Literary Arts

George Houston Bass was a faculty member of playwriting and Afro-American studies (Now Africana Studies). Before coming to Brown, he had served as Langston Hughes’ secretary and literary assistant; he later founded the Langston Hughes Society and edited the Langston Hughes Review. He joined the Brown faculty in 1970 and shortly thereafter founded and served as artistic director of Rites and Reason, the research to performance-based theater of the Africana Studies Department. He wrote, mentored and directed many performance works for the Brown community, culminating in the presentation of his imaginative and provocative play, Malacoff Blue, which was performed at Rites & Reason in the late 1980s. He died in September, 1990.

See more about George Houston Bass in Martha Mitchell’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana.