By Laura J. Thomson
Title: Tom Dent papers, 1861-1998
Predominant Dates:1959-1998
Creator: Dent, Tom (1932-1998)
Extent: 149.6 Linear Feet
Arrangement: The Tom Dent papers have been arranged into eight series: Correspondence and other materials, Writings, Journals and notebooks, Oral history and audiovisual collection, Project files, Financial records, Photographs, and Memorabilia, news clippings and realia.
Date Acquired: 01/01/1976. More info below under Accruals.
The papers of Tom Dent provide a rich documentary source in the areas of African American literature and theater, the Civil Rights Movement, and the society and culture of New Orleans. The collection encompasses 149 linear feet of correspondence, literary manuscripts, oral history interviews, photographs, financial records, and memorabilia generated by one of New Orleans' most treasured poets, playwrights, and oral historians.
Dent was a prolific writer of letters, poetry, and prose throughout his lifetime. The papers span over thirty years of African American literature through his correspondence with editors, writers, and artists. The papers are a resource for the topics of the Black Arts Movement, the Free Southern Theater in New Orleans, the Umbra Writers' Workshop, and are rich in narratives about New Orleans society, culture, and the Black community. The papers are a strong source for the study of discrimination and racism in the United States, particularly in the area of the disenfranchisement of Black artists and writers.
Dent's literary works encompass approximately 331 drafts of original poems and 289 journals and notebooks, often focusing on Black identity, New Orleans, and civil rights. Dent also wrote short stories, essays, and book, film, and play reviews, which account for approximately 190 manuscripts in the collection. Other literary projects covered in the collection include the unpublished manuscript drafts of Andrew Young's autobiography, Easy Burden: the Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America and Dent's book Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement. Southern Journey documents historic African American communities and the era of civil rights in what Dent considered the "Deep South," the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Accompanying the manuscripts are 905 audiotapes of oral history interviews used for these two volumes, as well as three grant funded oral history projects, conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s, focused on the river communities of Louisiana, civil rights workers in Mississippi, and Acadian and jazz musicians of New Orleans. The audiovisual collection also includes numerous poetry readings, lectures, and special events, such as festivals, brass bands, and funerals documenting the uniqueness of New Orleans Black community and culture.
The papers also include photographs, financial records, and collected memorabilia, which are interrelated to Dent's correspondence, literary manuscripts, and the audiovisual collection.
Tom Dent, New Orleans-born poet, essayist, playwright, teacher, and oral historian was an active participant in the Black Arts and Civil Rights Movements. He was a leading literary figure in New Orleans, publishing two books of poetry, Magnolia Street (1976) and Blue Lights and River Songs (1982), and a prolific oral historian, whose work culminated with the publishing of his book, Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement (1997).
Thomas Covington Dent was born on March 20, 1932, to Albert Walter Dent and Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent, and was the oldest of three sons. Dr. Albert W. Dent was the president of Dillard University (1941-1969). Jessie Covington Dent was a trained classical pianist originally from Houston, Texas, and trained at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a fellow of the Juilliard Musical Foundation. The Dent's were a prominent New Orleans family active in the Black community and often hosts to well-known individuals of the civil rights era.
Tom Dent graduated from Gilbert Academy in 1947 at the age of fifteen. He attended Morehouse College, receiving a Bachelors of Arts in political science in 1952. During his time at Morehouse, he was the editor of the college's literary newspaper, The Maroon Tiger. He also worked as a news reporter for The Houston Informer (1950-1951) while at Morehouse. Dent continued his studies in political science at Syracuse University (1952-1956), and while there became a fan of the music of David Brubeck. Dent served as a Private First Class (PFC) in the United States Army at the Ireland Army Hospital in Fort Knox, Kentucky (1957-1959), and during this time participated in a Writer's Digest short story course through the mail.
