David Henderson Biography
David Henderson is an American writer and poet. Henderson co-founded the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He has been an active member of New York’s Lower East Side art scene for over 40 years.
David Henderson Age
David was born on September 19, 1942, in the United States of America. He is 81 years old as of September 2023
David Henderson Education
He went to Bronx Community College, Hunter College, and the New School for Social Research. Henderson studied writing, communications, and Eastern cultures but never finished a degree.
David Henderson Family
Attempts to establish the identities of his family, his mother, and his father were in vain since no information about them is available to the public. It’s therefore not known whether he has any siblings.
David Henderson Wife- Son
Henderson has a son named Imetai Malik Henderson. He married Barbara Christian, a scholar and black feminist critic. They have a daughter named Najuma Ide Henderson. Henderson and Christian got divorced.
David Henderson Career
He has been an active member of New York’s Lower East Side art scene for over 40 years. His work has featured in numerous literary periodicals and anthologies, and he has four collections of his own poems. He is well known for his highly acclaimed biography of the rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, which he rewrote and enlarged for a second edition released in 2009. Henderson and other black writers created the Society of Umbra in 1962. Henderson collaborated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Free Southern Theatre in New Orleans, and the Teachers and Writers Collaborative at Columbia University. He was a poet-in-residence and lectured at City College of New York.
While living in California in the late 1960s and 1970s, he served on the board of directors for the University Without Walls in Berkeley and as an artistic consultant for the Berkeley Public Schools. He also taught English and African American literature at the University of California, Berkeley and San Diego. Later, he taught classes, seminars, and workshops at Long Island University, the New School, and the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. Henderson’s poems have appeared in various anthologies, including two edited by Langston Hughes. He has also contributed to a number of publications, including Black American Literature Forum, Black Scholar, Essence, Paris Review, New American Review, Saturday Review, and The New York Times.
Henderson spent more than five years researching, interviewing, and publishing Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age, which first appeared in 1978. In 1981, it was simplified and reworked to become “Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky.” In 2009, an enlarged and rewritten edition was published under the title ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky — Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child. Henderson co-founded Umbra, a literary collective and periodical, in 1962 with other Black authors and artists on New York’s Lower East Side. Henderson started as a co-editor and eventually became the general editor. Other noteworthy editors and regular contributors to Umbra magazine include Tom Dent, Ishmael Reed, Brenda Walcott, N.H. Pritchard, Askia Toure, Lorenzo Thomas, Al Haynes, and Calvin C. Hernton.
David Henderson Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of 1 million dollars.