Background
Thomas Dent was born on March 20, 1932, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, to Albert W. Dent, president of Dillard University, and Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent, a concert pianist. He was the oldest of three sons.
830 Westview Dr SW, Atlanta, GA 30314, USA
Thomas Dent studied at Morehouse College.
The Dent family, Amistad Research Center.
A young Tom Dent.
Tom Dent Editing The Maroon Tiger.
Umbra meeting. Left to right: Askia Muhammad Toure, Lorenzo Thomas, and Ishmael Reed at an Umbra workshop meeting.
Tom Dent in his apartment on East 2nd Street in New York City.
Tom Dent (left) and poet Kalamu ya Salaam (right) on the Koindu stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1980.
Tom and poet David Henderson.
Thomas Dent was born on March 20, 1932, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, to Albert W. Dent, president of Dillard University, and Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent, a concert pianist. He was the oldest of three sons.
In 1947 Tom graduated from Gilbert Academy, a college preparatory school for Black students located on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. He then attended and graduated from Morehouse (Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, 1952). At Morehouse, Tom was an editor of literary journal Maroon Tiger. He did graduate work at Syracuse University's School of International Studies (Maxwell School of Citizenship 1952-56) where he completed all of his course work leading to a doctorate.
After two-years in the United States Army (1957-59), Tom Dent moved to New York and resided there from 1959 to 1965. He worked as a reporter for a Harlem newspaper, the New York Age (1959-60). From 1960-1961 he worked as a social worker for New York Welfare Department, and then as a press attaché and public information director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (1961-63), assisting Thurgood Marshall.
During his years in New York, Tom was active as both a political and cultural activist. In addition to his NAACP work, he was active around demonstrations at the UN and in other Civil Rights and anti-Colonial struggles. As a cultural activist in 1962, Tom was one of the founders of the New York-based Umbra Writer's Workshop, the first major post-sixties organization of Black writers. More than forty books have been published by Umbra Workshop members who include Ishmael Reed, Calvin Hernton, and David Henderson.
In 1965, Tom returned to New Orleans for a short visit decided to help out with the Free Southern Theater (FST), an activist community theater project. Tom became associate director of the Free Southern Theater (1966-70), organized performances throughout the South. Tom also founded the FST Writing Workshop, which eventually became BLKARTSOUTH.
Between 1968 and 1973, the FST Writing Workshop also published Nkombo, a literary journal. In collaboration with Richard Schechner and Free Southern Theater co-founder Gilbert Moses, Tom Dent edited the 1969 book The Free Southern Theater by The Free Southern Theater.
From 1968 to 1970, Dent commuted to and taught at Mary Holmes College in West Point, Mississippi. In 1969 along with Dr. Jerry Ward and Charles Rowell, Tom Dent founded Callaloo, A Quarterly Journal of African and African American Arts and Letters. In the early seventies, Tom Dent contributed articles and plays to the then-fledgling Black Collegian Magazine. Tom Dent served as public relations director for New Orleans antipoverty agency (1971-74). From 1979 to 1981, Tom was the Marcus Christian Lecturer in Afro-American Literature at the University of New Orleans.
Tom Dent produced two books of poetry, Magnolia Street (1976) Blue Lights and River Songs (1982). Additionally, Tom wrote a number of plays Negro Study No. 34A (1970), Snapshot (1970), Ritual Murder (1976), which is now considered a classic of New Orleans theater. Although written in the seventies, the play's theme and commentary continues to be relevant and productions remain popular in the nineties.
As an indefatigable chronicler and oral historian, Tom between 1978 and 1985, conducted oral histories of Mississippi Civil Rights workers, and in 1984 conducted an oral history of New Orleans and Acadian musicians. The tapes from both collections are now housed at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans.
From 1984 to 1986 Tom worked as a writer on Andrew Young's autobiography, An Easy Burden. In the nineties, Tom worked with Dr. Ward on the Mississippi Oral History Project focusing on local Mississippi participation in the Civil Rights movement.
From 1987 to 1990, Tom Dent served as the Executive Director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, which presents the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. During the 1990s Tom traveled in the Caribbean and in Africa investigating cultural connections between the African-heritage cultures of the Diaspora and Africa. At the time of his death, Tom Dent was working on two journals, a collection of reflections on New Orleans and a series of personal essays on the connections and disruptions between Africa and African Americans.
Thomas was a member of African Literature Association, Modern Language Association.