Lorenzo Thomas

@Writers, Career and Childhood ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Lorenzo Thomas was an American poet who incorporated the infamous African-American culture of the 1960s and 1970s into his writing African American Authors American Writers Poets Virgo Celebrities Lorenzo Thomas was an eminent American poet and literary figure. He gained popularity through his honest and cutting edge writing on his personal experiences during the African-American artistic movement. His childhood was marked by an easy life, with the exception of the local kids bullying him on his Spanish language, which motivated him to master English later on. It was during his college days that he became a member of the Umbra workshop where he befriended various upcoming black poets and got familiar with the culture, music, and cinema prevailing in the African-American era of the 1960s and 1970s, which formed a major part of his poetry collections and other scholarly works. His works mostly dealt with issues in Vietnam and civil rights movement. Some of his distinguished works included ‘Chances Are Few’, ‘Dancing on Main Street’, ‘The Bathers’, ‘Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and Twentieth-Century American Poetry’, and ‘Don’t Deny My Name: Words and Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition’. A number of his works got published in different journals, such as Living Blues, Popular Music and Society, African American Review, Arrowsmith, and others. Apart from his literary career, he served in the Navy in Vietnam and worked at Texas Southern University and University of Houston-Downtown, for over 20 years

Personal Details

Birthday: August 31, 1944 Died on: July 4, 2005 Nationality: American Famous: African American Authors, Writers, Poets Universities: Queens College City University of New York Birth Place: Panama Gender: Male Information Detail Birthday August 31, 1944 Died on July 4, 2005 Nationality American Famous African American Authors, Writers, Poets Universities Queens College City University of New York Birth Place Panama Gender Male Sun Sign Virgo Born in Panama Famous as Poet Died at Age 60

Panama

Lorenzo Thomas born at Unsplash Birth Place

He suffered from emphysema and died on July 4, 2005, in Texas Medical Center Hospice, at the age of 60. Unsplash Personal Life

Lorenzo Thomas was born on August 31, 1944, in the Republic of Panama, to a pharmacist father and a community activist mother. Unsplash Childhood & Early Life

The family migrated to New York City in 1948, when he was four, and lived in the Bronx and Queens. Unsplash Childhood & Early Life

He graduated from Queens College, New York City, in 1968. Unsplash Childhood & Early Life

While studying at Queens College, he actively participated in the Umbra workshop, along with other members such as David Henderson, Tom Dent, Ishmael Reed, and Larry Neal, which greatly influenced his poetry. Unsplash Career

He was actively involved in the Black Arts Movement in New York City, which familiarized him with its political and racial rights struggle as well as the black music, American popular culture, and cinema of that era. Unsplash Career

Some of his early poetry collections included ‘A Visible Island’ (1966), ‘Dracula’ (1973), and ‘Framing the Sunrise’ (1975). Unsplash Career

After graduating, he joined the Navy as a military advisor in 1971 and got posted in Vietnam. Unsplash Career

He quit the Navy in 1973 and relocated to Houston where he was appointed as writer-in-residence at Texas Southern University (TSU). Unsplash Career

Among his most popular poetry collections were ‘Chances Are Few’ (1979), whose expanded second edition was released in 2003, and ‘Dancing on Main Street’ (2004). Unsplash Major Works

His other well-known books are ‘The Bathers’, ‘Es Gibt Zeugen’, and ‘Sing the Sum Up: Creative Writing Ideas from African-American Literature’. Unsplash Major Works

Information	Detail
Birthday	August 31, 1944
Died on	July 4, 2005
Nationality	American
Famous	African American Authors, Writers, Poets
Universities	Queens College City University of New York
Birth Place	Panama
Gender	Male
Sun Sign	Virgo
Born in	Panama
Famous as	Poet
Died at Age	60

Lorenzo Thomas

American

Aug 31, 1944

Biography

Personal Details

Panama