[3] Born to African-American parents in Harlem, New York, Bourne's mother was a nurse and his father was journalist St. Clair T.

[4] The father also wrote scripts for African American documentary filmmakers William Alexander and Edward Lewis.

In 1965, the Peace Corps sent Bourne to Peru where he helped publish a Spanish newspaper, El Comeno, in Comas, a settlement adjacent to Lima.

After the Peace Corps, Bourne attended Syracuse University, graduating in 1967 with a dual degree in Journalism and Political Science.

[2] The finding aid to the St. Clair Bourne Collection can be found at the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.