J. Mason Brewer, Folklorist and Scholar ─ His Early Texas Writings

J. Mason Brewer, Folklorist and Scholar: His Texas Writings, edited by BRUCE A. GLASRUD and MILTON S. JORDAN, is a collection of the writings of famed African American teacher and scholar, John Mason Brewer. In this collection, Glasrud and Jordan pulled together a wide range of Brewer’s publications that were written in and about Texas. These works were published over a lengthy period of time, beginning in the early 1920s and continuing to mid-century. In this stimulating collection of Brewer’s writings it can be noted that he was a renaissance scholar and teacher proficient as a folklorist, poet, and historian. Glasrud and Jordan included in J. Mason Brewer a Foreword from Texas Folklore Society director KENNETH UNTIEDT, an Introduction, and a Bibliography. The publications of Brewer found in this book include Glimpses of Life: Poems; The Negro in Texas History; The Life of John Wesley Anderson in Verse; and a folklore collection, “John Tales,” among other studies.

J. MASON BREWER earned an undergraduate degree from Wiley College in 1917 and later a graduate degree from Indiana University.?He worked at Samuel Huston College in Austin from 1926 to 1933 when he left to pursue additional studies and career options. He returned in 1944 to teach at Huston-Tillotson College (previously Samuel Huston College) until 1959 when he went to Livingstone College in North Carolina. Brewer moved back to Texas ten years later (1969) and taught at East Texas State University until his death in 1975. In his writings Brewer sought to portray black culture in its many ramifications.

MILTON JORDAN is a native Texan, born in Waco and reared in East Texas and Houston. He graduated from Southwestern University with a BA in history and received a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Methodist University.? A past president of the East Texas Historical Association, he is retired and lives in Georgetown.

BRUCE GLASRUD is Professor Emeritus of History, California State University, East Bay; retired Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, Sul Ross State University; and a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. Glasrud received his Ph.D. in history from Texas Tech University and is a specialist in the history of blacks in the West.