Addison Gayle
Addison Gayle, Jr. was a professor, literary critic, and author in New York City. He advocated for a Black aesthetic.
Gayle was born in Newport News, Virginia. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1965 with a B.A. and received an M.A. in English from UCLA a year later. He taught English at Bernard M. Baruch College until his death in October 1991.
He wrote that a Black aesthetic can be "a means of helping Black people out of the polluted mainstream of Americanism".
Gayle edited Black Expression: Essays by and about Black Americans in the Creative Arts published by Weybright & Talley in 1969 and Bondage, Freedom and Beyond: The Prose of Black America published by Doubleday in Garden City, New York, 1970.
On September 12, 1965, Gayle married Rosalie Norwood, who was a lecturer at University of California, Los Angeles when they met. They divorced in 1971.
