During Willard Motley 's lifetime the brief biographies of him that were printed in newspapers or on the dust jackets of his best-selling novels presented him as a writer who had clawed his way up from the proletariat. The jacket of Let Noon Be Fair (1966), for example, listed his previous occupations as migrant laborer, ranch hand, cook, shipping clerk, and photographer and mentioned that he had served a jail sentence for vagrancy in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In truth, despite his sincere interest in the have-nots of American society, Motley was the product of a middle-class black home in the integrated Englewood district of Chicago's South Side.

The son of Florence Motley, Willard Motley was born on 14 July 1909 and grew up under the illusion that his grandparents were his father and mother. These parental surrogates provided strong role models. Archibald Motley, Sr., a Pullman porter, stood for moral and financial...