Thomas Covington Dent was a writer, civil rights activist and dramatist.

He was born on March 20, 1932 in New Orleans, La and was the oldest son of Dr. Albert Dent, a President of Dillard University and Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent, a former concert pianist.

He found work for a Black weekly newspaper called the New York Age and served as a press liaison for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a position he was appointed to by NAACP attorney (and later Supreme Court Justice) Thurgood Marshall.

While living in New York, he was exposed to several other African-American writers whose works were also revealing the culture and struggles of African-Americans at that time.

In 1965, Dent returned to New Orleans and helped found the Free Southern Theater (FST), a collective of artists, thinkers and activists fighting racism and segregation through drama productions.