Until the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

Writer, essayist and American culture critic                          

Selected Works:

Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture - 1989
Life with Daughters:Watching the Miss America Pageant - 1990
The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture - 1994
Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood - 1994 - memoir
One Nation Under a Groove: Motown & American Culture - 1994 - music history
How the War in the Streets Is Won: Poems on the Quest of Love and Faith - Time Being Books, 1995 - poetry
Yes I Can! The Sammy Davis Jr. Story - 2001 nominated for a Grammy - Best Album Notes
Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance - 2002 - nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes

Editing Work:

Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity and the Ambivalence of Assimilation - 1993
Ain't But a Place: An Anthology of African American Writings About St. Louis - 1998
Body Language: Writers on Sport - 1998
The Muhammad Ali Reader - 1998
Miles Davis and American Culture - 2001
The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader - 2001
Black America in the 1960s - 2003
My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen- 1991
Speech and Power: The African-American Essay in Its Cultural Content- 1993                          

Mother Florence Fernandez Oglesby
Father Henry Early, three children
Wife Ida Haynes, two children.                           

Excellence in the Arts Award, Arts and Education Council, St. Louis, Missouri - 2008
Distinguished Service to Education Award, Harris-Stowe State University - 2007
Phi Beta Kappa Evelyn and William Jaffe Medal for Distinguished Service to the Humanities - 2006
Grammy Award Nomination - 2001, Best Album Liner Notes, Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words of the Harlem Renaissance, Rhino Records
Grammy Award Nomination - 2000, Best Album Liner Notes, Yes I Can: The Sammy Davis, Jr. Story, Rhino Records
Washington University's Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Award - 1997
National Book Critics Circle Award  - 1994 - The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture
                          

Merle Kling Professor of Modern letters, of English, African studies, African American studies, American culture studies,

Director, Center for Joint Projects in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Consultant on Ken Burns' documentary films Baseball and Jazz and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson and The War. 

Commentator on National Public Radio's Fresh Air.