Bontemps, Arna

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1902–73, African-American writer, b. Alexandria, La. He is best remembered as the author of the novel God Sends Sunday (1931), the basis of the play St. Louis Woman (1946); and of Black Thunder (1936), a tragic account of the slave insurrection led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Va., in 1800. Bontemps was also an editor, anthologizer, and historian.