Henry Dumas

Dumas, Henry (1934–1968) poet, short fiction writer, and mythologizer. The literary legacy of Henry Dumas is one that has been kept alive almost single-handedly by fellow poet Eugene Redmond. Dumas inspires interest not only for his unique vision of black people in the diaspora, but because of the tragedy of his own life. Mistakenly shot down by a New York City Transit policeman on 23 May 1968, when he was a mere thirty-three, his life is emblematic of the precarious position of black men in America and the painful situation of a talented young man dying so young. Observers can only speculate, sadly, about what he might have accomplished if he had somehow escaped the fate assigned to him. In many ways Dumas has become a cultural icon in African American literary circles.

Henry Dumas was born on 20 July 1934 in Sweet Home, Arkansas, where he spent his early years and was saturated with the religious and folk traditions of that soil. He claimed Moms Mabley and gospel music as particular influences upon him. At the age of ten, he was taken to Harlem, where he attended public schools and graduated from Commerce High School in 1953. He enrolled in City College that year but left to join the Air Force. Stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, he maintained his interest in religion by teaching Sunday school while there. Dumas also spent a year on the Arabian Peninsula, where he developed an interest in the Arabic language, mythology, and culture.

Dumas married Loretta Ponton on 24 September 1955, while he was still in the military. He fathered two sons before he came to his untimely death. The first son, David, was born in 1958, after Dumas had completed his tour of duty and enrolled at Rutgers University. His second son, Michael, was born in 1962, three years before Dumas terminated his part-time attendance at Rutgers; he did not complete his degree. Though he had compelling duties as a husband, father, and IBM worker (1963–1964), Dumas was nonetheless active in civil rights and humanitarian activities, including transporting food and clothing to protesters living in Mississippi and Tennessee.

In 1967 Dumas went to Southern Illinois University as a teacher, counselor, and director of language workshops in its Experiment in Higher Education program. It was here that he met Eugene Redmond, a fellow teacher in that program. Over the course of the ten months Dumas lived in East St. Louis, he and Redmond forged the collaborative relationship that would prove so fruitful to Dumas's posthumous career. He and Redmond read their poetry at common gatherings; Redmond especially remembers Dumas reading “Our King Is Dead”, his elegy for Martin LutherKing, Jr. Dumas also frequented the offices of the East St. Louis Monitor, which Redmond edited and which featured an obituary on Dumas on 6 June 1968.

Dumas's first collection of short fiction is entitled “Arks of Bones” and Other Stories (edited by Redmond in 1974), which includes nine stories and in which his largely mythic vision of African American existence is apparent. In “Ark of Bones, for example, Dumas depicts an ark that lands in a river in Arkansas, to which a young African American boy, Headeye, is called to assume his priestly role on the ship. The ship contains bones, bones of black people who died in the Middle Passage or who have otherwise lost their lives in a repressive, racist world. The only living inhabitants on the ark are the eternal caretakers of the bones; Head-eye has been selected to become one of these and is initiated into the role he must play. Like Velma Henry in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters or the general pattern in which African Americans, especially preachers, are chosen by forces beyond this world for duties in this world, Headeye finally accepts the fact that he hears voices that other people do not hear, that he has one foot in the realm of the empirical and one foot in the realm of the extranatural. Instances of otherworldly phenomena permeating the natural environment also occur in other stories in the collection.

Redmond's commitment to making Dumas's work readily available to scholarly communities continued in the publication of Goodbye, Sweetwater (1988) and Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas (1989). The first volume contains eight of the stories that first appeared in “Ark of Bones”, along with excerpts from Dumas's unfinished novel, Jonoah and the Green Stone (1976), stories from Rope of Wind (1979), and three selections from “Goodbye Sweetwater”. One of the stories in the final section is “Rain God”, which develops the African American folk belief that, when it is raining and the sun is shining, the devil is beating his wife. Three young black boys literally witness this phenomenon as they are on their way home one rainy-sunny day. The second volume contains previously published as well as unpublished poems, including several poems with the title “Kef” and an accompanying number, and “Saba”, with the same pattern. Some of the poems in Knees had appeared in Play Ebony: Play Ivory (1974), a collection of Dumas's poetry, which Redmond edited singly in 1974 and which he had coedited in 1970. Dumas's poetry is inspired by African American music, particularly blues and jazz (he studied with Sun Ra), and he develops themes consistent with the Black Aesthetic of the 1960s. His poetry also focuses, in keeping with his fiction, on themes of nature and the natural world.

