SOURCE: "The Role of Folklore in the Modern Black Novel," in Kansas Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3, Summer, 1975, pp. 99-110.

In the following essay, Petesch explores the recurrence of certain folkloric themes and character types in the works of African-American writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and many others.

Popular articles and the impact of such monumental studies as Newbell Niles Puckett's The Magic and Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro have helped to create the belief that black folklore is exclusively Southern and rural. Actually, folklore follows the people, and the people have gone north, west, and some to the Midwest. Richard M. Dorson, for example, has observed that the best storyteller he ever met was James Douglas Suggs, a resident of Calvin Township, a farming settlement in southwestern Michigan.¹ In addition, rural tales have assumed urban form and content. Roger Abrahams' "classic" study of black urban folklore...