"[2][3] Corrothers was born in Cass County, Michigan,and grew up in a small town of anti-slavery activists who settled before the war.

He attended Northwestern University in Chicago and Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, but left to work as a newspaper reporter.

In his autobiography, In Spite of the Handicap, Corrothers claimed credit for bringing Dunbar's work to the attention of William Dean Howells.

Corrothers worked as a minister after 1898, serving African Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, and Presbyterian congregations.

[1] In 1922, James Weldon Johnson published seven poems by Corrothers in the anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922).