Readers coming to Dumas's works are most struck by his extraordinary vision, his unusual ways of looking at the world, at the experiences of African Americans, and at the intersections of natural and supernatural phenomena. Redmond had done yeoman work in encouraging interest in Dumas's fictional and poetic creations. It remains to be seen whether the planted seeds will indeed sprout into a critical industry.

Bibliography

• Eugene B. Redmond, introduction to “Ark of Bones” and Other Stories, 1974.
• Carolyn A. Mitchell, “Henry Dumas,” in DLB, vol. 41, Afro-American Poets since 1955, eds. Trudier Harris and
• Thadious M. Davis, 1985, pp. 89–99.
• Eugene B. Redmond, “The Ancient and Recent Voices within Henry Dumas,” introduction to Goodbye Sweetwater, 1988.
• Eugene B. Redmond, “Poet Henry Dumas: Distance Runner, Stabilizer, Distiller,” introduction to Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas, 1989.
• Dana A. Williams, “Making the Bones Live Again: A Look at the ‘Bones People’ in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone and Henry Dumas’ “Ark of Bones,”’ College Language Association Journal 42: 3 (March 1999): 309–19

Trudier Harris

writer; periodical publisher; periodical editor; teacher

Personal Information

Born Henry Lee Dumas on July 20, 1934, in Sweet Home, AR; died on May 23, 1968, in New York, NY; son of Appliance Watson; married Loretta Ponton, 1955; children: David, Michael
Education: Attended City College, NY, 1953; attended Rutgers University, 1957-65.
Politics: Black nationalist.
Military/Wartime Service: US Air Force, 1953-57.

Career

Contributor, editor, publisher, distributor, various literary magazines, 1953-68; IBM, New York City, printing machine operator, 1963-64; New York City social worker, 1965-66; Upward Bound, Hiram College, Hiram, OH, assistant director, 1967; Southern Illinois University, East St. Louis, teacher-counselor, director of language workshops, director of the Experiment in Higher Education, 1967-68.

Life's Work

On the night of May 23, 1968, a 33-year-old black man was shot to death on a Harlem platform of the New York Central Railroad by a white transit policeman. A teacher, fiction writer, and poet, Henry Dumas was visiting New York from his home in East St. Louis, Illinois. He had been at a rehearsal at the practice space of jazz musician and spiritual guru Sun Ra. At the time of his death, Dumas had published only a few poems and short stories. He left behind numerous manuscripts, many incomplete, that were compiled and edited by his friends and colleagues, primarily the poet Eugene Redmond. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, then a senior editor at Random House, oversaw a book of poetry and a collection of short stories through publication. Critics hailed Dumas as an authentic black American voice of unfulfilled potential.

Henry Lee Dumas was born on July 20, 1934, in Sweet Home, in racially-segregated rural Arkansas. As a young child he would go out into the woods and make up stories that he then shared with his family and friends. He absorbed the religious and folk traditions of the black South. Moms Mabley and gospel music were among his early influences. His childhood experiences--and the fear that plagued southern black children in the 1930s and 1940s--were frequent themes in Dumas's writings.

Joined Air Force

When Dumas was ten, his mother, Appliance Watson, took him to New York City, where he attended Harlem public schools. Tragedy stuck the family when Dumas's younger brother, Billy, was shot to death in Chicago in the late 1950s. After graduating from Commerce High School in 1953, Dumas entered the City College of New York. However, he left almost immediately to join the Air Force. While stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, Dumas taught Sunday school and investigated various Protestant denominations, as well as non-Christian religions. He spent 18 months at Dhahran Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia, where he added the language, culture, religion, and mythology of the Arab world to his varied interests. Eventually Dumas's writing would draw, not only on black Christianity and Islam, but on Sufi mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Native American and African myths and religions.

