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Books by and
about John Oliver Killens
Youngblood /
And Then We Heard the Thunder
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The Cotillion /
The Great Black Russian
A Man-Aint-Nothin But A Man Adventures of John Henry /
Slaves /
Sippi A Novel /
Black-SouthernVoices: An Anthology
Great-Gittin-Up-Morning: A
Biography of Denmark Vesey
Keith Gilyard,
Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver
Killens (2003)
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John Oliver Killens (1916-1987)
Novelist, Harlem Guild Writer
Published originally on the heels of the
Supreme Court's decision of 1954,
Youngblood marked the
beginning of a new era in African American literature, for it
broke starkly with the Wright school and opened a path for those
novelists, poets, and playwrights who comprised the Neo-Black
Arts Movement--a movement that recognized John Oliver Killens as
its spiritual father."
--Toni
Cade Bambara
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John Oliver Killens's landmark novel of social protest
of a Georgia family from the turn of the
century to the Great Depression chronicles the lives of the Youngblood family and their friends
in Crossroads, Georgia, from the turn of the century to the
Great Depression. Its large cast of powerfully affecting
characters includes Joe Youngblood, a tragic figure of heroic
physical strength; Laurie Lee, his beautiful and strong-willed
wife; Richard Myles, a young high school teacher from New York;
and Robby, the Youngbloods' son, who takes the large risk of
becoming involved in the labor movement.
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John Oliver Killens (January 14,1916–October
27, 1987),
born in Macon, Georgia, to Charles Myles, Sr., and
Willie Lee (Coleman) Killens. John Killens credits his
relatives with fostering in him cultural pride and
literary values. His father Charles encouraged him to
read a weekly column by Langston Hughes; his mother
Willie Lee, president of the Dunbar Literary Club,
introduced him to poetry; and his great-grandmother
filled his boyhood with the hardships and tales of
slavery.
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| These early exposures to criticism, art,
and folklore are evident in Killens' fiction, which
depicts accurately social classes, engaging narratives,
and successful layering of African-American history,
legends, songs, and jokes.
Killens planned to be a lawyer. He attended Edward
Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida (1934-1935) and
Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia (1935-1936). He
moved to Washington, D.C. and became a staff member of
the National labor Relations Board (NLRB) and completed
his B.A. through evening classes at Howard University.
He studied at the Robert Terrel Law School from 1939
until 1942, but he completed only two-thirds of the
program before he joined the army. |
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His second novel
And Then We Heard the Thunder (1963), which concerned racism in the military and
the growth of racial identity and consciousness, was based on
his service in the South Pacific. This novel, which deals
also with a race riot, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In
1946, Killens returned briefly to his job at the NLRB. In
1947-1948, he organized black and white workers for the Congress
of industrial Organization (CIO) and was an active member of the
Progressive Party. He soon became convinced that leading
intellectuals, the white working class, and the U.S. government
were not committed to an inclusive society. In
1948, Killens moved to New York and attended writing classes at
Columbia University and New York University. He met such
influential figures as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and W.E.B.
Du Bois. While working on his fiction, he wrote regular articles
for the leftist newspaper Freedom (1951-1955). During this
period Killens developed definitive views on the purpose of the
novel. He thus attacked Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a
"decadent mixture . . . a vicious distortion of Negro
life." Killens believed that literature should be created
to improve society. "Art is functional. A Black work of art
helps the liberation or hinders it." Killens
found other young writers with a similar perspective. With Rosa
Guy, John Henrik Clarke, and Walter Christmas, Killens founded
the Harlem Writers Guild in the early 1950s. Youngblood (1954)
was the fist novel published by a guild member. The novels
treats the struggles of a southern black family in early
twentieth-century Georgia. With critical praise of the work,
Killens toured to speak on subjects concerning African
Americans. Some of the better known members and alumnae of
the Guild include Maya Angelou, Ossie Davis, Audrey Lorde,
Terry McMillan, Lon Elder III, Paule Marshal and Walter Dean
Myers. In 1955, Killens went to Alabama
to research for a screenplay on the Montgomery bus Boycott and
to visit with the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also
became close friends close friends with Malcolm X and with him
in 1964 founded the organization for Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
Black Man's Burden (1965), a collection of political essays,
documents his combination of socialist and nationalist
sentiments.
| Below: John Oliver
Killens with poet and critic Sterling Brown |
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Killens' major subject is
the violence and racism of American society, how it hinders
manhood and family. 'Sippi (1967) is about a struggle
over voting rights.
