22 Facts About Chester Himes

In 1958, Himes won France's Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere.

Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, on July 29,1909, to Joseph Sandy Himes and Estelle Bomar Himes; his father was a professor of industrial trades at a black college, and his mother, prior to getting married, was a teacher at Scotia Seminary.

Chester Himes grew up in a middle-class home in Missouri.

Chester Himes had misbehaved and his mother made him sit out a gunpowder demonstration that he and his brother, Joseph Jr.

In 1925, Chester Himes's family left Pine Bluff and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended East High School.

Chester Himes attended The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where he became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, but was expelled for playing a prank.

Chester Himes stated that writing in prison and being published was a way to earn respect from guards and fellow inmates, as well as to avoid violence.

In 1934, Chester Himes was transferred to London Prison Farm and in April 1936 was released on parole into his mother's custody.

Chester Himes provided an analysis of the Zoot Suit Riots for The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP.

Back on the East Coast Chester Himes received a scholarship at the Yaddo artists' community, where he stayed and worked in May and June 1948, in a room opposite Patricia Highsmith's.

Chester Himes separated from his wife, Jean, in 1952, and the following year he began a period of travels by boarding a ship to France.

In Paris, Chester Himes was friends with his contemporaries; the political cartoonist Oliver Harrington and fellow expatriate writers Richard Wright, James Baldwin and William Gardner Smith.

In Paris in the late 1950s Chester Himes met his second wife, Lesley Packard, when she interviewed him for the Herald Tribune; she wrote a fashion column there under the name of "Monica".

Chester Himes cared for him for the rest of his life, and worked with him as his informal editor, proofreader, confidante and, as the director Melvin Van Peebles dubbed her, "his watchdog".

Lesley and Chester Himes faced adversities as a mixed-race couple but they prevailed.

In 1969, Chester Himes moved to Moraira, Spain, where he died in 1984 from Parkinson's disease, at the age of 75.

Ishmael Reed says: "[Chester Himes] taught me the difference between a black detective and Sherlock Holmes" and it would be more than 30 years until another black mystery writer, Walter Mosley and his Easy Rawlins and Mouse series, had even a similar effect.

Cosby opined that Chester Himes' works influenced future writers and cited his Harlem cycle as being among his favorite work.

Chester Himes wrote about African Americans in general, especially in two books that are concerned with labor relations and African-American workplace issues.

Yesterday Will Make You Cry, published after Chester Himes's death, restored the original manuscript.

Chester Himes wrote a series of Harlem Detective novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, New York City police detectives in Harlem.

Chester Himes was Catholic, but professed to be "not a good one".