John Mason Brewer is known as a scholar, teacher, historian, folklorist, and storyteller who was perhaps the first Texan to tell the full range of African-American experience from formal historical accounts to the excitement and accuracy of folktales. He spoke of the entire range of black Texas experience.

Brewer was born in Goliad in 1896, the son of a cowboy. Schooled in Austin, he advanced through Wiley College to a master's degree from Indiana and Ph.D. from Paul Quinn College. Combining academic credentials and a very active personal life, Brewer was qualified to observe and speak—as few before or after—on a broad range of experience.

For more than a quarter century, he worked and taught at East Texas State University. He was a longtime member of the Texas Folklore Society and served as council member and vice president for the American Folklore Society.

His accomplishments range from an academic study of Reconstruction times in Texas—The Negro Legislators of Texas—to the collections of African-American folktales and life such as Dog Ghosts. His Aunt Dicey Tales and The Word on the Brazos are still popular.

Brewer was also the first author and speaker to use black American dialect extensively in front of and to all audiences, particularly when dealing with folklore. Occasionally, he drew mixed reactions, from blacks and whites alike, because of the prejudicial feeling against the dialects commonly spoken by Texas blacks.

Brewer succeeded in defending black American vernacular as a literary dialect, but, above all, he presented the lives of African-American Texans truthfully with neither heroic overstatement nor apology. And he did this with much beauty.