Henry Dumas

Writer

• Born: July 20, 1934
• Birthplace: Sweet Home, Arkansas
• Died: May 23, 1968
• Place of death: Harlem, New York

Dumas was a writer and poet best known for his bluesy, gospel-oriented, southern-inspired poetry and prose. Many of his stories explore African Americans’ connections to their African roots and the African diaspora. Dumas’s career was cut short when he was killed by an off-duty white policeman at age thirty-three.

Early Life

Henry Lee Dumas (DEW-mahs) was born in rural Sweet Home, Arkansas, on July 20, 1934. At the age of ten, he moved with his family to Harlem, New York. In 1953, Dumas graduated from Commerce High School. Shortly after, he enrolled at the City College of New York but did not stay long. Instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. During his time with the Air Force, Dumas spent one year on the Arabian Peninsula and studied the Arabic language, mythology, and culture. He married Loretta Ponton and had two sons: David, born in 1958, and Michael, born in 1962.

In 1957, shortly after his discharge from the Air Force, Dumas enrolled at Rutgers University to study English, and sociology. He only completed two years of course work and never attained a degree. Dumas became a civil rights activist, volunteering in homeless shelters in Mississippi and Tennessee, and worked at IBM for a year. Throughout these years, he never gave up his passion for writing and teaching. In the early 1960’s, he taught at Hiram College in Ohio and served as a staff member for The Hiram Poetry Review.

Dumas received writing opportunities in 1965-1966 with the independent literary magazine The Negro Digest. In 1965, he published the short stories “The Crossing” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?,” one of his more popular works. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” is a blues- and gospel-inspired short story that pays homage to the African American art form of jazz. Dumas was an avid fan of jazz, the blues, and traditional gospel music. In 1966, he collaborated with jazz composer and poet Sun Ra. Together, the two composed the album The Ark and the Ankh (1966), a conversational jazz-inspired piece that discusses topics such as black life, black arts, and the death of Malcolm X.

Life’s Work

In 1967, Dumas accepted a position at Southern Illinois University in East Saint Louis. He directed many language workshops, led the university’s Experiment in Higher Education program, and worked with disadvantaged youths in the area. During his ten-month residency at the university, Dumas met poet and teacher Eugene B. Redmond. They both performed and published their poetry in the same literary circles. Dumas confided in Redmond his concerns about African American politics, literature, and life.

Dumas got his big break when he was asked to contribute to Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968), edited by Larry Neal and Amiri Baraka. Dumas’s poems for the anthology, “mosaic harlem,” “knock on wood,” and “cuttin down to size,” exemplified his love for New York City and his love of writing about African Americans living in the city.

Many of the concerns Dumas expressed can be found in his prose. “Ark of Bones,” “Goodbye, Sweetwater,” and “Riot or Revolt” examine a wide range of subjects related to African American identity in the 1960’s and 1970’s. “Ark of Bones,” a well-known work, was inspired by the transatlantic slave trade, Christianity, and African Americans’ connection to their ancestral home. “Goodbye, Sweetwater” invokes Dumas’s southern roots. “Riot or Revolt” is a powerful political piece that explores the race riots of the 1960’s and the state of black America after the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

When Dumas heard the news of King’s death on April 4, 1968, he immediately wrote “Our King Is Dead,” a poem that elegized the civil rights leader. Dumas later recited the poem at the Celebrity Room in East St. Louis, a gathering place for local poets, activists, and musicians. This reading was Dumas’s last performance. On May 23, 1968, he was shot and killed by an off-duty New York transit policeman in a Harlem subway station. Friends and colleagues mourned Dumas’s untimely death.

After his death, Dumas’s legacy was shepherded by his wife, Loretta, and Redmond. Several of Dumas’s works were published posthumously, including a collection of short stories, Ark of Bones, and Other Stories (1970); a volume of poetry, Poetry for My People (better known as Play Ebony, Play Ivory, 1970); Goodbye, Sweetwater (1988); and Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (2003).

Significance

In “Ark of Bones,” Dumas explores the relationship of African Americans to Christianity. He depicts African Americans as disconnected from their ancestral identity because of the lingering legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. This story encapsulates Dumas’s legacy because it reflects his desire—evident throughout his work—for African Americans to understand their history and the African diaspora.

Bibliography

Dumas, Henry. Ark of Bones, and Other Stories. Edited by Hale Chatfield and Eugene Redmond. Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970. The first collection of short stories published after Dumas’s death in 1968. Includes useful critical commentary by Chatfield and Redmond on Dumas’s themes.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas. Edited by Eugene B. Redmond. Minneapolis, Minn.: Coffee House Press, 2003. Includes a foreword by Redmond and a critical introduction by John S. Wright.

Redmond, Eugene. “Thirty Years Later: Remembering Henry Dumas.” Essence 29, no. 10 (February, 1999): 63. Recalls the author’s meeting of Dumas, and the subsequent development of the Henry Dumas Movement.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Black American Literature Forum 22, no. 2 (Summer, 1988). Special issue devoted to Dumas. Redmond collected nearly sixty pieces of criticism and tributes from some of the foremost critics and artists in the field of African American literature.