Archie Dumas

Archie Dumas was a Black painter and sculptor. He was born on June 28, 1912, in East St. Louis, Illinois, the son of Jeremiah Dumas and Peola Pritchette. At an early age, Dumas made an important connection to the St. Louis art scene: He attended Sumner High School in St. Louis in the late 1920s, where he was a member of the Dexterity Art Club and studied under the prominent local Black artist Frederick C. Alston. Dumas was later educated at Stowe Teachers College in St. Louis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and The Art Institute of Chicago. He also received a master's of art in English and education from St. Louis University in 1938.

As an artist, Dumas worked in a variety of mediums, from sculpture to sketching, but he was known primarily as a portrait artist. In the 1950s, Dumas painted a series of portraits featuring several prominent St. Louis School Board members, including superintendent Philip J. Hickey.

Dumas taught at Douglass High School in Jefferson County and worked as a teacher and school administrator for St. Louis Public Schools. He established the Banneker Reading Clinic for inner-city children with reading disabilities in the 1960s. Dumas died in St. Louis on February 1, 1988, and is buried in Washington Park Cemetery in Berkeley, St. Louis County.