SOURCE: Reed, Ishmael. “Chester Himes's Last Visit Home.” Black Scholar 28, no. 1 (spring 1998): 5-9.

In the following essay, Reed reminisces about Himes's last visit to America in 1972, noting that Himes was never well-accepted by the literary establishment at home.

In 1972, when Chester Himes made his triumphant return to the United States on the occasion of the publication of the first volume of his autobiography, The Quality of Hurt, the establishment was just beginning to take revenge on black men for having caused much of the political ferment of the 1960s.

Aware of this atmosphere, Himes said, prophetically, on the television show Soul, that the establishment was going to start a war between black men and black women. Himes was right. And so, unlike in the 1960s, when a vague entity known as the “white power structure” was blamed for the continuing problems of many African Americans, by the late...