Arna Wendell Bontemps
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Arna Wendell Bontemps was an American poet and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. 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.Bontemps was a teacher in Chicago from 1923-38. 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”. After retiring from the Fisk University in 1966, he worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago until 1969 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.
His children’s book, ”Story of the Negro”, was a 1949 Newbery Honor Book and the Jane Addams Book Award in 1956.
100 years of Negro freedom / | Anyplace but here | Black thunder | Chariot in the sky : | Drums at dusk : | God sends Sunday, | Kaleidoscope : | Popo and Fifina | The Old South : | Young Booker; Booker T. Washington’s early days,