SOURCE: "A Necessary Ambivalence: Sutton Griggs's Imperium in Imperio and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition," in Mythic Black Fiction: The Transformation of History, The University of Tennessee Press, 1986, pp. 42-63.

In the following excerpt, Campbell explores the ways in which Griggs's Imperium in Imperio and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition reflected the moral climate of their time.

The fiction of Sutton Griggs and Charles Chesnutt emerges from post-Reconstruction despair, both writers crafting romances that bespeak vast promise, that give voice to black heroism in the face of devastating odds. Both resort to the Genteel Tradition in order to supplant degrading stereotypes. At the same time, both launch indictments of education for the limited advantages it offered Afro-Americans. Finally both create two heroes, one militant and one accommodationist, heroes that reflect Griggs's and Chesnutt's ambivalence toward their mythmaking role.

Griggs especially strives to awaken his audience to...