From Sterling A Brown's FBI file c. 1942:

"Informant stated BROWN is a poet and as
such may have contact with Communists or even Nazis through his interest in poetry. Informant added that such contact would strictly be confined to an interest in poetry, and not any interest of a political nature."

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Reading more Sterling A Brown today and poking around at his bio.

His FBI files are available on Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/SterlingBrownFBIFile/

I love the recorded suspicion that a shared love of poetry might bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between a Black poet and a Nazi, lol. The FBI (or at least its informant) had great faith in the ability of poetry to bring people together, apparently.

#SterlingABrown #Poetry