Dent chose to discontinue his studies in Syracuse and moved to New York to become immersed in writing. Early on during the New York years (1959-1965) he became involved in political activities that coincided to the emergence of Black Nationalism. Dent became a news reporter for the New York Age (1959) and was appointed press liaison for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (1960-1963) by Thurgood Marshall. This position took Dent to several hot spots of the Civil Rights Movement, including Jackson, Mississippi, where he became involved in getting James Meredith admitted as the first Black student of the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Through the community in Harlem, Dent helped to produce a journal called On Guard for Freedom, which represented an early Black Nationalist artists' group and included members such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Harold Cruse, and Calvin Hicks. Involvement with this group and its activities lead to the creation of the Umbra Writers' Workshop (1962-1964) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, for which Dent was a founding member. The roots of the Black arts literary movement came from the Umbra collective of young writers involved in the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School founded by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). The Umbra Writers' Workshop members included Steve Cannon, Tom Dent, Al Haynes, David Henderson, Ishmael Reed, and Askia M. Toure (Roland Snelling). The group's literary magazine, Umbra, featured poetry and other genres of creative writing, and became one of the earliest and most prominent "little magazines" that focused on African American writing.
Tom Dent returned to New Orleans in 1965 after the disbanding of the Umbra workshop. He did not intend to stay in New Orleans, but discovered new things about the city that were different from when he had left fifteen years earlier. One major discovery was the Free Southern Theater (FST) founded by John O'Neal and Gilbert Moses as an integrated Tougaloo Drama Workshop at Tougaloo College, Mississippi, in 1963. Dent had met John O'Neal previously in New York and by the time he returned to the south, the FST was based in New Orleans. Dent became the Associate Director (1966-1970) and authored a one-act play, Ritual Murder (1967). The FST was organized as an integrated touring company that used volunteers to play for civil rights centers of the south, particularly in Mississippi. The administration of the company was often divided as to its direction. Gilbert Moses attempted in 1965 to reorganize the FST into an all-Black company with its base in New Orleans; however, John O'Neal and the fundraising committee were based in New York. The new Black orientation of the theater caused confusion for the integrated New York-based fundraising committee, and by 1967 there were conflicts about the direction of the theater between the groups in New Orleans and New York. The touring concept coming from New York at the time was to hire professional Black actors from New York for the touring season. As the direction of the theater continued to be in conflict throughout the late sixties, Dent's development of the New Orleans-based community workshop program progressed.
Dent's journey of self-discovery found resolution in New Orleans with a sense of belonging to the South and to its Black community. As the core group of the FST left for New York and the administration of the theater fractured, Dent became convinced the idea of his work and its sense of the South must continue to be done in the South. The FST community workshop program, established in 1967, was spearheaded by Dent's desire to develop an artistic project within the New Orleans community. The acting and writing workshops cultivated local talent to produce quality work for the theater's use, with multiple programs organized separately from the touring company. The result of the program was the BLKARTSOUTH creative writing and acting workshops and Nkombo literary magazine. The group of writers and actors was jointly directed by Dent and Bob "Big Daddy" Costley and became BLKARTSOUTH in 1969. The goals of the workshop were to develop new literary and theatrical materials for use by the FST. The performing ensemble performed poetry and short plays throughout the South and produced five mimeographed books of poetry in 1969.
Nkombo literary magazine, published in nine issues from 1969 to 1974 in New Orleans, was unique with the purpose of producing plays and poetry to enhance the work of Black theater and literature during the period of the Black Arts Movement. A predecessor issue in December of 1968, under the title Echoes from the Gumbo, published the first works of the members of the workshop program. Dent was the main force behind the magazine as founder and co-editor along with a young member of the group Val Ferdinand (Kalamu ya Salaam). Dent envisioned a collective of southern Black writers who would be creatively nurtured within the community. BLKARTSOUTH separated from the FST and evolved into the Southern Black Cultural Alliance with the partnership between Tom Dent and Kalamu ya Salaam solidified in Nkombo Publications (1971). Dent hoped a regional association of southern community theaters and programs would provide financial support and an exchange of ideas for southern writers. At the time of the last issue of Nkombo in 1974, Kalamu ya Salaam was focused on his work with the Black Collegian magazine and Dent was focusing on establishing the Congo Square Writer's Union and another literary journal, The Black River Journal (1977). Throughout the life of Nkombo, financial difficulties often delayed its publication.
