It is easy to summon a list of Black men whose lives have been snuffed out by unwarranted violence by white police officers, a list that is provoked by the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis when an officer compressed his neck to the pavement for nearly ten minutes.
Most immediately we are reminded of Eric Garner’s death in 2014 when he, too, had his breath cut off, this time by an officer’s chokehold. “I can’t breathe,” were the last desperate words uttered by Garner and Floyd. Of all the victims who can be counted among those slain by the police there was one in New York City almost 52 years ago to this month who did not have the advantage of social media or a video to show what happened.
The killing of author/poet Henry Dumas, except for a few activists and concerned citizens in the city, practically went unnoticed. One account of the incident in which a transit officer shot and killed Dumas was printed in these pages. “Police said Dumas and an unidentified man were scuffling in the subway when the officer walked up to them and attempted to stop the fracas,” the paper reported. “Police said Dumas, resentful at the interference, slashed the officer who shot and killed him.” According to the police’s account, Dumas had been threatening another man with a knife and was ordered to drop it. But rather than dropping the knife, the officer said he slashed at him, cutting his cheek. Three shots were fired and Dumas lay dead inside the subway station.
A deadly encounter that took his life was something Dumas had intimated in his poetry and short stories. If his death did not receive the riots and mayhem now raging across the country, his literature often touched on the tension and ultimate violence between the police and the African American community.
Dumas was born on July 20, 1934 in Sweet Home, Arkansas, a small farming town on the outskirts of Little Rock. Picking cotton, milking cows and studying insects were some of the pastimes that occupied the young Dumas when he was not actively engaged in sports. He was ten years old when the family, like so many during that era, migrated north to New York City. After attending the intermediate public schools in Harlem he graduated from Commerce High School in 1953. There was a brief stint at City College before enlisting in the Air Force. Most rewarding of his military duty was the 18 months in Saudi Arabia where he began cultivating an interest in Arab culture.
In 1957, he mustered out of the Air Force, and with his wife, Loretta, returned to civilian life where he enrolled at Rutgers University. A decade later, he had acquired enough academic training to earn a post as a counselor and director of Southern Illinois University’s Experiment in Higher Education in East St. Louis. His literary pursuits began in earnest during this period from his contact with Dr. Edward Crosby, the editor of the Hiram Review, where Dumas began publishing and subsequently became an editor at the publication. It was mainly the tireless work of his widow and his colleague, the poet Eugene Redmond, that Dumas’s massive trove of works were posthumously published.
With Redmond’s guidance and as the literary executor of Dumas’s estate, the writer gradually gained a wider following from the few poems and stories he had published in rather obscure journals. Soon, like a relentless current, one enhanced by the editorial vision and assistance of Toni Morrison, the creative fount of Dumas flowed ceaselessly. “Play Ebony Play Ivory,” “Ark of Bones,” “Echo Tree,” and “Goodbye Sweetwater” were among the most popular. A favorite of mine was his poem “Love Song”:
Beloved,
I have to adore the earth:
The wind must have heard
your voice once.
It echoes and sings like you.
The soil must have tasted
you once.
It is laden with your scent.
The trees honor you
in gold
and blush when you pass.
I know why the north country
is frozen.
It has been trying to preserve
your memory.
I know why the desert
burns with fever.
It was wept too long without you.
On hands and knees,
the ocean begs up the beach,
and falls at your feet.
I have to adore
the mirror of the earth.
You have taught her well
how to be beautiful.
And we have to adore Dumas’s superb gift of words, his passionate embrace of life that was prematurely snatched from him. But thanks to Redmond, Loretta and Toni, it is possible and required that during these troubled times we evoke and enjoy Dumas’s extensive legacy of brilliance and prophecy.