Samuel Washington Allen (December 9, 1917 – June 27, 2015), sometimes publishing as Paul Vesey, was an American writer, literary scholar, and lawyer.
Samuel Washington Allen was born on December 9, 1917, in Columbus, Ohio. [1] He graduated as valedictorian of Fisk University in 1938 with an AB in sociology. [1] [2] At Fisk, he studied with James Weldon Johnson. [3] He received a JD from Harvard Law School in 1941 and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. [2] [3] He was an officer in the Army, which was then segregated. [4]
After World War II ended, Allen studied at The New School for a year and then went to Paris on the G.I. Bill, studying at the Sorbonne from 1948 to 1949. [2] [1] [3] His first poems appeared in 1949 in Présence africaine and his first book of poetry was published in 1956. [1] [3] He edited English writing in Présence africaine after Richard Wright left France. [4] His 1959 essay " Negritude and Its Relevance to the American Negro Writer" was published in the journal and widely reprinted. [4]
He worked as a lawyer in government and private practice from the 1940s to 1960s, before being appointed as the Avalon Professor of Humanities at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in 1968. [2] From 1971, he taught literature at Boston University. [2]
Allen's work was not well known in the United States until the 1960s, when it was published in anthologies edited by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. [4] His 1975 poetry collection Paul Vesey's Ledger "traces the long history of oppression against African Americans". [5]
Allen died on June 27, 2015, in Norwood, Massachusetts. [6] [7]