Henry Dumas's personal and creative life flashed brilliantly across the social and political sky of the 1960s, leaving behind an extraordinary, but incomplete legacy of fiction and poetry which has been meticulously organized and edited by Eugene Redmond, well-known poet and critic who worked with Dumas at Southern Illinois University. Under Redmond's guidance, Dumas's poetry and fiction have been posthumously published by Southern Illinois University Press and by Random House. Redmond and others have also adapted Dumas's poetry and prose to the stage.

Henry Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, on 20 July 1934. He migrated to New York City's Harlem at the age of ten, attended public schools and graduated from Commerce High School in 1953. Dumas started at City College (now part of the City University of New York), but interrupted his studies in 1953 to enter the Air Force. He was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in...