Novelist Ernest J. Gaines, who explored the hardships of African Americans living in rural Louisiana, died in his home in Oscar, Louisiana, on November 5. The acclaimed author of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” was 86.
Gaines died in his sleep of cardiac arrest, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation confirmed to The Associated Press (AP).
“It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Ernest J. Gaines, a native Louisianan who used his immense vision and literary talents to tell the stories of African Americans in the South,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said in a