Author. Arna Bontemps was a prolific African-American poet, novelist, and author of children's books, along with being an editor. His writings depicted the lives and struggles of the African-American. He was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a 1920s literary and arts movement centered on Harlem and the African American culture; this began his life's work as a curator of this literature and culture. It has become the most influential movement in African American literary and art history. Born Arna Wendell Bontemps, into a Louisianan Creole family, whose ancestorial lines were free people of color and French colonists, his mother was a schoolteacher and his father a bricklayer, who exposed him to jazz as he became of age. The family migrated to California when he was a three-year-old. The family soon abandoned Roman Catholicism and became devout Seventh Day Adventists. After attending local schools, he graduated from Pacific Union College in 1923 majoring in English. Accepting a teaching position in Harlem, he relocated to New York joining with the literacy groups. By the age of 22, in August of 1924, he published his first poem, "Hope." In 1926 he married and eventually had six children. In 1926 and 1927, he received for his poetry the Alexander Pushkin Prize from "Opportunity", which was the journal of the National Urban League, and an award from the periodical "Crisis," which was the publication of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Accepting a position in 1931 at a historically black Seventh-day Adventist school, Oakwood Junior College, he and his family relocated to Huntsville, Alabama during the Great Depression, but left there in 1934. In 1943 Bontemps received a master's degree in library science from the University of Chicago. He was appointed professor and head librarian at Fisk University, a historically African-American university in Nashville, Tennessee. He held that position until his retirement in 1965. During his career, he received two Guggenheim Fellowships and two Julius Rosenwald Fellowships. In 1950 he published a biography, "George Washington Carver." His most recognized piece, the 1936 novel "Black Thunder," which tells about the slave riots in the 19th century, was re-released in 1968. One of the last of his publications was the 1973 biography, "Young Booker: Brooker T. Washington's Early Days." He died of a heart attack while finishing the collection of autobiographical short stories, "The Old South." He ended his remarkable career as a teacher and librarian at Fisk University, University of Illinois in Chicago Circle, and Yale. He was placed on the 2002 list the "100 Greatest African-Americans." He received the 1956 Jane Addams Children's Book Award for his 1948 book, "The Story of the Negro." A few of his short stories or novels have been adapted to plays. The 1996 Academy Award nominated short film, "A Tuesday Morning Ride," is an adaptation of his 1933 short story, "A Summer Tragedy." He received honorary doctorate degrees from Morgan State University and Berea College. His family's old Louisiana home has become the Arna Bontemps African American Museum and Cultural Arts Center.