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Books by Sam
Greenlee
The Spook Who Sat By the Door /
Ammunition! Poetry and Other Raps
Baghdad Blues: A Novel /
Blues for an African Princess
"Be-bop man/be-bop woman" 1968-1993: Poetry and
other raps
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Sam Greenlee's Book
Is
Still Making a Statement
By DeWayne
Wickham
WASHINGTON – Thirty years after his movie,
The
Spook Who Sat by the Door was bum-rushed out of inner-city
theaters, Sam Greenlee is still an angry
man.
Greenlee’s film was drawn from his book by the same name,
which was published in 1969 – four years before his movie was
released. Written in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and at the end
of a decade in which race riots threatened to spawn on
the streets of America the kind of guerrilla warfare that now rages in Iraq,
Greenlee’s book
was not well received by this nation’s ruling class. As
quickly as it showed
up in 1973, it disappeared from the big screen.
“The film was suppressed by the FBI. It was only out there
four months,”
Greenlee said Wednesday after a special viewing of his movie at
the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference. A couple
hundred people – most of them old enough to have seen Greenlee’s film when it
was in theaters –
watched it in a cavernous ballroom of the new Washington
convention center.
If you’re too young to have seen the movie during its original
release, or too
uninspired to have read the book,
The Spook Who Sat by the Door is about a black CIA agent who masters the skills of a
spy and then uses
then to lead a black guerrilla movement in this country. While
the fighting pits
blacks against whites, Dan Freeman – the CIA agent-turned-black-revolutionary
– tells one of his men that they are fighting for
“freedom,” not against “whitey.”
If the film’s plot makes you uncomfortable, that’s exactly
what it was
intended to do to white folks back in 1973. It was part of a
genre of black
protest movies that were lumped together with other black films
of that era. Called
“blaxploitation,” these movies have been widely dismissed as
a form of black slapstick – movies that glorify bad behavior
or trivialize inner city life.
But Greenlee’s film doesn’t fit that mold. Nor do many others,
like the 1971 film
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Melvin Van Peebles X-rated movie about a black sex
performer who kills two cops after they brutalize a black boy;
or
Cornbread, Earl and Me, the 1975 story of a black
high school basketball star who is mistakenly killed by a cop.
Wedged in
between the release of those films were movies like Gordon’s
War, in which four black Vietnam veterans join together to
rid an inner city neighborhood of drug pushers; and
The Legend of Nigger
Charley, the tale of three runaway slaves who outwit the
bounty hunter sent to return them to captivity.
These movies were intended to make political statements, as much
as they were meant to entertain black folks. They contained
not-so-subtle messages
about black rage at a time when white indifference to the
on-going oppression
of blacks was widespread. And some of them – like
The
Spook Who Sat by the Door– may have been too controversial to stay in theaters very long.
What’s certain is that the fire that burned in Greenlee’s
gut when he produced his book and movie still rage inside him today.
“I’m a street dude who went to three fine universities,” Greenlee
said of himself to those who hung around to hear him after the screening
of his movie. “If I had been praised and offered an Academy
Award (for
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
) I’d have to look at myself and figure out
what I did wrong,” he said.
Like Oscar Micheaux, the largely forgotten black filmmaker who produced
44 feature films in the first half of the 20th century, Greenlee
thinks that if black stories are going to be told in the cinema
– and told well – those movies must be produced by blacks.
“If you want to make black films,” he said, “you’ve got to have black money.”
White money brings with it
white control, Greenlee said.
And in far too many instances today, white control of black
movies has produced a new genre of blaxploitation films –
movies that are largely devoid of any meaningful message.
Source:
Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com. DeWayne
Wickham
is a columnist for USA Today and the Gannett News Service, which
distributes his commentaries to more than 130 daily newspapers. He's a
former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, and a
scholar-in-residence and distinguished professor of journalism at
Delaware State University.
posted 25 September 2003 * *
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Sam
Greenlee—novelist, poet, screenwriter,
journalist, teacher and talk show host—was born 13 July 1930 in Chicago.
He attended Chicago public schools. At age fifteen, Greenlee
participated in his first sit-in and walked his first picked line. His
social activism continues. In 1952, Greenlee received his B.S. in
political science from the University of Wisconsin and the following
year attended law school. He transferred to the University of Chicago to
study international relations from 1954 to 1957. In 1957, he began a
seven-year career with the U.S. Information Agency as a foreign services
officer, serving in Iraq, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Greece, and in 1958
he was awarded the Meritorious Service Award for bravery during the
Baghdad revolution.
Greenlee's novel
The Spook Who Sat By the Door, was published in 1968.
Prize-winning its fictionalization of an urban-based war for African
American liberation became an underground favorite. Greenlee co-wrote a
screenplay adaptation of the novel, and in 1973
The Spook Who Sat by
the Door was released on film. The film was an overnight success
when it was released but was unexpectedly taken out of distribution.
Greenlee has written numerous novels, stage plays, screenplays and
poems. He moved back to Chicago after several years of voluntary exile
in Spain and West Africa and is hosted a radio talk show program. He is
presently working on his autobiography.
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Sam Greenlee
(born July 13, 1930) is an African American writer,
best known for his novel The
Spook Who Sat by the Door, first published in London by Allison
& Busby in March 1969, which was made into the 1973
movie of the same name and won
The Sunday Times Book of the Year award. Other
works include
Baghdad Blues, a 1976 novel based on his
experiences traveling in
Iraq in the 1950s, Blues for an African
Princess, a 1971 collection of poems, and
Ammunition, a 1975 collection of poems. In 1990
Greenlee was the
Illinois
poet laureate.
Born in
Chicago, Greenlee attended the
University of Wisconsin (BS, political science,
1952) and the
University of Chicago (1954-7). He is a member
of
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. He served in
the military (1952-4), earning the rank of first
lieutenant, and subsequently worked for the
United States Information Agency, serving in
Iraq (in 1958 he was awarded the
Meritorious Service Medal for bravery during the
Baghdad revolution),
Pakistan,
Indonesia, and
Greece between 1957 and 1965. He undertook
further study (1963-4) at the
University of Thessaloniki, in Greece, where he
lived for three years.—Wikipedia
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Ammunition: Poetry and Other Raps
By Sam Greenlee
Greenlee is also
known for such works as
Blues for an African Princess
(1971), a collection of poems. His novel
Baghdad Blues (1976) and
Ammunition: Poetry and Other Raps
(1975) both deal with African
Americans’ pain, anger, and fear,
particularly that of those who are
caught up in the racism and oppression
of government agencies.
Greenlee's contributions to the literary
tradition in African American literature
have caused his readers to examine
closely the racial awareness or
unawareness within agencies and
institutions that are designed to serve
all Americans. His presentation of
African Americans’ duality and
paradoxical existence in a racist
society is still providing scholars with
text to investigate the themes of
racism. Greenlee is masterful in his
presentation of characters and
community; his work is saturated with
the African American literary tradition.—Answers |
 |
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Sam Greenlee is
relaxed. He sits lotus style on a rainbow-striped
blanket, rolling cigarettes and talking in
reflective, short streams about the rage that fueled
his 1969 underground classic The
Spook Who Sat by the Door. "I planted the seed and I'll live to
see it grow," says Greenlee. The seed was a portrait
of a black CIA agent who trains a Chicago street
gang to orchestrate a Mau Mau-style war on whitey.
Its growth was stunted, Greenlee has long contended,
by a campaign to keep the 1973 film version of the
book out of theaters. "They haven't discouraged me,"
says Greenlee, 63. "I'm old but I'm not tired. I'm
satisfied with my career, I've done the right
thing."
Growing up in
the 30s and 40s in west Woodlawn, Greenlee lived an
"idyllic" childhood filled with Sunday school, Boy
Scouts, and the rural, southern values of his
parents. He went to Englewood High and earned a
track scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in
1948. He began a graduate degree in international
relations at the University of Chicago. "I went to
two white, brainwashing institutions. But I'm the
black dog that didn't fall for Pavlov's scam," he
says with a chuckle.
Greenlee joined
the foreign service in 1957. "I wanted to see the
world," he says, stroking his silver beard. "Baghdad
was my first post; they were having a revolution. I
was in Pakistan and Greece while both countries were
having a coup. What I've lived is far more exciting
than anything I could make up."
After eight
years, he left the foreign service but stayed on the
Greek island of Mykonos, where he began writing his
first novel. "I never could write while I was
surrounded by those people," he says of his
colleagues. "I was so enraged when I came home every
night. I was watching them undermine whole cultures.
The U.S. is the biggest threat to world peace there
is."—the
relaxed rage of Sam Greenlee
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Baghdad Blues
The Revolution That Brought Saddam
Hussein to Power
By Sam Greenlee
This book is based on the real life
experience of a black man posted to
Baghdad in the late 1950s and employed
by the US Information Bureau. His white
colleagues are totally out of touch with
the emerging political unrest protesting
the corrupt royalist regime and when the
revolution erupts, the US embassy is
shocked. The king it supports is killed
and the entire city of Baghdad is
plunged into political chaos and
violence. Sam Greenlee is a most
engaging story teller...a very
interesting read! Gives insight into
Saddam Hussein's ability to rise to
power given the preceding historical
events.—amazon
customer |
On YouTube
The Spook Who Sat
by the Door /
Part 2 of 11
/
Part 3 of 11 /
Part 4 of
11 /
Part 5 of 11 /
Part 6 of
11
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update 6 August 2008 |
