William Attaway

Attaway’s literary legacy rests primarily with his novel Blood on the Forge, which has been called the finest depiction of the Great Migration era in American literature. Attaway retains an important place among African-American writers of the early 20th century; the reprinting of Blood on the Forge in 1993 has brought renewed critical and popular attention to his writing.

During his last years, Attaway lived in Berkeley and then Los Angeles, California. He was working on a screenplay for The Atlanta Child Murders television series when he suffered a heart attack. He died on June 17, 1986, of heart failure, aged 74.

George P. Weick in Harlem Renaissance Lives points out that in 1967, Attaway published for children a compilation of representative popular music in America, including historical commentary, Hear America Singing. Harry Belafonte in the Hear America Singing introduction writes the folk singing is no longer a spectator sport—it is an essential part of growing up. Folk music is just exactly what it claims to be—the music of the people; not of individuals, but all the people. Belafonte continues the term “folk” was originally applied only to the peasants and farmers of the Old World, who had never learned to read or write. The evolution of democracy slowly expanded the meaning of the world until it came to stand for all proud and common people.

William Attaway’s daughter, Noelle, recalls records of Martin Luther King Jr. calling William Attaway ” a fellow freedom fighter” and both marched side by side during the civil rights movement. He took part in the March 7, 1965 Bloody Sunday voting rights demonstrations in Selma, Alabama.

Attaway was married in 1962 to a woman named Frances Settele. They lived in Barbados for eleven years with their two children, Bill and Noelle. Frances Attaway was a white woman originally from New York. They had a 20-years courtship before going public and official with their union. Frances and William moved their family to the Caribbean to escape racial turmoil and death threats.

After Blood on the Forge, Attaway began to write songs, screenplays, and books about music. His main works include Calypso Song Book and Hear America Singing. Attaway and Irving Burgie co-wrote the famous song “Day-O” (“Banana Boat Song”) for calypso singer Harry Belafonte. In the 1950s, Attaway began to write for radio, TV, and films. He was the first African American to write scripts for film and TV. He wrote for programs such as Wide Wide World and Colgate Hour.

Despite having published works approved by critics, Attaway’s work never gained the mainstream fame enjoyed by some other African-American authors, for example Richard Wright, whose novel Native Son was published in 1940.

According to Harlem Renaissance Lives, Attaway’s sister, Ruth, helped him to enter the theater world and he also performed in several productions, including a 1939 traveling production of George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take it With You. (PP 23) One Hundred Years of Laughter, a television special on black humor, was one of his most important scripts that was airing in 1966. Attaway is also credited as the screenwriter for the 1981 race-relations TV movie Grambling’s White Tiger, directed by [[Roots: The Saga of an American Family |Roots]] actor Georg Stanford Brown.

After getting his B.A. (1936) from the University of Illinois and having published “The Tale of the Blackamoor” in Challenge, he traveled around the US before settling into New York City.

His first short story, “Tale of the Blackamoor”, was published in 1936. In between works, he worked many odd jobs and even tried acting with his sister Ruth. Ruth later became a successful Broadway actress, and she ultimately helped to fuel Attaway’s career. In 1939, Attaway’s first novel, Let Me Breathe Thunder, was published. He then began working on his second and last novel, Blood on the Forge.

In 1935, Attaway began working on his first project as he helped to write the Federal Writers’ Project guide to Illinois. While he was working on this project he became good friends with Richard Wright, another soon-to-be-famous novelist. After his first project was over, Attaway returned to the University of Illinois and received his degree. He then moved to New York, where his drama Carnival was produced.

William Attaway often kept the main themes of his writing about racial and ecological crisis, especially in his novel Blood on the Forge. In Blood on the Forge, Attaway depicts the hardship of the black community during The Great Migration, which Attaway experienced firsthand when his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1916. Blood on the Forge uses the lives of three brothers to describe the battle that the African-American community went through in order to achieve acceptance and equality. His vivid portrayal of The Great Migration gives the reader an honest insight into the struggles of the African-American community as they moved out of the Southern United States fighting for a better life that they weren’t necessarily guaranteed.

William Alexander Attaway (November 19, 1911 – June 17, 1986) was an African-American novelist, short story writer, essayist, songwriter, playwright, and screenwriter.

Attaway was born on November 19, 1911, in Greenville, Mississippi, the son of W. A. Attaway, a physician and founder of the National Negro Insurance Association, and Florence Parry Attaway, a school teacher. When Attaway was six, he moved with his family to Chicago, Illinois, as part of the Great Migration, to escape the segregated South.