Oral history interview with Arna Bontemps, 1971

 

Name
Bontemps, Arna, 1902-1973 (Interviewee)
La Brie, Henry G (Interviewer)
Title
Oral history interview with Arna Bontemps, 1971
Other Titles
Reminiscences of Arna Bontemps : oral history, 1971; Oral history of Arna Bontemps, 1971
Abstract
Bontemps discusses: Free At Last, his biography of Frederick Douglass; the successes of the black press and its dwindling significance; his early exposure to black newspapers; and their role in the Great Migration of black Americans out of the south. Bontemps describes the new employment opportunities available to black journalists at mainstream news outlets and the challenges this creates for blac k papers that cannot offer competitive salaries and thus cannot appeal to the available talent pool. He examines the credibility of black newspapers and whether or not it is important for black papers to be black-owned. Bontemps recalls his aspirations to be a journalist and his refusal by The Los Angeles Times. He describes the black newspaper as a phenomenon of the North and how, in the Deep South, black papers were met with hostility because they encouraged social change and activism.
Collection Name
Black Journalists oral history collection
Subjects
Authors; African American press; African American journalists; Newspaper publishing--Economic aspects--United States; African Americans--Civil rights; African Americans--Migrations--20th century; Migration, Internal; United States Race relations; Bontemps, Arna, 1902-1973
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
1971
Physical Description
sound files : digital preservation master, WAV files (96kHz, 24 bit); 34 pages
Note (Biographical)
Arna Bontemps (1902-1973) was a novelist, poet, and noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born into a Louisiana Creole family in Alexandria, Louisiana; his father Paul Bismark Bontemps was a bricklayer and his mother Maria Carolina Pembroke B ontemps was a schoolteacher. In 1905, his family relocated to Los Angeles as part of the Great Migration and settled in the Watts neighborhood. Bontemps attended public schools and completed his bachelor's degree at Pacific Union College where he majored in English with a minor in history. Bontemps moved to New York City and began teaching at Harlem Academy in 1924, as he simultaneously pursued a writing career. Bontemps returned south in 1931 during the Great Depression, settling in Huntsville, Alabama where he taught at Oakwood Junior College. In 1943 Bontemps earned a master's degree in library science from the University of Chicago and accepted a position as head librarian at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he developed the University’s Langston Hughes Renaissance Collection. He remained at Fisk until 1964, after which Bontemps worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, and Yale University, where he was curator of the James Weldon Johnson Collection. Bontemps wrote extensively and published much of his work. He was acquainted with many Harlem Renaissance writers, artists and intellectuals; among them: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, W.E.B. Dubois, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. He was also the recipient of writing awards from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL). In addition his children’s history book Story of the Negro received the Jane Addams Book Award and recognition as a Newbery Honor Book. In 1926, he married Alberta Johnson and together they had six children. Bontemps died at his home in Nashville in 1973.
Note
Interviewed by Henry G. La Brie III on July 31, 1971.
Note (Provenance)
Henry G. La Brie III Gift, 1975
Language
English
Library Location
Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University
Browse Location’s Digital Content
Catalog Record
11562874
Also In
Oral History Archives at Columbia
Time-Based Media
Time-Based Media
Persistent URL
https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/d8-pk4m-g372
Related URLs
Available digital content for this interview.