1989. In 2015, Redmond spoke of his hope that "the Black Lives Matter movement will help introduce Dumas to a whole new audience and help bolster the foundation that the moment rests upon." Rapper Milo has referenced him in song multiple times, most notably in the song “Napping Under the Echo Tree” whose title is a reference to Dumas’ book “Echo Tree: the Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas”. He is also referenced by name in the song's lyrics. Influences Dumas described himself as having been heavily influenced by Moms Mabley and gospel music at a young age. Dumas used his spiritual upbringing as well as his other experiences as a black child growing up in the south during the 1930s and 1940s frequently in his writings. Dumas had a strong interest in the music and folk elements that are strongly related to the black experience. In the 1960s, he became increasingly recognized as one of the most important voices of the Black Power Movement and its artistic manifestation, the Black Arts Movement, immersing himself in music, particularly gospel, spirituals, jazz, and blues. Dumas studied with jazz musician Sun Ra during the mid-1960s. Dumas's poem "Black Paladins" became the title track for a recording by Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye in 1979. Dumas often addresses other prevalent themes of the 1960s. In his poem "Afro American," he attempts to define not only, what it means to be black, but also of dual heritage and proposes the recognition of both a dual heritage and that of each of its creators. Writer Margaret Walker and musicians James Brown and John Coltrane proved to be major influences on his writing. Elements of Black Christianity, Islam, Sufi mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American mythology, and African mythology appear in Dumas's works. Both his fiction and his poetry developed themes of the Black Arts, or Black Aesthetic movement. Bibliography Poetry for My People (1970) (poetry) Ark of Bones and Other Stories (1974) (short stories) Play Ebony, Play Ivory (1974) (poetry) Jonoah and the Green Stone (1976) (novel) Rope of Wind and Other Stories (1979) (short stories) Goodbye, Sweetwater: New and Selected Stories (1988) (short stories) Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas (1989) (poetry) Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (Coffee House Press, 2003) (short stories) References Further reading Eugene B. Redmond, introduction to Ark of Bones' and