Bontemps << bon TAH >>, Arna Wendell (1902-1973), was an African American author who edited or wrote over 30 books on Black culture. His works include biography, children’s stories, history, criticism, novels, and poetry. He also edited collections of folklore and poetry with his friend Langston Hughes, a Black writer.
Bontemps’s first book was God Sends Sunday (1931), a story about a Black jockey. He and Countee Cullen, a Black novelist and poet, adapted the novel into a musical comedy called St. Louis Woman (1946). Bontemps’s early novel Black Thunder (1936) describes a revolt by enslaved people in Virginia. Drums at Dusk (1939) deals with another such rebellion in Haiti. His later works include a collection of poetry called Personals (1936) and One Hundred Years of Negro Freedom (1961), a history.
Bontemps was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, on Oct. 13, 1902. He was a public-school teacher and principal from 1924 to 1938. From 1943 to 1965, he was librarian at Fisk University. He then taught at the University of Illinois and at Yale University before returning to Fisk in 1971 as writer in residence. Bontemps died on June 4, 1973.
