Himes was arrested in September 1928 on the charge of armed robbery and
was sentenced to 20 to 25 years of hard labor at Ohio State
Penitentiary. He began writing seriously in prison. By the time of his
parole in 1937, Himes had published many stories about prison life in
Esquire magazine and elsewhere. Upon release, he married his long-time
girlfriend Jean Johnson and found work as a research assistant in the
Cleveland Public Library. Eventually he was hired by the Ohio State
Writers' Project to work on a history of Cleveland. When WWII began, he
moved to Los Angeles and began writing novels.
