Thomas was part of the Black Arts Movement in New York City and a member of the Umbra workshop, whose other members included Ishmael Reed, Calvin Hernton, and Tom Dent. Influenced by the work of the Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire, Thomas identified with African American and African culture. Often addressing the civil rights movement and Vietnam, his poetry reveals his familiarity with black music, surrealism, contemporary American popular culture, and cinema, as well as empathy for the underprivileged. Poet John Ashbery commented on his work: “Thomas’s poems have a graceful New York School nonchalance that can swiftly become a hard and cutting edge when he writes of the African American experience.” A critic as well as a poet, Thomas has also published Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry (2000).
A longtime resident of Houston, Thomas first moved to Texas as a writer-in-residence at Texas Southern University in 1973. He taught writing workshops at the Black Arts Center, through the artists-in-the-schools program, and as an English professor at the University of Houston’s downtown campus. He organized the Juneteenth Blues Festival in Houston and other cities in Texas.