in which Hernton interprets ALICE WALKER’s The
COLOR PURPLE (1982) as a slave narrative. Another
chapter is one of the first serious assessments of
ANN PETRY’s novel The STREET (1946), which Hern-
ton considers a pivotal work of African-American
women’s fiction.
Although lauded as a feminist by female liter-
ary critics and readers, Hernton preferred to think
of himself as a “non-sexist male” for refusing to
tolerate bias based on race, class, or gender. This
point of view appears in his most famous book,
Sex and Racism in America (1965), a “social study”
that places black women in the “lowest status
group” in American society, designating them
“an oppressed class.” The book’s central premise
is that “[A]ll race relations tend to be, however
subtle, sex relations” (6). This statement echoes
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON’s idea that “in the core of
the heart of the American race problem the sex
factor is rooted,” a quotation from Along This Way
that serves as the epigraph to Sex and Racism in
America. Hernton made a major contribution to
African-American literary and cultural studies as
an early advocate of the womanist movement, a
developer of the Black Arts Movement, an innova-
tive teacher and researcher, a prescient commen-
tator on the connections between sex and racism,
and a creative writer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hernton, Calvin C. “Chattanooga Black Boy: Identity
and Racism.” In Names We Call Home: Autobiogra-
phy on Racial Identity, edited by Becky Thompson
and Sangeeta Tyagi, 139–154. New York: Rout-
ledge, 1995.
———. The Coming of Chronos to the House of Night-
song: An Epical Narrative of the South. New York:
Interim Books, 1964.
———. Coming Together: Black Power, White Hatred,
and Sexual Hang-Ups. New York: Random House,
1971.
———. The Red Crab Gang and Black River Poems.
Berkeley, Calif.: Ishmael Reed Publishing Co.,
1999.
———. Scarecrow. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1974.
———. Sex and Racism in America. New York: Grove
Press, 1965.
———. The Sexual Mountain and Black Women
Writers: Adventures in Sex, Literature, and Real
Life. New York: Anchor Press, 1987.
———. “Umbra: A Personal Recounting.” African
American Review 27, no. 4 (1993): 579–584.
Lauri RameyHimes, Chester (1909–1984)
One of the most prolific writers among the gen-
eration of black authors to emerge from the 1940s
fascination with the “protest novel,” Chester Himes
is best known today as the inventor of black noir
fiction. Born in 1909, the “third generation” out
of slavery, Himes was reared in the South and mi-
grated north with his family to Cleveland, where
he spent his adolescence. Learning his way on the
city streets, he gravitated to the Scovil District, a
haven for gangsters and speakeasies during Prohi-
bition. It was here that he would earn his moniker,
“Little Katzi,” beginning as a gambler and pimp
and soon graduating to armed robbery, a crime for
which he was sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary
for 20 to 25 years.
In prison Himes passed the time reading Black
Mask, the slick magazine where the noir stories of
Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler first
appeared. Certain that he could write his own
crime stories, since he was surrounded by crimi-
nals, Himes began writing prison stories that he
sold to the nationally circulated Esquire magazine.
One of these, “To What Red Hell,” was about the
Easter Sunday fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary
that killed 330 prisoners and fueled the public
outcry that moved legislators to reduce long-
term sentencing. Himes was eventually paroled
from prison after seven and a half years, and he
reentered society with the hopes of publishing his
prison novel and becoming a writer.
In 1936, he returned to Cleveland as the indus-
trial city was in the throes of the depression. For a
black ex-con, finding work was nearly impossible.
He soon received a Works Project AdministrationHimes, Chester 247