Today marks 54 years since Henry Dumas was shot to death at the age of 33 by a New York City Transit Police officer. My father, Eugene Redmond, met Henry Dumas in 1967 when he became a teacher-counselor and director of language workshops at Southern Illinois University’s Experiment in Higher Education, in East St. Louis, Illinois. Dumas’s riveting story is one rescued from ultimate tragedy by the love of his friend, Eugene Redmond. Presently I am the Post Doctoral Fellow of Literary Executorship for the Henry Dumas and Eugene B. Redmond estate. 

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LISTEN HERE: 

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The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn’t write a memoir, so this series of conversations is partly that.

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