Arna+Bontemps


 * The Life of Arna Bontemps **

**Arna Bontemps was born on October 13, 1902 in Alexandria Louisiana. He grew up in Los Angeles with his mother and father until the year he turned 12 when his mother passed away. He was then put into the care of his father and his grandparents. When he grew up he went to a Fernando Academy which he graduated from in 1920. Later he enrolled in Pacific Union College which is where he earned an A.B. degree in 1923. In 1924 Bontemps went to New York and met other young writers which whom he worked with. In New York he found he was interested in its theater, music, its concern with world affairs, and struggle of African Americans (cultural realization, social recognition). He taught in Adventist Schools like Harlem Academy (just as his parents had) which led to him beginning his serious career as a writer. He got involved with the Harlem Renaissance by writing children�s books which allowed him to make a contribution, since juvenile literature was not common to be written by or for African Americans at the time. In 1926 he married his first wife Alberta Johnson. Later they had four daughters and two children. Bontemps began to write poetry which was known for its brooding quality and suggestive treatment of protest/black pride. In 1926 he also wrote a poem called �A Black Man Talk�s of Reaping� which won a Crisis Magazine first prize. Bontemps coauthored with Langston Hughes on Popo and Fifine: Children of Haiti in 1932. In the early 1940�s he returned to graduate school and earned a masters degree from the university of Chicago Graduate Library School in December of 1943. That same year he became head librarian at Fisk University in Nashville. In 1931 Bontemps published his first novel �God Sends Sundays� which was transformed into a musical which was performed on Broadway in 1946. In 1956 he received the Jane Addams Children�s Book Award for Story of the Negro which was published in 1948. Bontemps was awarded two prestigious national awards that recognized his prodigious creative output and literary excellence. From 1966 to 1969 he was a professor at the Chicago Circle Campus of the University of Illinois and served as visiting professor and curator of the James Weldon Johnson collection at Yale University. In 1972 he was appointed honorary consultant to the Library of Congress. Before his death in 1973, Bontemps accepted the invitation to become a visiting professor and the Beinecke Library Chief Archivist of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection. In his lifetime Bontemps wrote 16 works for Children which included collaborations with Langston Hughes, fiction, travel narratives, and histories. Bontemps wrote books and poems that were based off of his thoughts about what African Americans went through and how their lives were. He was inspired by his desire to provide rich materials for his own children and to combat the prevailing literary stereotypes of African Americans and their history. He passed away on June 4, 1973 in Nashville, Tennessee and was one of the oldest survivors of the Harlem Renaissance. **

**Works Cited: **

**Nichols, Charles. "Arna Wendell Bontemps" Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Gale, 2006. Gale Biography in Context. Web. February 15, 2011 **

**Haskins, Jim. The Harlem Renaissance. Millbrook Press, Inc, 1996, Brookfield, Connecticut. 1997. Print **

**Brown, Lois. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance. New York. Info Base Publishing. 2006. Print **

**H.L.L 3 **