Bradford, Roark, 1896-1948

Roark Bradford, novelist, short story writer, and journalist, was born in Lauderdale County, Tenn., where he was raised on a cotton plantation in the Nankipoo-Knob Creek area. In 1924 Bradford moved to New Orleans, La. to take a position at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and in 1926 he devoted himself entirely to writing African-American fiction.

Roark Bradford was born in 1896 in Tennessee. He moved to New Orleans in 1923, and worked as an editor at the Times-Picayune newspaper from 1924 to 1926. He was a prolific writer of short stories, and widely published in magazines. Many of the stories he wrote used an exaggerated African-American dialect popular at the time; some of his works were dramatized for stage and film, including "Ol' Man Adam and His Chillun'", which became the basis for the 1936 film, The Green Pastures. He served as a consultant to Tulane University's English Dept., 1947-1948. Roark Bradford died in New Orleans on Nov. 13, 1948.