Arna Bontemps

Arna Bontemps, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1938

Arnaud "Arna" Wendell Bontemps (October 13, 1902 - June 4, 1973) was an American poet and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.

Life and career

Painting by Betsy Graves Reyneau

Bontemps was born in the city of Alexandria, Louisiana on October 13, 1902 to the son of Charlie Bontemps and Marie Pembrooke Bontemps. His birthplace at 1327 Third Street has been recently restored and converted for use as the Bontemps African American Museum. It is included on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. He died of a heart attack on June 4, 1973 in Nashville,TN.

When he was three, his family moved to the Watts district of Los Angeles, California in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South to cities of the North, Midwest and West. He graduated from Pacific Union College in California in 1923. After graduation he went to New York to teach at Harlem Academy. In New York he became an important contributor to the Harlem Renaissance where he met many lifelong friends including Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. Hughes became a role model, collaborator, and dear friend to Bontemps.

He began writing while a student at Pacific Union College where he majored in English and minored in history, and later became the author of many children's books. His critically most important work, The Story of the Negro (1948), received the Jane Addams Book Award and was also a Newbery Honor Book. He is probably best known for the 1931 novel God Sends Sunday, the 1936 novel Black Thunder, and the 1966 anthology Great Slave Narratives. He also wrote the 1946 play St. Louis Woman with Countee Cullen.

In 1943, after graduating from the University of Chicago with a masters degree in library science, Bontemps was appointed head librarian at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. He held that position for 22 years and developed important collections and archives of African-American literature and culture, namely the Langston Hughes Renaissance Collection. He had two children. After retiring from the Fisk University in 1966, he worked at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle) and Yale University, where he served as curator to the James Weldon Johnson Collection. Through his librarianship and bibliographic work, Bontemps has become a leading figure in establishing African-American literature as a legitimate object of study and preservation.

Bontemps died June 4, 1973, in Nashville, from a myocardial infarction (heart attack), while working on his autobiography. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Arna Bontemps on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. Bontemps was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Works

(Unless noted otherwise, Bontemps is the main author of the work)

• God Sends Sunday, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931)
• Popo and Fifina, Children of Haiti, by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, (New York: Macmillan, 1932)
• You Can’t Pet a Possum, (New York: W. Morrow, 1934)
• Black Thunder: Gabriel's Revolt: Virginia 1800, (New York: Macmillan, 1936)
• Sad-faced Boy, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937)
• Drums at Dusk: a Novel, (New York: Macmillan, 1939)
• Father of the Blues: an Autobiography, by W.C. Handy: edited by Arna Bontemps, (New York: Macmillan, 1957)
• 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)
• 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)
• Chariot in the Sky: a Story of the Jubilee Singers, (Philadelphia, (London: P. Breman, 1963)
• Famous Negro Athletes, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 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)
• The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, Edited, With a Memoir, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972)
• 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)

ice cream is good!!!!!!!:)

Further reading

• Kirkland C. Jones, Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Biography of Arna Wendell Bontemps, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992). ISBN 0313280134
• Charles Harold Nichols, editor, Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters, 1925-1967, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980). ISBN 0396076874
• Bontemps, Arna, "Drums at Dusk: A Novel". Baton Rouge LA. :Louisiana State University Press, 2009 ISBN 978-0-8071-3439-9

External links

• Arna Bontemps Museum
• Academy of American Poets
• Tennessee Authors
• UIUC Modern American Poetry