Later Years
After retiring from Fisk University in 1966, Bontemps worked at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle). He moved to Yale University, where he served as curator of the James Weldon Johnson Collection.
Through his librarianship and bibliographic work, Bontemps became a leading figure in establishing African-American literature as a legitimate object of study and preservation.
Bontemps died June 4, 1973, in Nashville, from a myocardial infarction (heart attack), while working on his autobiography.
Read more about this topic: Arna Bontemps
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“In former years it was said that at three o’clock in the afternoon all sober persons were rounded up and herded off the grounds, as undesirable. The tradition of insobriety is still carefully preserved.”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres—
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)