During the course of his literary career, William Melvin Kelley, who began writing with a vision of racial coexistence, increasingly saw the impossibility of this ideal. The change in his perception and racial politics paralleled that of many black Americans during the turbulent 1960s, when the dream of the integrationist phase of the civil rights movement began to be replaced by the rage and anger of the emerging black nationalists. As Kelley became more aware of the systematic degradation ofblacks throughout American history, the themes and concerns of his writing took on a more radical stance. He shifted from characters making quiet protests to regain their lost dignity to characters angrily avenging past wrongs.

Kelly's beginnings could be said to represent the culmination of the integrationist dream in America. He was born on 1 November 1937 in the Bronx, the son of editor William Kelley and Narcissa Agatha Kelley, and...