typed urbanites such as Bubber Brown, a would-
be private detective; Jinx Jenkins, his friend; Spider
Webb, a numbers runner; Doty Hicks, a drug ad-
dict; and Samuel Crouch, the undertaker. Placed
together in Harlem, these characters create a med-
ley of vision, intrigue, and laughter.
From the opening pages of The Conjure-Man
Dies, Fisher presents readers, as did CARL VAN
VECHTEN in NIGGER HEAVEN and CLAUDE MCKAY
in HOME TO HARLEM, with a panoramic view of
the New Negro’s black mecca, particularly the
night street life scene that “sprouted... like fields
in spring,” as camel hair-clad men and musk-
rat-wrapped women eagerly seek “the voracious
dance halls” (3). Exemplary is the Hip-Toe Club
on Lenox Avenue, a cabaret frequented by dandies,
dope users and peddlers, and number runners,
where blues and jazz beat the rhythms and blare
the exotic sounds of the Jazz Age. Fisher’s descrip-
tion of this sexually liberated, primitive setting
also resonates with NELLA LARSEN’s more middle-
class oriented novels, Quicksand (1928) and Pass-
ing (1929). Fisher writes,
In the narrow strip of interspace, a tall brown
girl was doing a song and dance to the ab-
sorbed delight of the patrons seated nearest
her. Her flam chiffon dress, normally long and
flowing, had been caught up bit by bit in her
palms, which rested nonchalantly on her hips,
until now it was not so much a dress as a sash,
gathered about her waist. (102)By making the central figure of his novel a con-
jure man, whom he ironically pairs with a formally
trained medical doctor, Fisher records, preserves,
and to some degree celebrates black folk culture
as did CHARLES CHESNUTT in The CONJURE WOMAN
AND OTHER STORIES, and as ZORA NEALE HURSTON,
LANGSTON HUGHES, WALLACE THURMAN, and ERIC
WALROND and other HARLEM RENAISSANCE lumi-
naries, were interested in doing. In The Conjure-
Man Dies, Fisher’s Hicks explains that he has gone
to see Frimbo, known for his potent spells, because
his brother’s former wife had hired Frimbo to kill
Spat, her former abusive husband who is also
Hicks’s brother. Doty explains: “Frimbo’s a conjure
man. He can put spells on folks. One kind o’spell
to keep ’em from dyin’.... Another kind to set ’em
to dyin—misery all in through here, coughin’ spell,
night sweats, chills and fever, and wastin’ away.
That’s what he was doin’ to Spats” (113). Frimbo’s
urban city dweller customers all believe in the
power of the African traditional religion practiced
by Frimbo’s family in Africa and passed down to
him as his inheritance.
For the most part, The Conjure-Man Dies
was well received. ARNA BONTEMPS and COUNTEE
CULLEN adapted it for the stage as a Federal The-
atre Project. It is considered a forerunner to the
detective novels of CHESTER HIMES and contempo-
rary novelist WALTER MOSLEY. According to Arthur
P. Davis, The Conjure Man Dies is a conventional
thriller that “has all of the customary trappings of
the type: the red herrings, the false starts, the least
likely suspect, and a team of detectives—one ama-
teur, the other official police” (103).BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower, Afro-American
Writers 1900–1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1981.
Fisher, Rudolph. The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery
Tale of Dark Harlem. New York: Arno Press and
The New York Times, 1971.
Wilfred D. SamuelsConjure Woman and Other Stories, The
Charles W. Chesnuttt (1899)
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT published “The Goophered
Grapevine,” his first short story, in the prestigious
Atlantic Monthly in 1877. Twenty-two years later,
it became the lead story in his first collection, The
Conjure Woman and Other Stories (1899). William
Dean Howells favorably reviewed the collection,
but Chesnutt’s African-American identity was not
immediately revealed. That Chesnutt, who saw
literature as “a weapon that could defeat racism”
(Gates, 116), set out to accomplish his established
goal of using literature as a venue for moral prog-
ress in America with the stories in The Conjure
Woman and Other Stories is readily visible.Conjure Woman and Other Stories, The 115