Black Fiction's great griot master: John Oliver Killens (1916-1987) ushered in a new era of the African American novel in 1954 and subsequently mentored a whole generation of black fiction talent. So why is most of his work out of print?

JOHN OLIVER KILLENS's large, multilayered, debut novel, Youngblood, was published in May 1954, the same month that the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. As we note the 50th anniversary of that landmark act of jurisprudence, compelling reasons exist to remember and to celebrate Killens as one of our most important cultural figures.

Taken as a whole, the fiction of John Oliver Killens anticipates the drama of playwright August Wilson, who is approaching the conclusion of a cycle of 10 plays, each designed to illustrate African American life in one of the decades of the 20th century. Similarly, most of Killens's major works connect to a particular era and set of concerns in African American history. Unfortunately, most of his books are out of print. Great Gittin' Up Morning (1980) explores the antebellum period through the eyes of a fictionalized Denmark Vesey and his partners in a slave rebellion that occurred in South Carolina in 1822. (The story is geared primarily toward younger readers, but it packs a punch comparable to Black Thunder, Arna Bontemps's excellent 1936 novel about the Gabriel Prosser insurrection.) Killens's last published novel, Great Black Russian, imagines the life of Alexander Pushkin, who was a contemporary of Vesey on the world scene, but the crucial action and drama in the novel unfold in the decade or so following Vesey's death. A Man Ain't Nothin' but a Man, spun around the legend of John Henry, examines the struggle of African Americans--and the working class overall--in the 19th century, post Emancipation era.

Youngblood (1954) is a book about struggle on lira Crow terrain toward black self-determination and economic justice over the first third of the 20th century. And Then We Heard the Thunder (1963) is easily the best treatment we have in fiction of the African American military experience during World War II. 'Sippi (1967) dramatically chronicles developments from the onset of the modern Civil Rights Movement to the dawn of the Black Power Era. The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd ((1971) depicts cultural politics in the post-Malcolm period before 1970. In addition to his novels, Killens wrote numerous short stories, plays and scripts; he was the first African American to receive solo screenplay credit for a Hollywood movie, the 1959 Odds Against Tomorrow.

Killens articulated African American heroism, particularly within a family or community context, and offered a set of values he felt was liberating. Black nationalism is always a feature of his work; the community-oriented activism and armed self defense in some of his portrayals make this clear. But ever present is transformation.

Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Margaret Walker were literary influences he always acknowledged. His students included novelists Tina McElroy Ansa, Bebe Moore Campbell, Arthur Flowers, Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Nunez and Terry McMillan. All re calla soft-spoken man who was generous with his time, praise and humor. He always talked about the need for artists to be politically engaged and responsible--both in their craft and their broader lives. His own life was a fine example.

In 1950, Killens became the founding chairman of the Harlem Writers Guild, a still-active workshop whose members have authored hundreds of books and sponsored numerous activities to promote African American literature. A couple of years later, he and close friend John Henrik Clarke assisted Malcolm X with the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Although Killens remained involved with various political efforts into the 1980s--the FBI kept a file on him for five decades--he devoted an increasing amount of time to his work as an educator and cultural organizer. He held appointments at the New School for Social Research, Fisk University, Columbia University, Howard University, Bronx Community College and Medgar Evers College in his home borough of Brooklyn. He generally insisted on running a writing workshop for the community in addition to his responsibilities to the students enrolled on campus.

Despite the great demand upon his time, Killens, naturally gregarious, loved to draw artists and intellectuals around him for discussions about literature and politics. In conjunction with his teaching appointments, he directed a series of writers' conferences between 1965 and 1986 that serve as milestones in African American literary history. That tradition continues with the biennial National Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, which this year presented a tribute and symposium to Killens.

Killens was unwavering in his love for black people. We should continue to return that love with our remembrance.

A Killens Sampler

Black Man's Burden Simon & Schuster, December 1970 ISBN 0-671-20551-X

The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half the Heard Foreword by Alexs D. Pate Coffee House Press, Black Arts Movement Series, June 2002 ISBN 1-566-89119-1

Youngblood University of Georgia Press (reissue edition) April 2000 ISBN 0-820-32201-6

Keith Gilyard, author of Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens (Wayne State University Press, May 2003), is a professor of English at Penn State and worked with Killens for six years on the faculty of CUNY's Medgar Evers College.