Calvin Hernton

Calvin Coolidge Hernton was born on the twenty-eighth of April 1932 at Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of a Chattanooga Black Baptist family of the principal post-Reconstruction Tennessee Black community. He was raised in the principal Chattanooga Black community of the principal post-Reconstruction Tennessee.

He completed the bachelor's degree at Talladega College at Talladega, Alabama in 1954 — and the master's degree in sociology at the Fisk University at Nashville, Tennessee in 1956.

He taught across the principal late-1950s as a sociology instructor at the Benedict College at Columbia, South Carolina and at the principal Edward Waters College at Jacksonville, Florida.

He relocated to New York in 1961 — and joined the principal Lower East Side Black-Arts-and-Beat-literary community at the principal Lower East Side Black-Arts-and-Beat-literary period of the principal post-1961 New York Black-Bohemian community.

He co-founded with the principal Black-Arts poets Tom Dent and David Henderson the principal Umbra poets collective at New York in February 1962 — at the principal Lower East Side Black-Arts-and-Black-Bohemian poetic-collective. The principal Umbra poets included Calvin Hernton, Tom Dent, David Henderson, Ishmael Reed, Lorenzo Thomas, Steve Cannon, N. H. Pritchard, and Askia Touré — the principal pre-Black-Arts-Movement Black-Bohemian poetic-collective of the principal post-1962 New York-Black-Arts pre-Black-Power period.

He published his first poetic volume The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong at the principal Interim Books at New York in 1964 — at the principal post-1962 Umbra-collective-Lower-East-Side Black-Bohemian poetic-canon.

He published the principal sociological-and-cultural critique Sex and Racism in America at the principal Doubleday Press at New York in 1965 — the principal foundational post-1965 American Black-American sociological-and-cultural critique of the principal post-Civil-Rights interracial-and-sexual-and-political American society. Sex and Racism in America sold approximately two hundred thousand copies in the principal post-1965 American hardcover-and-paperback editions.

He relocated to London in 1965 — at the principal post-1965 R. D. Laing Kingsley-Hall anti-psychiatry community at the principal post-1965 London anti-psychiatry-and-Black-Bohemian community. He held the principal Kingsley Hall residency from 1965 to 1968.

He was hired in 1970 by Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio as the principal first Black-American instructor in the principal Oberlin College Department of Black Studies — and held the principal Oberlin College Black-Studies position from 1970 to 2001.

He published the principal sociological-and-cultural-critique volume The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers at the principal Anchor Books at New York in 1987 — the principal post-1965 Black-American Black-feminist literary-and-cultural critique of the principal post-1970 Black-feminist Black-American literary canon.

He died at Oberlin, Ohio on the thirtieth of September 2001 of complications of a long illness, at sixty-nine.

He is honored here as the co-founder of the Umbra poets collective.