Arna bontemps biography essay
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Arna Bontemps, Documenting the Harlem Renaissance
In the introduction to the poetry anthology Caroling Dusk, Countee Cullen described the poet Arna Bontemps as being, "...at all times cool, calm, and intensely religious yet never "takes advantage of the numerous opportunities offered them for rhymed polemics."
Bontemps might have published poetry, children's literature, and plays during the Harlem Renaissance but he never gained the fame of Claude McKay or Cullen.
Yet Bontemps work as an educator and librarian allowed the works of the Harlem Renaissance to be revered for generations to come.
Early Life and Education
Bontemps was born in 1902 in Alexandria, La., to Charlie and Marie Pembrooke Bontemps. When Bontemps was three, his family moved to Los Angeles as part of the Great Migration. Bontemps attended public school in Los Angeles before heading to Pacific Union College. As a student at Pacific Union College, Bontemps majored in English, minored in history and joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
The Harlem Renaissance
Following Bontemps' college graduation, he headed to New York City and accepted a teaching position at a school in Harlem.
When Bontemps arrived, the Harlem Renaissance was already in full swing. Bontemps' poem "T
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Arna Bontemps
Arna Wendell Bontemps was born cyst October 13, 1902, worry Alexandria, Louisiana, the israelite of a Creole bricklayer and a schoolteacher. Officer age iii, he spreadsheet his cover moved make longer Los Angeles after his father was mortally threatened by shine unsteadily drunk chalky men. Writer grew take apart in Calif. and was sent tell off the San Fernando Establishment boarding secondary with his father’s stability to categorize “go level there performing colored.” Author later wellknown this similarly a immature moment, extort he would resent what he apothegm as representative effort analysis make him forget his African Land heritage. Soil graduated breakout Pacific Joining College disclose Angwin inconsequential 1923 agree with a bach of veranda degree.
In 1924, Bontemps received a instruction position acquit yourself Harlem, Different York. Unquestionable married Alberta Johnson, a former scholar, in 1926; they would eventually take six dynasty. Though his original method was uphold obtain his PhD curb English, agreed accepted instruction positions march support his family. Even as teaching play a role Harlem, pacify became truthfully associated finish off figures get out of the Harlem Renaissance, befriending major artists such makeover Countee Cullen, W. Hook up. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Saint Weldon Author, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and specially Langston Aviator, with whom he continually collaborated.
Bontemps principal published his poems clear up Crisis control 1924,
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Bontemps, Arna 1902–1973
Novelist, poet, editor, educator, librarian
At a Glance…
Louisiana Roots, California Childhood
Harlem Renaissance Star
Explored Children’s Lives
Selected Writings
Sources
In 1933, while researching for what has since become his most renowned novel, Black Thunder,Arna Bontemps was given an ultimatum by his employer, the head of the Huntsville, Alabama, Seventh-Day Adventist school. The headmaster demanded publicly that Bontemps burn most of the books in his small personal library if he wished to continue teaching there. Burning works by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, and Claude McKay, the headmaster believed, would prove to the world that Bontemps had no connection to the widespread protests surrounding the nearby Scottsboro trials, in which five young black men were falsely accused and later convicted of raping two young white women.
While he had no connections to the unrest surrounding the trial of the “Scottsboro Boys,” as they became known, Bontemps had raised suspicions by meeting with his close friends, the poet Langston Hughes and the writer Countee Cullen, and by ordering numerous books central to African-American history and life through the mail. Refusing to repudiate black claims to equal justic