J. Saunders Redding
(October 12, 1906 - March 2, 1988)

7935 Orchid St. NW, Shepherd Park neighborhood, DC.

Redding was a literary critic and historian who taught at several colleges, including Brown University in 1949, making him the first African American faculty member at an Ivy League School, and George Washington University in 1969, where he taught American history and civilization. Redding was also Director of the Division of Research and Publications at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1966 to 1969.

Redding is the author of ten books, including a novel, Stranger and Alone (1950), and a memoir, No Day of Triumph (1942). He co-edited the anthology Cavalcade: Negro Writing from 1760 to the Present (1971), with Arthur P. Davis. He is probably best remembered for his landmark history of African American literature, one of the first studies of its kind, called To Make a Poet Black (1939).