Dent taught creative writing at Mary Holmes Junior College in West Point, Mississippi (1968-1970), and at the University of New Orleans (1979-1981). He was a community organizer for the Social Welfare Planning Council (1965-1966) to address relief efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward section of New Orleans after Hurricane Betsy. Dent also worked as the public relations officer (1971-1973) and Assistant to the Executive Director for Publications (1975-1978) for Total Community Action, a community service non-profit organization in New Orleans. He worked to complete a Masters degree in poetry and black literature at Goddard College in Vermont (1974). He married Roberta "Bobbi" Yancy, a friend he had met through the FST, on April 6, 1974, at Christ Chapel Riverside Church in New York. The couple was often separated by work and location and divorced in 1980. During this period, Dent's first volume of poetry, Magnolia Street (1976), was published and described by David Henderson as a "heavy trip through New Orleans." These poems were devoted to local places and events, such as the Mardi Gras parade of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the lakefront, the balcony of the Orpheum Theater, and the local culture and society of New Orleans.
The mid-to-late seventies was a turning point in Dent's work as he became involved in documenting events through oral history projects. He received grants to conduct oral history projects of Mississippi civil rights workers (1978-1985) and interviews of New Orleans and Acadian musicians (1984). He worked with photographer Roy Lewis, to conduct oral histories documenting the isolated historic Louisiana Black communities along the Mississippi River from Phoenix to Donaldsonville (1976-1980). Lewis also worked as Dent's photographer for the Mississippi oral history project. Dent continued his literary work as co-founder of Callaloo (1976 - ), an African American southern journal of arts and letters, with Charles H. Rowell.
As early as 1979, Dent was working on the autobiography of his childhood friend, Andrew Young. Though he was officially hired as a consultant (1981-1982), he continued to work on the book until 1986. Dent traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to conduct a series of interviews with Young, then researched New Orleans and civil rights era history for the draft of the book, with the working title "An Easy Burden" (1982).
The eighties continued to be a period of creative, community, and historical writing projects for Dent. He wrote a screenplay with Michael Goodwin entitled "Heaven Before I Die" (1984) and published another book of poetry, Blue Lights and River Songs (1982). Throughout Dent's life, he was a prolific writer of journals and notebooks. In 1986, he started work on a book with the working title "New Orleans Journal," which would encompass numerous prose sketches on New Orleans parades, streets, neighborhoods, funerals, politics, music, and portraits written from 1968 to 1975.
Dent was the executive director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, Inc. (1987-1990). He wrote the documentary New Orleans Brass (1990), commissioned by the National Geographic Explorer television series, which was produced and directed by veteran filmmaker St. Clair Bourne. The production was coordinated by Kalamu ya Salaam and Bright Moments, Inc.
Oral history projects continued to dominate much of Dent's work as he set out again to document historic Black communities and the era of civil rights, by expanding his interviews beyond Mississippi and the River to encompass what he considered the "Deep South," the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina (1991-1996). The culmination of hundreds of interviews resulted in his book, Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement (1997).
Thomas Covington Dent died on June 6, 1998, at the age of 66 in New Orleans.
Accruals: There were two additions to the Tom Dent papers. The first, received in 1991, consisted of his literary manuscripts, voluminous oral histories, and memorabilia. The second addition, received in 1998, encompassed the bulk of the papers, as well as Mr. Dent's library collection.
Access Restrictions: The Tom Dent papers are open and available for research use.
Use Restrictions: Copyright to these papers has not been assigned to the Amistad Research Center. It is the responsibility of an author to secure permission for publication from the holder of the copyright to any material contained in this collection.
