J. Mason Brewer

John Mason Brewer (March 24, 1896 – January 24, 1975) was an American folklorist, scholar, and writer noted for his work on African-American folklore in Texas. He studied at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and Indiana University Bloomington, while he taught at Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas, Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Texas Southern University in Houston, Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, and East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas (now Texas A&M University–Commerce). He published numerous collections of folklore and poetry, most notably The Word on the Brazos, Aunt Dicey Tales (1956), Dog Ghosts and Other Texas Negro Folk Tales (1958), and Worser Days and Better Times (1965).

Brewer was the first African American to be an active member of the Texas Folklore Society, to be a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and to serve on the council of the American Folklore Society. He was also the first African American to deliver a lecture series at the University of Arizona, the University of California, and the University of Colorado, and he broke the color barrier at Austin's Driskill Hotel. He has been compared to Zora Neale Hurston, Joel Chandler Harris, and Alain Locke. He also published a book on African American legislators in Texas during the Reconstruction era up until their disenfranchisement.

Early life J. Mason Brewer was born on March 24, 1896, in Goliad, Texas. Brewer's four sisters (Gladys, Jewell, Marguerite, and Stella) all became educators (working in Atlanta, Austin, and Houston), while his only brother (Claude) became an interior decorator in Austin.

Brewer attended public schools in Austin and Fannin, and graduated from high school in 1913 at the age of 17. He then attended Wiley College in Marshall, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1917. Following this, he taught for a year in Austin before joining the American Expeditionary Forces in 1918, serving as a corporal in France, where he worked as an interpreter due to his knowledge of French, Italian, and Spanish. In 1919, Brewer returned from Europe to teach and serve as a principal in Fort Worth, working there in the public schools for five years. In 1924, Brewer moved to Denver to work briefly for the Continental Oil Company. While in Denver, he wrote both poetry and stories for his employer's trade journal as well as for The Negro American. He returned to teaching as a principal in Shreveport, Louisiana, and in 1926 earned a position as a professor at Samuel Huston College in Austin. In the 1930s, he taught English and Spanish at Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. In 1936, he wrote The Negro in Texas History for the occasion of the Texas Centennial. as well as Director of Research. During summers, he also taught at Texas Southern University in Houston. The next year he published Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore, which included his story collection entitled "John Tales", with the Texas Folklore Society. The "John Tales" feature the eponymous John, who according to Glasrud and Jordan is "the trickster hero of the southern plantation [who] always comes out victorious in his contests with the slave owner or overseer." In 1947, Brewer privately published a volume of works entitled More Truth Than Poetry.

Middle career and success In 1951, Brewer was granted an honorary Doctor of Literature degree by Paul Quinn College in Waco, In 1953, he published The Word on the Brazos: Negro Preacher Tales from the Brazos Bottoms of Texas, through the University of Texas Press; it was "widely" considered a "classic", according to Byrd, and Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb referred to it as "the best of its sort ever". Glasrud and Jordan called it "his first major folklore collection". In 1956, Brewer published a limited edition of 400 for his Aunt Dicey Tales, a collection of 14 "snuff-dipping tales of the Texas Negro". In 1958 Brewer published what Byrd considers his "third and best" of his "major volumes", Dog Ghosts and Other Texas Negro Folk Tales; of its 63 stories, only 9 are ghost stories involving dog ghosts. Glasrud and Jordan called it "a rich and delightful trove of stories".

Brewer began his tenure as a professor of English at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1959.

Later career In 1969, Brewer published a "well-received" collection of stories entitled American Negro Folklore through Quadrangle Books and the New York Times Book Company. In the same year he took a position as Visiting Distinguished Professor at East Texas State University (ETSU) in Commerce, Texas (now Texas A&M University–Commerce), where he taught until his death in 1975. While at ETSU, he organized symposia and workshops in addition to teaching classes, which he occasionally lectured in verse, while also turning his major research focus to African influences on Mexican folklore. He was the first African American professor in ETSU's English Department, and was appointed only one year after David Talbot became the university's first African American professor. In 1972, Brewer wrote the introduction to Henry D. Spalding's Encyclopedia of Black Folklore and Humor, as well as the 80-page chapter "Plantation to Emancipation". Spalding introduced Brewer's chapter by calling Brewer "the nation's most illustrious black folklorist".

Personal life Brewer was a Methodist and a member of the Democratic Party. He married twice, and had a son with his first wife; his second wife, Ruth Helen, was from Hitchcock, Texas. After his death, he was buried in Austin. He was also the first African American to deliver a lecture series at the University of Arizona, the University of California, and the University of Colorado. Additionally, he broke the color barrier at Austin's Driskill Hotel when he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. Charles Leland Sonnichsen called him the "premier collector of Negro folklore in Texas", while Alan Dundes referred to him as "one of the few professionally trained Negro folklorists". Humanities Texas argued that he "almost single-handedly preserved the African American folklore of his home state." Brewer is often compared with Floridian Zora Neale Hurston because, in the words of Byrd, "they were both successful in collecting and publishing Negro folklore." He has also been compared to Joel Chandler Harris due to both his subject matter and the "extended use of Negro dialect" in his writings. He has additionally been compared to Alain Locke, although Brewer himself criticized the Harlem Renaissance as "unrepresentative" of the African American experience. Byrd considers Brewer's best long works, in order of publication, to be The Word on the Brazos, Aunt Dicy Tales, Dog Ghosts, and Worser Days and Better Times. According to Texas scholar Michael Phillips, themes prevalent in Brewer's stories include "intelligence winning over brute force" and "a defiant attitude toward white America".

A 1969 interview with Brewer is featured in the Oral History Collection at Texas Tech University's Southwest Collection. In 1999, the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center held an exhibition on Aunt Dicy Tales that prominently featured the illustrations created by John Biggers.

Brewer described his tales in Dog Ghosts in his own words as "as varied as the Texas landscape, as full of contrasts as Texas weather. Among them are tales that have their roots deeply embedded in African, Irish, and Welsh mythology; other have parallels in pre-Columbian Mexican traditions; and a few have versions that can be traced back to Chaucer's England."