Henry Dumas



Henry Dumas (July 20, 1934 – May 23, 1968) was an African American writer and poet.

Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas in 1934 and he lived there until the age of ten, when he moved to New York City; however, he always kept with him the religious and folk traditions of his hometown. In Harlem, he attended public school and graduated from Commerce High School in 1953. After graduating, he enrolled in the Air Force and was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he met future wife Loretta Ponton. The couple married in 1955 and had two sons, David in 1958 and Michael in 1962. Dumas was in the military until 1957, at which time he enrolled at Rutgers University but never attained a degree. In 1967 Dumas began work at Southern Illinois University as a teacher, counselor, and director of its "Experiment in Higher Education" program. It was here that he met fellow teacher and poet Eugene Redmond, forming a close collaborative relationship that would prove so integral to Dumas's posthumous career.

During his life, Dumas was active in civil rights and humanitarian efforts, including transporting food and clothing to protesters in Mississippi and Tennessee. While serving in the military, he spent eighteen months at Dhahran Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia, where he developed an interest in the language, culture, religion, and mythology of the Arab world.

He was shot to death at the age of 33 by a white New York City Transit Authority police officer at 125th Street Station, in a case of "mistaken identity" on May 23, 1968. The tragic incident exemplified the position of blacks in America in the 1960s. His death is mentioned in the poem "An Alphabet of My Dead," by Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

Dumas was influenced by jazz, studying with Sun Ra during the mid-1960s, and in turn influenced jazz musicians. For example, his poem Black Paladins became the title track for a recording by Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye. His first collection of short stories was Ark of Bones and Other Stories (1974), posthumously edited by his friend, poet Eugene Redmond. His short story Will the Circle Be Unbroken? was included in the Dark Matter (series) Reading The Bones anthology edited by Sheree Thomas

Dumas claimed some of his earliest influences to be Moms Mabley and gospel music. His experiences as a black child growing up in the south during the '30s and '40s were frequent themes in Dumas's writings. His time spent on the Arabian Peninsula influenced him as well, and he eventually drew not only on black Christianity and Islam, but on Sufi mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Native American and African myths and religions. In the 1960s Dumas became increasingly involved with both the Black Power Movement and the Black Arts Movement, immersing himself in music like gospel, spirituals, jazz, and blues. Writer Margaret Walker and musicians James Brown and John Coltrane proved to be major influences of his writing at this time.

Both his fiction and his poetry developed themes of the Black Aesthetic movement, in addition to themes of nature and the natural world.