Four Black Revolutionary Novels, 1899-1970

Abstract

The Black Power Movement of the late 1960s was characterized by its emphasis on black consciousness and black pride, and by its demand for a black self-determination that resisted, violently if necessary, the incursions of the dominant white culture upon the rights of Afro-Americans. The new mood was often extralegal in outlook, proposing to combat violence with counterviolence, to take lives for lives, to pit organized force against the agents of an oppressive government (the police and the national guard). This new mood of the more militant black leadership is understandably reflected in much of the black fiction written during the last three years of the 1960s, notably, in J. Denis Jackson's The Black Commandos, John A Williams' Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light, and Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The first black revolutionary novel, however, Sutton Griggs' in was published more than seventy years ago. Its reissue in several editions is quite timely, for Griggs' seminal work foreshadows the contemporary black revolutionary novel. Griggs describes a secret black society, the Imperium in Imperio, which plans to engage in open revolt (in collusion with America's enemies)