Chester Himes

CTL-E-6279 · Person · writer · 1909–1984

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07467 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6279.

Chester Bomar Himes (July 29, 1909 – November 12, 1984) was an American writer born in Jefferson City, Missouri. He attended Ohio State University, then was jailed at the Ohio State Penitentiary from 1929 to 1936 for armed robbery, and began writing fiction in prison, publishing stories in Esquire and other American magazines. After his release he worked at numerous odd jobs and joined the Works Progress Administration, eventually serving as a writer with the Ohio Writers' Project. His first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), details the fear, anger, and humiliation of a Black employee of a racist defense plant during World War II. Lonely Crusade (1947) concerns racism in the labour movement, Cast the First Stone (1952) portrays prison life, and The Third Generation (1954) examines family life. In the mid-1950s Himes moved to Paris, where he wrote chiefly murder mysteries set in Harlem, featuring detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, including The Crazy Kill (1959), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965), and Blind Man with a Pistol (1969). He won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958, later moved to Moraira, Spain, and died there in 1984.

The record

• Also known as: Chester Bomar Himes, Chester B. Himes

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 7 — 747 Program, FINAL Wave 13; seventh Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Chester Himes entity, alias, or variant in the live graph (3,910 entities). ID CTL-E-6279 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger — Tier 4 corpus scan tail, corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked #3182. The scan supplied the name string only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: Black American novelist whose protest novels and Harlem Detective series are central texts of twentieth-century Black fiction; in scope as a corpus-named writer with no prior home in the graph. Vital status: DECEASED — died November 12, 1984, Moraira, Spain, aged 75 (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Wikipedia, both accessed 2026-10-16). STATISTICS — Prison term: Britannica (accessed 2026-10-16) gives jailed at the Ohio State Penitentiary 1929–1936; Wikipedia (accessed 2026-10-16) gives arrest and a 20-to-25-year sentence in late 1928, transfer in 1934, and parole in April 1936 — the accounts agree on a 1936 release and are retained as framed by each source. Harlem Detective series: eight titles listed by Wikipedia as written between 1957 and 1969, with a posthumous final entry, Plan B (1983). Award: Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, 1958 (Wikipedia). No sales or print-run figures were found in opened sources and none are asserted. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate in media_specs); chart in media_specs; video HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by name and variants, 2026-10-16); no near-miss title found.); audio HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (Created for this packet (CTL graphic, CTL-PHOTO-001 lane) from the record's sourced facts.) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by nam) | audio = HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.)

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chester Himes (accessed 2026-10-16) — born July 29, 1909, Jefferson City, Missouri, died November 12, 1984, Moraira, Spain; attended Ohio State University; jailed at the Ohio State Penitentiary 1929–1936 for armed robbery and began writing fiction there, stories appearing in Esquire; Works Progress Administration writer with the Ohio Writers' Project; If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Lonely Crusade (1947), Cast the First Stone (1952), The Third Generation (1954); moved to Paris in the mid-1950s and wrote Harlem murder mysteries including The Crazy Kill (1959), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965; film 1970), and Blind Man with a Pistol (1969); autobiographies The Quality of Hurt (1972) and My Life As Absurdity (1976) — http://www.britannica.com/biography/Chester-Himes (build store)
• Wikipedia, Chester Himes (accessed 2026-10-16) — full name Chester Bomar Himes, July 29, 1909 – November 12, 1984; Harlem Detective series set in the 1950s and early 1960s featuring Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson; won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958; sentenced in late 1928 to 20 to 25 years for armed robbery and paroled in April 1936; first stories in The Bronzeman in 1931 and in Esquire from 1934; Harlem Detective titles written 1957–1969 including A Rage in Harlem and Cotton Comes to Harlem; moved to Moraira, Spain in 1969 and died there in 1984 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Himes (build store)

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