The novels, pamphlets, and political tracts of Sutton Elbert Griggs contain the seeds of black nationalism, and black Americans today who espouse black beauty, pride, militancy, and separatism are the ideological successors of Sutton E. Griggs, one of the most neglected black writers of the period between the Spanish American War and World War I. During the period of disenfranchisement of the black American, when Thomas Nelson Page and Thomas Dixon aided antiblack legislation by writing works which showed the black person as a vicious beast and an irresponsible degenerate, Griggs wrote novels glorifying black people and demanding racial justice.

Griggs's novels have been virtually ignored by major black and white critics, with the exceptions of Hugh M. Gloster, Robert Bone, and, recently, Robert E. Fleming and Campbell Tatham. His work has been left out of most anthologies, with the notable exception of Arthur P. Davis and J...