to 1931 he contributed to The Boston Evening Transcript, eventually becoming its literary editor. He also wrote articles, reviews and poetry for many other periodicals and journals, including the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the The New Republic.

In 1918 he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 1935, Braithwaite assumed a professorship of creative literature at Atlanta University. He retired from Atlanta University in 1945.

In 1946, he and his wife Emma Kelly, along with their seven children, moved to Sugar Hill—a neighborhood in Harlem, New York—where Braithwaite continued to write and publish poetry, essays and anthologies.