Arna Bontemps African American Museum

This turn-of-the-twentieth-century wood frame house serves as a memorial to the incredible life and work of Arnaud “Arna” Wendell Bontemps, one of the nation’s most prolific African American writers.

Although his family left Alexandria while he was still a boy, much of Bontemps’ writing dealt with black life in Louisiana and the South, and as a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, librarian, and historian he continually opposed the injustices of segregation. A leading member of the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s, he later went on to serve as the head librarian at Fisk University in Nashville, one of the nation’s premier all-black colleges.

Visitors to the museum, the author’s birth home, discover the immense contributions Bontemps made to African American history and culture. Exhibits focus on his Louisiana background, varied career, and works, including his poetry, short stories, children’s literature, anthologies, and biographies of famous African Americans.