Stephen Henderson

'Stephen Evangelist Henderson (October 13, 1925 – January 7, 1997) was an American literary critic and professor of African-American literature and culture whose work was closely associated with HBCUs. He taught at Virginia Union University, Morehouse College, the Institute of the Black World (IBW) and Howard University, where he directed the Institute for the Arts and the Humanities.

His anthology and critical study Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References (1973) is widely regarded as a foundational work of Black Arts Movement criticism and Black aesthetics, combining an extended theoretical introduction with an influential selection of contemporary Black poetry.

Henderson was a co-founder of the IBW in Atlanta, a black intellectual “think tank” created with Vincent Harding and William Strickland that linked scholarship to Black political activism in the 1970s.

Early life and education Henderson was born in Key West, Florida, on October 13, 1925, to James and Leonora (Sands) Henderson, a working-class family with Bahamian and Gullah roots.

During the final years of the Second World War Henderson served for two years in the United States Army.

Henderson's 1973 book Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic Reference is regarded as a seminal work that has been "heralded as the first formalized articulation of a theoretical understanding of African-American poetry and sparked new debate and dialogue in the world of African-American literature."

Selected works (With Mercer Cook) The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States, University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References, Morrow, 1973.