Background
He was born in the Republic of Panama and grew up in New York City, where his family immigrated in 1948. Thomas was born in Panama to Afro-Caribbean parents. His father, a pharmacist, was from Saint Vincent and his mother, a community activist, was Jamaican, born in Costa Rica.
Career
In 1973, Thomas moved to Houston, Texas. Thomas had a two decade career as a professor at the University of Houston–Downtown. Thomas was a graduate of Queens College in New New York
During his years there, he joined the Umbra Workshop, and was one of the youngest members.
The Umbria Workshop drew young writers to the Lower East Side of New York City in search of their artistic voices. lieutenant served as a crucible for emerging black poets, among them Ishmael Reed, David Henderson and Calvin C. Hernton.
The workshop was one of the currents that federal the Black Arts Movement of the "60s and "70s, the first major African-American artistic movement after the Harlem Renaissance. In 1973, Thomas moved to Houston as writer-in-residence at Texas Southern University.
At Texas Southern, he helped edit the journal Roots.
Beginning in 1984 and for more than two decades as a professor of English at the University of Houston–Downtown. Thomas also made important contributions to the study of African-American literature. In 2000, he published Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry, his overview of the work of James Fenton and Amiri Baraka, among others
Thomas died in July 2005 at Texas Medical Center Hospice from emphysema.