Technical Access Note: The 1/4 inch open reel audiotapes and microcassettes are currently unavailable for research use. All other audiovisual materials are open, please contact the reference desk at (504) 862-3222 for access.
Acquisition Source: Tom Dent
Acquisition Method: Gift
Appraisal Information: The Tom Dent papers are a rich documentary source for research in the areas of the Black Arts Movement, Civil Rights Movement, African American literature, and New Orleans culture and society.
Separated Materials: The library collection of Tom Dent is held within the Amistad Research Center library, please contact the reference desk at (504) 862-3222 for more information.
Related Materials:
Thomas Covington Dent was the son of Albert and Jessie Dent, whose papers are also held by the Amistad Research Center as the Dent Family papers. The following collections contain correspondence and other records generated by Tom Dent: Nkombo Publications records, Dent Family papers, and Free Southern Theater records. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation Oral History collection was a project Dent conducted that was commissioned by the Foundation in 1984 to document New Orleans Jazz and Acadian musicians. Other related collections include the Jason Berry papers, the Harold Battiste papers, Junebug Productions records, John O'Neal papers, Kim Lacy Rogers-Glenda Stevens Oral History collection, and the Treme Oral History collection.
The Amistad Research Center also houses Tom Dent's personal library of 1500+ volumes.
Related Publications:
Dent, Tom, Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: William Morrow, 1997), 1-400.
Young, Andrew, Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (New York: HarpersCollins Publishers, 1996), 1-550.
Preferred Citation: Tom Dent papers, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Processing Information: This collection was processed from July 2008 to November 2010.
There are 16 linear feet of collected memorabilia, news clippings, and realia within the collection. The bulk of the memorabilia is in the form of brochures, flyers, and programs covering the topics of literature, travel, and theater. Of note are files for memorabilia in which Dent was featured either as a lecturer or poet, as well as performances of his play Ritual Murder, conducted by the Free Southern Theater and the Chakula cha Jua Theater in New Orleans. Also of note are a 1968-1969 directory for Mary Holmes College kept when Dent was teaching African American literature and writing courses at the College, a theater directory, and a checklist of Black writers compiled by Galen Williams in 1970. Memorabilia also features art exhibitions, festivals, and collected brochures about archival and research institutions. Lastly, book catalogs and maps collected during his travels are included. The memorabilia is arranged alphabetically by format and then chronologically within the files.
News clippings are arranged in chronological order with originals followed by preservation photocopies. Main topics within the news clippings include the Free Southern Theater; literature; music, specifically jazz; New Orleans history; people, such as James Baldwin, Danny Barker, Elizabeth Catlett, Ishmael Reed, Paul Robeson, and Andrew Young; Mardi Gras Indians; and parades and festivals. Of note are articles about poverty in New Orleans, including lifestyle, culture, and disenfranchisement; the Black community in Louisiana and Mississippi; civil rights; and racism. The clippings correspond to Dent's interests and complement his writings and other original materials in the collection.
Oversize materials complete the collection and are arranged generally by newspapers, posters, and museum items. Collected newspapers consist of special editions of the Jackson Advocate, Montgomery Advisor, and others focused on historical highlights of the Civil Rights Movement in specific communities. These papers date from Dent's travels in 1991 for his book project Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement. Of note are two issues of The Maroon Tiger (1952), Morehouse College's newspaper for which Dent served as editor. Dent's posters mainly consist of his poetry readings and performances of Ritual Murder, as well as the Free Southern Theater and the Umbra Writers' Workshop. Also of note are various laminated pages of Harper's Weekly showing illustrations that featured New Orleans, particularly the New Orleans riots of 1866. There are account books for the Free Southern Theater (1975-1978), which tally the theater's cash disbursements, receipts, and payroll. Lastly, items such as wooden cigar boxes, collected business cards, leather goods, plaques, and Dent's IBM Wheelwriter6 typewriter complete the collection.