In 1955 Dumas married Loretta Ponton and their sons, David and Michael, were born in 1958 and 1962, respectively. After his discharge from the Air Force in 1957, Dumas entered Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He first studied sociology and etymology, eventually majoring in English. After attending school full-time for about two years, his family's needs and his increasing involvement with the civil rights movement forced him to curtail his education. His job as a printing machine operator at IBM inspired "Machines Can Do It Too (IBM Blues)," a poem with the cadence and sexual innuendos of the blues. He traveled to Tennessee and Mississippi, taking clothing and supplies to protestors in tent cities, whom he photographed and interviewed. Dumas remained a part-time student at Rutgers until 1965, when he left without a degree.

Yet Dumas was always writing. According to his friend Jay Wright--who wrote the foreword in Play Ebony Play Ivory, "During the time that he was an on-again-off-again student ... he spent a great deal of time trying to organize informal readings, or starting or promoting small publications, or persuading one or another of his friends to go to a gospel concert. ... Whenever he appeared, he had stacks of new poems, pages of a novel, articles, prose poems, sketches for a play."

Became a Teacher

After spending a year as a social worker for the State of New York, Dumas became an assistant director of Upward Bound at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, and a staff member for the Hiram Poetry Review. In 1967 Dr. Edward W. Crosby recruited Dumas as a teacher-counselor and director of language workshops for the Experiment in Higher Education, a Southern Illinois University (SIU) two-year college for disadvantaged youth in East St. Louis.

At SIU Dumas found a soul-mate in fellow teacher Eugene Redmond. They were both poets and street intellectuals, disciples of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jomo Kenyatta, and Nelson Mandela. Dumas called their work "linguistic mechanics"--blending the street language of their students with formal English. They continually revamped the curriculum, combining traditional Eurocentric studies with African studies and black history, culture, and consciousness, all under the guise of general education.

Dumas became increasingly involved with both the black power movement and the black arts movement, claiming writer Margaret Walker and musicians James Brown and John Coltrane as major influences. He immersed himself in black music--gospel, spirituals, jazz, and blues. Crosby wrote in the Black American Literature Forum (BALF): "Dumas came to me once and announced that his writing sections--as well as all sections taught by whomever--would formally commence with students' and teachers' listening to Black classical and spiritual (not necessarily religious) music." Dumas studied in residence with Sun Ra and incorporated elements of Sun Ra's outer-space cosmology into his work. A conversation between the two, probably recorded in 1966 in New York City's Slug's Saloon, was released on CD in 2001.

Works Published Before and After Death

From 1953 on, Dumas was a contributor, editor, publisher, and distributor for various small literary magazines and periodicals. These included the Anthologist, Untitled, American Weave, Camel, Collection, Freedomways, and Umbra, . He published both poems and short stories in the Negro Digest and in anthologies.

The circumstances of Henry Dumas's death on May 23, 1968, remain murky. The transit policeman claimed that Dumas was singing out loud and acting suspiciously. When he approached him, Dumas put his hands in his pockets. The policeman apparently assumed he had a gun and shot him. The incident was ruled a case of "mistaken identity."

Following Dumas's death, Redmond and Hale Chatfield, a friend from Rutgers and Hiram State, jointly edited Ark of Bones and Other Stories and Poetry for My People. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) wrote the preface to Poetry for My People. Through Dr. Crosby's efforts, and with a special grant from SIU, the SIU Press published limited editions of the books.

The two books were reissued by Random House in 1974, with Poetry for My People under the title of the poem, "Play Ebony Play Ivory." In this poem the piano is an African percussive instrument and the piano, the music, the pianist and the audience merge into one: "play ebony play ivory/play chords that/speak primeval/play ebony play ivory/play notes that/speak my people..." In his 1975 review of the collection in the New York Times Book Review, Julius Lester wrote that Dumas's "authentic voice is heard most clearly when he writes from within what seems to have been his subject Africa and Nature. He is the first Afro-American poet to speak convincingly in the voice of an African. ... Dumas does not personify nature; he becomes it. Nature is not an object of beauty, but a living, articulate organism. ... At his best, Henry Dumas was the most original Afro-American poet of the sixties...."

Integrated Nature, Music, and Biblical Stories

In Play Ebony Play Ivory Jay Wright wrote: "Dumas was a poet of the dispossessed. ...[of] land, absolute participation in the natural processes, mythic and humane gesture, spirit. ...the city is portrayed as a cage, closed, antagonistic, a corrupter of the spirit." Redmond wrote in BALF, "Dumas uses a broad spectrum of converging literary and folk influences to make his statement as a Black American. He permits us to enter, with him, a world of surrealism, supernaturalism, Gothicism, madness, nightmarishness, child-men and girl-women, astrology, death, magic, witchcraft, and science fiction." Biblical stories meshed with southern folk tales and black American belief systems in Dumas's fiction.

