Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, writer, activist, collector, and important figure of the Harlem Renaissance was born in Saturce, Puerto Rico. His mother, a black woman, was originally from St. Croix, Danish Virgin Islands (now the U.S. Virgin Islands), and his father was a Puerto Rican of … Read MoreArturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938)
Hoping for a much better life outside the racially oppressive South and Alexandria, Louisiana where Arnaud Wendell Bontemps was born on October 13, 1902, the middle class Bontemps family moved to the Watts community just south of Los Angeles. They soon abandoned Catholicism and became … Read MoreArna Bontemps (1902-1973)
Chester Himes was an important writer of fiction and autobiography. Although Himes’s most widely read novels were detective stories set in Harlem, his first two published novels reflected his experiences in Los Angeles, where he lived from 1940 until 1944. Hines was born in Jefferson … Read MoreChester Himes (1909-1984)
