Writer Roark Bradford was born Roark Whitney Wickliffe Bradford in Lauderdale County, Texas, on August 21, 1896. He was descended from the first Governor or Massacvhusetts, William Bradford. He joined the US Army during World War I and became an officer in the Artillery Corps, but was never sent overseas. He left the army in 1920 and went into the newspaper business, working on the Atlanta "Georgian". In 1922 he moved to New Orleans and joined the staff of the "New Orleans Times-Picayune", becoming the paper's night editor.

He wrote a series of stories for the New York "World" about black life in the South. Those stories were eventually combined into a book, "Ol' Man Adams and His Chillun", which was turned into a play on Broadway, "The Green Pastures"--which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1930--and later made into a movie, The Green Pastures (1936).

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