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Books by Chester Himes
If He Hollers Let Him Go!
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Cotton Comes to Harlem /
Rage in Harlem /
The Third-Generation /
Cast the First Stone
The Quality of Hurt: The Early Years: Autobiography /
My Life of Absurdity-Autobiography /
The Collected Stories of Chester-Himes
The End of a Primitive
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Yesterday Will Make You Cry /
Lonely Crusade /
Conversations with Chester Himes
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Chester Himes' Call for a Negro
Revolution!!!
By Amin Sharif
The essay "Negro Martyrs Are
Needed" (1943) was written by the novelist Chester
Himes, who is best known for his “Harlem Cycle” crime novels
written in 1957 while in Paris, France. Many movie buffs
probably know indirectly Himes work from the movies
Cotton Comes to Harlem and
Rage in Harlem, which featured Himes' black detectives
Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. Like most things that
Hollywood gets its hands on, Himes’ work was desecrated by
filmmakers only out to make a fast buck. After viewing
Rage in Harlem one would never imagine that the novel was
of such literary value that it won for Himes a major prize for
literature in France. More serious students of black literature
know Chester Himes as the author of
If He Hollers Let Him Go! which was published more than ten
years earlier in 1945.
"Negro Martyrs Are
Needed", which may seem a stretch for a black crime
novelist, is a polemic designed to encourage radical thinking
among Black people. Curiously, it first appeared in 1943 in the Crisis
magazine of the NAACP. The reader may, at first, be somewhat put
off by this essay. For it contains language from another time
and place. But the reader should be assured that Himes’ work
was more than timely when it was published. Ideas such as
Socialism, Communism, and Revolution were very much in vogue
during the 1940s. Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, and John Henrik
Clarke -- all flirted with socialism or communism at one time or
another. Essays such as Benjamin J. Davis, Jr.’s
Why I am a Communist, Richard Wright’s
"I Tried
to Be a Communist," and Langston Hughes’
My Adventures as a Social Poet attest to the fact that political and
artistic radicalism once thrived among “Negro” artists,
especially during the 1930s and 1940s. So Himes’ essay must be
viewed as one of many literary appeals made on the part of a
famous black artist in favor of communist revolution.
We know now that the Communist (Soviet) Revolution was doomed
to fail. But when Himes was writing this essay, Marxism-Leninism
and the Communist Party of America were still a part of the
American political landscape. One must remember that it was the
Communist Party of America and not the NAACP who came to the aid
of the Scottsboro Boys. Still, even in this polemic, we can see
something of Himes’ personality. Himes was known as a rough
and ready, cut to the chase, kind of man and writer. As such, we
might well expect to hear the call for a Negro American
revolution from Himes when faced with the nemesis of white
racism. The real surprise for the reader is how much effort
Himes put into this work. This is a cerebral not an emotional
work. It shows Himes as much more than just a “detective
novelist.” There is here real intellectual work. And, if
this essay does not succeed as a convincing polemic, it does
flesh out another aspect of the character of Chester
Himes.
More Facts on Himes
Chester Himes was born in 1909 in Jefferson, Missouri. His
mother was a very light-skinned woman who was a descendent of
“wealthy white southerners.” Chester’s father, by
contrast, was described as “coal black.”
When Chester’s father (who was a college professor)
lost his job, the Himes family moved from Jefferson to St. Louis
and later to Cleveland, Ohio. Eventually, Chester would enter
Ohio State University. But Himes would soon leave the college to
pursue another kind of education on the streets of Cleveland's
ghettoes. Himes’ association with pimps, hustlers, and
prostitutes drew him into criminal activity. Soon he was
convicted of taking part in an armed robbery. For this crime,
Himes received a twenty-two-year sentence.
It was while Himes was serving his prison sentence that he
turned to writing. He was published both in Abbott’s
Monthly and Esquire while
in jail. To achieve this
artistic feat, Himes did not tell the Esquire
publishers that he was a black man. After serving seven and
a half years in prison, Himes was released. In 1945, he
published
If He Hollers Let Him Go! In 1953, he moved to France and in 1957 met
Marcel Duhamel of the Gallimard publishing house. It was Duhamel
who hired Chester to write the “Harlem Cycle” of crime
novels.
In 1984, Himes died in Spain. He never received critically or
financially the acclaim his work deserved. In
The Dilemma of the Black Novelist in the United States, Himes argues
that it is the duty of the black novelist to tell the truth
about the condition of black people in America even if those
views are seemingly anti-Semitic or anti-black. It is for such
an honest and forthright stand that Himes needs to be read,
appreciated, and remembered.
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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A Wreath for Emmett Till
By Marilyn Nelson; Illustrated by
Philippe Lardy
This memorial to
the lynched teen is in the Homeric
tradition of poet-as-historian. It is a
heroic crown of sonnets in Petrarchan
rhyme scheme and, as such, is quite
formal not only in form but in language.
There are 15 poems in the cycle, the
last line of one being the first line of
the next, and each of the first lines
makes up the entirety of the 15th. This
chosen formality brings distance and
reflection to readers, but also calls
attention to the horrifically ugly
events. The language is highly
figurative in one sonnet, cruelly
graphic in the next. The illustrations
echo the representative nature of the
poetry, using images from nature and
taking advantage of the emotional
quality of color. There is an
introduction by the author, a page about
Emmett Till, and literary and poetical
footnotes to the sonnets. The artist
also gives detailed reasoning behind his
choices. This underpinning information
makes this a full experience, eminently
teachable from several aspects,
including historical and literary—School
Library Journal |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update
7 January 2012
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