Calvin Hernton

Calvin Hernton was a scholar, a critic, and a poet whose work explored the intersections of race and sexual relations. Hernton is considered a pioneer in the field of Black Studies, and was a cofounder of Umbra magazine and the Umbra Poets Workshop, which sought to establish a Black literary and political tradition. Umbra published writers such as Langston Hughes and Alice Walker. Hernton was also a participant in the Black Arts Movement and taught African, African American, and Caribbean literature at Oberlin College.

Though Hernton primarily understood himself as a poet, he is most widely known for his critical text, Sex and Racism in America (Doubleday, 1965), in which he wrote “all race relations tend to be, however subtly, sexual relations.” In this book, he examined the intersections of racial and sexual dynamics in America by tracing modern historical contexts to slavery. His other scholarly works include Coming Together: Black Power, White Hatred, and Sexual Hang-Ups (Random House, 1971) and The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers: Adventures in Sex, Literature, and Real Life (Anchor, 1987). He is also the author of the novel Scarecrow (Doubleday, 1974). 

Hernton’s poems are published in the Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2023, edited by David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer) which includes “The Distant Drum,” the epic poem “The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong,” and other material from the Calvin C. Hernton papers at Ohio University. In his foreword to the collection, Ishmael Reed wrote, “In poetry, Calvin Hernton dared to go where others were scared to go.”