SOURCE: "Literary Garveyism: The Novels of Reverend Sutton E. Griggs," in PHYLON: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture, Vol. XL, No. 3, Fall, 1979, pp. 203-16.

In the following essay, Moses evaluates Griggs's place within the tradition of the nationalist novel adn discusses his use of African-American literary conventions.

The distinguished black American scholar arna bontemps was once heard to express his objections to white critics making more of the novels of Sutton Griggs than Bontemps felt they deserved. Perhaps Bontemps suspected the motives of his white colleagues and intended to halt, at the outset, a subterfuge that would ultimately lead to the ridiculing of black literature by displaying unrepresentative and pathetically weak figures. Or perhaps Bontempts simply felt that he, along with all other black literary figures, was being patronized, and resented it.¹ Sutton Elbert Griggs, like all artists, had weaknesses as well as strengths, and his...