Despite his stellar performance on the test (he
scores 480 points out of 500) and impeccable
military experience, Freeman, deemed incapable
of working in the field, where, because of his as-
sumed intellectual inferiority, he might jeopardize
his white colleagues, was assigned to the main of-
fice where he could be watched. When the general
asks the director of the training school to describe
Freeman, the director responds, “Well, slow-wit-
ted, a plodder.... Only in athletics does he seem
to do things naturally. Physically, he could be ex-
pected to react instantly and efficiently, but in a
mental crisis, I don’t know” (29). Freeman is made
the chief of the top-secret reproduction section—
the operator of the mimeograph (ditto) machine:
“being the only man in the section, he was little
more than the highest paid reproduction clerk in
Washington. Nevertheless, he was the Only Negro
officer in the CIA” (40).
A year later Freeman is promoted to special
assistant to the director of the CIA, given a glass
suite within the director’s office, and assigned the
role of the “black and conspicuous... integrated
Negro of the Central Intelligence Agency of the
United States of American” (47). Freeman, who
successfully assumes a dual identity as Washing-
ton’s Uncle Tom (see SAMBO AND UNCLE TOM) dur-
ing the week and as an urban hipster and playboy
with an apartment and lover in Harlem on the
weekends, uses this role as window dressing to his
advantage, endearing himself to the general, who
uses him as an administrative assistant and global
travel partner. Remaining vigilant, Freeman de-
vours the secret reports to which he has access.
Unbeknownst to the general, Freeman carefully
observes and studies the global warfare in which
the CIA plays a major role. Consequently, Freeman
becomes a master of guerrilla warfare and eventu-
ally leaves the CIA; returns to Chicago; takes over
and organizes the gangs, particularly the Cobras;
trains them to become freedom fighters; and leads
them into urban revolt.
Greenlee’s protagonist, Dan Freeman, is the
literary opposite of RALPH ELLISON’s protagonist
in INVISIBLE MAN. In his duplicitous role at the
CIA, he masters and plays well Ellison’s grandfa-
ther’s advice to the naive protagonist: “our life is a
war.... Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I
want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine
’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction”
(Ellison, 16). Freeman seems to accept this advice
as a given, and, though some merely saw his invis-
ibility as the equivalent of his identity as a ghost,
no more than a “spook,” a racial slur in black ver-
nacular, he is anything but naive. He is a warrior
who, though viewed as an apparition, not only is
committed to the destruction of oppressive white
society but also works to ensure it. In the end, no
one, not even blacks, would believe a black man
was capable of such an elaborate scheme, which,
in the novel, the FBI calls “the most sophisticated
underground in the Western Hemisphere, the cre-
ation of an expert” (242).
Greenlee is also the author of Blues for an Afri-
can Princess, a collection of poems; Baghdad Blues,
a novel; and Ammunition: Poetry and Other Raps.
First published in London, perhaps because of the
sensitive themes, The Spook Who Sat by the Door
won the London Sunday Times Book of the Year
Award in 1969. Ivan Dixon produced the movie
version of it in 1973.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage
Books, 1989.
Greenlee, Sam. The Spook Who Sat by the Door. New
York: Bantam Books, 1969.
Wilfred D. SamuelsGriggs, Sutton E. (1872–1933)
Novelist, essayist, orator, and Baptist pastor, Sut-
ton Elbert Griggs was the first of five children of
Allen, a prominent Baptist minister in the South,
and Emma Griggs in Chatfield, Texas, on June 19,- Profoundly influenced by his Baptist father,
Griggs was baptized in 1885. He studied at Bishop
College at Houston, Texas, and later earned his
doctor of divinity degree at Richmond Theological
Institute in 1893. While serving as a deacon at the
First Baptist Church of Berkley, Virginia, he mar-
ried Emma J. Williams in 1897, who became his
lifelong companion, and began to write fiction.
214 Griggs, Sutton E.