"Ark of Bones" is probably Dumas's best-known story. As in the poem "Son of Msippi," the Mississippi River is the symbolic grave of all black people stolen from Africa and killed: "All along the side of the ark them great black men were haulin up bones from that river. ... I comest to think about a sermon I heard about Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones." The ark's priest anoints the character Headeye, saying "son, you are in the house of generations. Every African who lives in America has a part of his soul in this ark."

Dumas's only novel, Jonoah and the Green Stone, unfinished at his death, was arranged by Redmond and published by Random House in 1976. It was to have been part of a trilogy called Visible Man. Jonoah is both the Biblical Noah who, as a small boy, survives the 1937 Mississippi flooding that kills his parents, and Jonah in the belly of the whale, which represents the evils of Harlem. Jonoah escapes to join the civil rights movement.

Music is both a subject and a medium in Dumas's work. In the story "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" the pure vibrations from a jazz musician's ancient "afro-horn" kill three whites who have forced their way into an all-black club. In "The Voice," young Harlem blues and gospel singers confront the existence of God and his purpose. This story was included in Rope of Wind, a collection of 12 short stories, parables, and novel excerpts, edited by Redmond and published by Random House in 1979.

Rediscovered in the 1980s

More than twenty years after his death, there was a resurgence of interest in Dumas. Through the efforts of Redmond, Morrison, and Quincy Troupe, Goodbye, Sweetwater was published in 1988. It included eight selections from Ark of Bones and Other Stories, excerpts from Jonoah and the Green Stone, stories from Rope of Wind, and three previously-uncollected stories. James Baldwin had chosen the story "Thalia" for the Black Scholar's 1976 literary award. A collection of poetry, including both previously-published and unpublished poems, appeared in 1989 and an issue of BALF was devoted to Dumas.

A movement called the "Soular System," that included Redmond, Loretta Dumas, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the late James Baldwin, kept Dumas's legacy alive through readings, editorial projects, book parties, and panel discussions. Several of his stories, including "Fon," have been adapted for the theater. Toni Morrison is quoted on the website of the African American Literature Book Club: "A cult has grown up around Henry Dumas--a very deserved cult.... He was brilliant. He was magnetic, and he was an incredible artist."

The Henry Dumas Memorial, including a student research library and reading room, was established at the Center of Pan-African Culture at Kent State University in Ohio in 1972. SIU's Experiment in Higher Education built the Henry Dumas Memorial Library and the Hiram Poetry Review sponsors an annual Henry Dumas Memorial Poetry Contest for college students.

Redmond remains Dumas's literary executor. He wrote in Essence in 1999: "More than 30 years after his death, Hank and I are still brothers, and like grits, greens, family and dreams, his full-throated passages have endured as staples of my soul's palate. I may have outlived him, but I have not outgrown him. Hank--or 'Ankh,' as he sometimes called himself--and I are still collaborating. Henry Dumas, root-writer and ancestor, my brother-friend." "Ankh" is the Egyptian symbol of life.

Awards

Several awards for creative writing published in Air Force newspapers and magazines, 1953-57; Editors Award for Creative Writing, Untitled magazine, 1963; creative writing award, Anthologist; literary award, Black Scholar, 1976.

Works

Selected works

• "The Crossing," Negro Digest, 1965.
• "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" Negro Digest, 1966.
• "Fon," Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, Morrow, 1968.
• "The Rain God," Negro Digest, 1968.
• Ark of Bones and Other Stories (includes "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" "Strike and Fade," "Fon"), Southern Illinois University Press, 1970; Random House, 1974.
• "Rain God," Brothers and Sisters: Modern Stories by Black Americans, Macmillan, 1970.
• "Ark of Bones," Cutting Edges: Young American Fiction for the '70s, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
• Jonoah and the Green Stone, Random House, 1976.
• Rope of Wind and Other Stories (includes "The Voice"), Random House, 1979.
• Goodbye, Sweetwater: New and Selected Stories (includes "Thalia"), Thunder's Mouth Press, 1988.
• Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas, Coffee House Press, 2003.