The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half
the Herd, published in 1971 and nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize, satirizes middle-class African-American values, and was
the basis for Cotillion, a play produced 1975 in New York
City. Killens' other plays include Ballad of the Winter
Soldiers (1964), with Loften Mitchell) and Lower Than the
Angels (1965). he wrote two screenplays, Odds Against
Tomorrow (1959, with Nelson Gidding) and Slaves (1969, with
Herbert J. Biberman and Alida Sherman). He also edited The Trial
Record of Denmark Vesey (1972) and A man Ain't Nothing but a
man: The Adventures of John Henry (1975). |
By
the mid-1960s, Killens had already started a string of positions
as a writer-in-residence: at Fisk University (1965-1968),
Columbia University (1970-1973), Howard University (1971-1972),
Bronx Community College (1979-1981), and Medgar Evers College in
the City University of New York (1981-1987). Other awards
included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
(1980) and a lifetime Achievement Award from the before Columbus
Foundation (1986). Until his death, Killens continued continued
to contribute articles to leading magazines such as Ebony,
Black World, The Black Aesthetic, and African
Forum.
The Great Black Russian: a Novel on the Life and
Times of Alexander Pushkin was published posthumously in
1988 Source: Encyclopedia of
African-American Culture and History (Vol. 3)*
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Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety-Ay: How Satisfactch'll Is Education
Today? Toward a New Song of the South
Dr. Joyce E. King on Black
Education and New Paradigms
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music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
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The State of African Education
(April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa
Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and
accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A teacher,
psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7
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Part
3 of 7 /
Part 4 of 7
/
Part 5 of 7 /
Part 6 of 7 /
Part 7 of 7
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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
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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Basil Davidson
obituary—By Victoria Brittain—9 July 2010—Davidson [(9
November 1914 – 9 July 2010) a
British
historian, writer and
Africanist] was enthused early on by the end of British
colonialism and the prospects of pan-Africanism in the
1960s, and he wrote copiously and with warmth about newly
independent
Ghana and its leader, Kwame Nkrumah. He went to work for
a year at the University of Accra in 1964. Later he threw
himself into the reporting of the African liberation wars in
the Portuguese colonies, particularly in Angola,
Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. . . . In the
1980s, with most of the African liberation wars now
won—except for South Africa's— Davidson turned much of his
attention to more theoretical questions about the future of
the nation state in Africa. He remained a passionate
advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1988 he made a long and
dangerous journey into Eritrea, writing a persuasive defence
of the nationalists' right to independence from
Ethiopia, and an equally eloquent attack on the
revolutionary leader Colonel Mengistu and the regime that
had overthrown Haile Selassie.
Guardian |
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Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
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West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
By
Basil Davidson
This
book is excellent as an introduction to West
African history. It begins with a brief
overview of region's history from earliest
times but the focus of the book is on the
thousand years between the 9th and the 19th
centuries A.D.
Comprehensive overviews of the political
histories of both well and little known West
African states and cities are recounted.
These include the histories of the empires
of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Kanem-Bornu, Oyo,
Benin, Dahomey and Asante. Accounts of
several other smaller states are also
detailed such as the Hausa city states, the
Wollof kingdom, the Bambara states, the
Niger Delta trading states, the Fulani
states of Futa Jallon and Futa Toro, the
important cities of Timbuktu, Jenne and Gao
and several others. |
Apart from these
political histories, Davidson also provides an insight
into the social fabric of West Africa, especially at the
dawn of the 17th century. He describes economic features
(like trade items, routes, currencies etc), religion,
arts and learning in the region, social stratification
and dominant trends. These provide the reader with a
real "feel" of the society at that time. Like all of
Davidson's writings on this subject matter, this book
dispels the myth that Africa had no history or
civilization before contact with Europe. It is clear,
concise and very easy to read.
D. E. Chukwumerije
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African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
By Basil Davidson
The best general acount
of the Atlantic slave trade. It is the story
of one of the most enormous crimes in all
human history. Basil Davidson states that by
examining three important areas of Africa in
the history of slavery 'against a general
background of their time and circumstance'
he was taking 'a fresh look at the oversea
slave trade, the steady year-by-year export
of African laborr to the West Indies and the
Americas that marked the greatest and most
fateful migration—forced migration—in the
history of man. This book is about the
course and consequences of this long
African-European connection that endured
from the fifteenth century to the
nineteenth. It makes an answer to three
vital questions: What kind of contact was
this with Europe and America? How did the
experience affect Africa? Why did it end in
colonial invasion and conquest? |
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John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
This
video chronicles the life and times of the
noted African-American historian, scholar
and Pan-African activist John Henrik Clarke
(1915-1998). Both a biography of Clarke
himself and an overview of 5,000 years of
African history, the film offers a
provocative look at the past through the
eyes of a leading proponent of an
Afrocentric view of history. From ancient
Egypt and Africa’s other great empires,
Clarke moves through Mediterranean
borrowings, the Atlantic slave trade,
European colonization, the development of
the Pan-African movement, and present-day
African-American history. |
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Ancient African Nations
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updated 12 June 2008 |
