Background
Roark Bradford was born on August 21, 1896, in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, United States.
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(There were those who claimed the Green Roller never lived...)
There were those who claimed the Green Roller never lived. But others knew better. They knew the Green Roller had preached up and down the swamp lands of Louisiana for a hundred years. And after that he went to glory. Illustrated by Peter Burchard.
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Roark Bradford was born on August 21, 1896, in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, United States.
Bradford had little formal education. He attended University of California, Berkeley, and served as a first lieutenant in the Coast Artillery during World War I.
Bradford found the substance for his career in the people around him.
When he began work as a reporter in 1920, he met the colourful characters of various Southern cities, including the musicians, preachers, and storytellers on the riverfront of New Orleans. This reacquaintance with the figures whom he had known while growing up on a plantation spurred Bradford to write a series of stories for the New York World.
Bradford's collected stories became his popular first book, Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun (1928), which consisted of biblical stories as related by uneducated blacks. The stories were adapted by Marc Connelly into the play Green Pastures.
Bradford also wrote novels that showed American blacks in historical perspective, such as This Side of Jordan (1929), about the arrival of machines on the plantations.
Bradford’s writings were very popular. The second story that he sold won the O. Henry Memorial Prize in 1927.
Marc Connelly adapted Ol' Man Adam and his Chillun for the stage as The Green Pastures, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1930. His stage adaption of John Henry appeared in New York City in 1940. His work appeared in Collier's, Harper's, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
(There were those who claimed the Green Roller never lived...)
Bradford married Lydia Sehorn, divorcing her in July 1933 after having the only son Richard Bradford. He then married Mary Rose Sciarra Himler, also a writer, in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