• "Black Star Line," Negro Digest, 1965.
• "Thought," American Weave, 1965.
• "Ngoma," "My Little Boy," "Montage," Hiram Poetry Review, 1966.
• "Image," "America," Black Out Loud: An Anthology of Modern Poems by Black Americans, Macmillan, 1970.
• Poetry for My People (includes "Son of Msippi," "Machines Can Do It Too (IBM Blues)," "Genesis on an Endless Mosaic"), Southern Illinois University Press, 1970; Play Ebony Play Ivory, Random House, 1974.
• "Black Trumpeter," "Buffalo," "America," "knock on wood," "Black Star Line," Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References, Morrow, 1973.
• "Genesis on an Endless Mosaic," "I Laugh Talk Joke," "Keep the Faith Blues," The Poetry of Black America: Anthology of the 20th Century, HarperCollins, 1973.
• Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems, Simon & Schuster, 1973.
• Celebrations: A New Anthology of Black American Poetry, Follett, 1977.
• Griefs of Joy: Anthology of Contemporary Afro-American Poetry for Students, Black River Writers, 1977.
• "Poetry" (includes "Our King is Dead"), Black American Literature Forum, 1988.
• Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1989.

• (With Sun Ra) The Ark and The Ankh, CD, ikef, 2001.

Further Reading

Books

• Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds., The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Ark of Bones and Other Stories, Southern Illinois University Press, 1970, pp. vii-ix; reissue, Random House, 1974, pp. ix-xviii.
• Blackshire-Belay, Carol Aisha, ed., Language and Literature in the African American Imagination, Greenwood, 1992, pp. 9-20.
• French, Warren, Lewis Leary, Amy Ling, Marco Portales, and A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, eds., Reference Guide to American Literature, 3rd ed., St. James Press, 1994, pp. 275-277.
• Harris Trudier, and Thadious M. Davis, eds., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 41: Afro-American Poets Since 1955, Gale, 1985, pp. 89-99.
• Jaye, Michael C. and Ann Chalmers Watts, eds., Literature & the Urban Experience: Essays on the City and Literature, Rutgers University Press, 1980, pp. 35-43.
• Play Ebony Play Ivory, Random House, 1974, pp. xvii-xxiii.

• Black American Literature Forum, summer 1988.
• Black World, September 1975, pp. 4-16.
• Essence, February 1999, p. 63.
• Melus, fall 1994, pp. 137-138.
• New York Times Book Review, January 19, 1975, pp. 10-11; June 26, 1988, pp. 15, 18.

• "African American Literature in the Black," Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/25thann/aism/htm (June 23, 2003).
• "Henry Dumas," The Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=762 (June 23, 2003).
• "Henry Dumas," African American Literature Book Club, www.aalbc.com/authors/henry1.htm (June 25, 2003).
• "Henry Dumas," Modern American Poets, www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dumas/dumas.htm (July 15, 2003).
• "Henry Dumas, Poet, Seer and Short Story Writer," African Educational Programming, www.hierographics.org/hdumaspoetandseer.htm (June 25, 2003).
• "Play Ebony Play Ivory," ChickenBones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes, www.nathanielturner.com/playebonydumasbio.htm (June 25, 2003).

— Margaret Alic

Henry Dumas
Born	Henry Dumas July 20, 1934(1934-07-20) Sweet Home, Arkansas, USA
Died	May 23, 1968 (aged 33) Harlem, New York City, New York, USA
Occupation	poet, short fiction writer, teacher
Ethnicity	African-American
Literary movement	Black Aesthetic
Spouse(s)	Loretta Ponton
Children	2
Influences Moms Mabley Margaret Walker

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.

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.

References

• "Henry Dumas." The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2001, 2002. Retrieved from Answers.com 26 Jun. 2008. http://www.answers.com/topic/henry-dumas
• "Henry Dumas." Contemporary Black Biography. The Gale Group, Inc, 2006. Retrieved from Answers.com 26 Jun. 2008. http://www.answers.com/topic/henry-dumas

External links

• Modern American Poetry material
• Poets.org - The Academy of American Poets
• Henry Dumas, Poet and Seer

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