Resources
Short Stories, Benny Andrews, and Langston Hughes
Students will write short stories inspired by Benny Andrew’s paintings.
6.W.TTP.3 Write narratives (fiction and nonfiction) to develop real or imagined experiences or
events using effective techniques, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event
sequences.
Students will be better able to:
• Identify a short story
• Develop a narrative with a distinct beginning, middle, and end.
• Recognize and describe the elements of story
About
Biography
Born on November 13, 1930 in Plainview Georgia, Benny Andrews spent his earliest years helping his
parents harvest cotton in the small sharecropping community they dwelt. His parent’s emphasis on
education helped drive Andrews to be the first member of his family to graduate high school and attend
college. After attending Fort Valley College for a few semesters, Andrews left school in 1950 to enlist in
the U.S. Air Force. He’d serve for the entirety of the Korean War, gaining the rank of staff Sergeant
before receiving an honorable discharge in 1954. With help from the G.I. Bill, Andrews was able to
attend the Art Institue of Chicago, graduating in 1958 with his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. Andrews would
later go on to teach at the New School for Social Research in NYC, the Jewish Community Center in
Bayonne, New York, and Queens College before helping form the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition
(BECC). Working alongside his fellow BECC members, Andrews would help start an arts program at
Manhattan Detention Complex that would serve as a national model for prison arts intiatives. Andrews
would spend the last few decades of his life illustration children’s book about John Lewis, Langston
Hughes, and Joseph Carol Smith. In 2006, Andrews passed away at the age of 75 from cancer.