Life and Career
Bontemps was born in the city of Alexandria, Louisiana, on October 13, 1902 to Charlie Bontemps and Marie Pembrooke Bontemps, a Louisiana Creole family. When he was three, his family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South to cities of the North, Midwest and West. They settled in what became known as the Watts district.
After attending public schools, Bontemps graduated from Pacific Union College in California in 1923, where he majored in English and minored in history. Bontemps was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
Read more about this topic: Arna Bontemps
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)