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, 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 (1953), 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. His mother, Minnie T. Brewer, was a public school teacher; his father, J. H. Brewer, worked a variety of jobs, including as a barber, drover, grocer, mail carrier, postmaster, and wagoner. 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's father told him Texas stories as a child, while his mother provided him with access to books on African-American history as well as the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar. According to James W. Byrd, as a child Brewer was an "avid listener" who became an "avid reader" and ultimately also an "avid writer". Bruce A. Glasrud and Milton S. Jordan particularly credit his father for Brewer's interest in folklore.
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.
Early career
In 1932, while in Austin, Brewer met J. Frank Dobie, then the secretary and editor of the Texas Folklore Society. According to Byrd, Dobie was the "biggest influence on [Brewer's] career as a writer". Also in 1932, the Society published a collection of African-American folktales collected by Brewer that was entitled "Juneteenth". He studied folklore formally for the first time at Indiana University, under the direction of Stith Thompson, ultimately earning his Master of Arts degree there in 1933. That same year, he published Negrito: Negro Dialect Poems of the Southwest. In 1936, he wrote The Negro in Texas History for the occasion of the Texas Centennial.