Arna Bontemps

Bontemps was born in 1902 in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole family. His ancestors included free people of color and French colonists. His father was a contractor and sometimes would take his son to construction sites. As the boy got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz. His mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke, was a schoolteacher. The family was Catholic, and Bontemps was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. When Bontemps was three years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South and into cities of the North, Midwest and West. They settled in what became known as the Watts district. After attending public schools, Bontemps attended Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, where he graduated in 1923. He majored in English and minored in history, and he was also a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. ==Career==

Following his graduation, Bontemps met and befriended the author Wallace Thurman, founder of Fire!! magazine, in his job at Los Angeles Post Office. Bontemps later traveled to New York City, where he settled and became part of the Harlem Renaissance. In August 1924, at the age of 22, Bontemps published his first poem, "Hope" (originally called "A Record of the Darker Races"), in The Crisis, official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He depicted hope as an "empty bark" drifting meaninglessly with no purpose, referring to his confusion about his career. Bontemps, along with many other West Coast intellectuals, traveled to New York during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926 Bontemps married Alberta Johnson, with whom he had six children. From oldest to youngest they were: Joan (who married Avon Williams), Paul, Poppy, Camille, Connie and Alex. In 1931, he left New York and his teaching position at the Harlem Academy as the Great Depression deepened. He and his family moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he had a teaching position at Oakwood Junior College for three years. Bontemps continued writing children's novels and published ''You Can't Pet a Possum (1934), which followed a story of a boy and his pet dog living in a rural part of Alabama. Bontemps, in addition to other work for the IWP, oversaw such young writers as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Katherine Dunham, Fenton Johnson, Frank Yerby, Richard Durham, Kitty Chapelle, and Robert Lucas, in creating the Cavalcade of the American Negro'' and other works. They created part of what became a massive collection of writings on the "Negro in Illinois". In 1938, following the publication of his children's book Sad-Faced Boy (1937), Bontemps was granted a Rosenwald fellowship to work on his novel, Drums at Dusk (1939). This was based on Toussaint L'Ouverture's slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (which became the independent republic of Haiti). This book received wider recognition than his other novels. Some critics viewed the plot as overdramatic, while others commended its characterizations. Bontemps continued breaking barriers at Fisk up to his retirement. In 1957, Bontemps encouraged his assistant, Jessie Carney Smith, to become a librarian. After she earned her Ph.D. in library science, she returned to Fisk in 1965 to replace Bontemps as head librarian, becoming the first black woman to hold that position. ==Later years==

After retiring from Fisk University in 1966, Bontemps worked at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle). He later moved to Yale University, where he served as curator of the James Weldon Johnson Collection. During this time, Bontemps published numerous novels varying in genre. Slappy Hooper (1946), and Sam Patch (1951) were two children's books that he co wrote with Jack Conroy. Individually he published Lonesome Boy (1955) and ''Mr. Kelso's Lion'' (1970), two other children's books. Simultaneously he was writing pieces targeted for teenagers, including biographies on George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. His other pieces of this time were Golden Slippers (1941), Story of the Negro (1948), Chariot in the Sky (1951) and Famous Negro Athletes (1964). – and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958). Bontemps collaborated with Conroy and wrote a history of the migration of African-Americans in the United States called They Seek a City (1945). They later revised and published it as Anyplace But Here (1966). Bontemps also wrote 100 Years of Negro Freedom (1961) and edited Great Slave Narratives (1969) and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972). In addition he was also able to edit American Negro Poetry (1963), which was a popular anthology. He compiled his poetry in Personals (1963) and also wrote an introduction for a previous novel, Black Thunder, when it was republished in 1968. Bontemps died aged 71 on June 4, 1973, at his home in Nashville, from a myocardial infarction (heart attack), while working on his collection of short fiction in The Old South (1973). Through his librarianship and bibliographic work, Bontemps became a leading figure in establishing African-American literature as a legitimate object of study and preservation. His work as a poet, novelist, children's writer, editor, librarian and historian helped shape modern African-American literature, but it also had a tremendous influence on African-American culture. ==Legacy and honors==

. • During his life, Bontemps earned two Guggenheim Fellowships. • In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Arna Bontemps on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans. ==Works==

• God Sends Sunday: A Novel (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931; New York: Washington Square Press, 2005) • Popo and Fifina, Children of Haiti, by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes (New York: Macmillan, 1932; Oxford University Press, 2000) • ''You Can't Pet a Possum'' (New York: William Morrow, 1934) • ''Black Thunder: Gabriel's Revolt: Virginia 1800'' (New York: Macmillan, 1936; reprinted with intro. Arnold Rampersad, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992) • Sad-Faced Boy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937) • Drums at Dusk: A Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1939; reprinted Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2009, ) • Golden Slippers: an Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, compiled by Arna Bontemps (New York: Harper & Row, 1941) • The Fast Sooner Hound, by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942) • They Seek a City (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1945) • We Have Tomorrow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945) • Slappy Hooper, the Wonderful Sign Painter, by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946) • Story of the Negro, (New York: Knopf, 1948; New York: Random House, 1963) • The Poetry of the Negro, 1746–1949: an anthology, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949) • George Washington Carver (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1950) • Father of the Blues: an Autobiography, W. C. Handy, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York: Macmillan, 1941, 1957; Da Capo Press, 1991) • Chariot in the Sky: a Story of the Jubilee Singers (Philadelphia: Winston, 1951; London: Paul Breman, 1963; Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) • Lonesome Boy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955; Beacon Press, 1988) • Famous Negro Athletes (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1964) • Great Slave Narratives (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) • Hold Fast to Dreams: Poems Old and New Selected by Arna Bontemps (Chicago: Follett, 1969) • ''Mr. Kelso's Lion'' (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970) • Free at Last: the Life of Frederick Douglass (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971; Apollo Editions, 2000) • The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, Edited, With a Memoir (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972, 1984) • ''Young Booker: Booker T. Washington's Early Days'' (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1972) • The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973) ==Recorded works==

• In the Beginning: Bible Stories for Children by Sholem Asch (Folkways Records, 1955) • Joseph and His Brothers: From In the Beginning by Sholem Asch (Folkways Records, 1955) • Anthology of Negro Poets in the U.S.A. - 200 Years (Folkways Records, 1955) • An Anthology of African American Poetry for Young People (Folkways Records, 1990) ==Notes==