considered too objective, critics thought Infants
was overly subjective and Thurman overly argu-
mentative. Yet critics also praised Thurman for
his frank discussion of black society. Martha Gru-
ening wrote in the Saturday Review of Literature,
“No other Negro writer has so unflinchingly told
the truth about color snobbery within the color
line, the ins and outs of ‘passing’ and other vaga-
ries of prejudice. [Infants of the Spring’s] quota of
truth is just that which Negro writers, under the
stress of propaganda and counter propaganda,
have generally and quite understandably omitted
from their picture.”
Thurman’s third novel, The Interne (1934), was
a collaboration with Abraham L. Furman, whom
he had met while working at Macaulay’s Publish-
ing Company. The novel portrays medical life at
an urban hospital as seen through the eyes of a
young white doctor, Carl Armstrong. In his first
three months at the hospital, during which he wit-
nesses staff members’ corrupt behavior and comes
in contact with bureaucratic red tape, Armstrong’s
ideals are shattered. Although he participates in
the prevailing vices, he soon realizes his own loss
of ethics and saves himself by taking his practice
to the country. Critics could not agree whether
Thurman’s accounts of medical wrongdoing were
based in fact; many claimed that the novel had no
semblance of reality, while others stressed that in-
cidents were actual, if unusual. Wallace Thurman
died on December 21, 1934, at age 32.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blackmore, David. “ ‘Something... Too Preposter-
ous and Complex to Be Recognized or Consid-
ered’: Same-Sex Desire and Race in Infants of the
Spring.” Soundings 80, no. 4 (1997): 519–29.
Gaither, Renoir W. “The Moment of Revision: A Re-
appraisal of Wallace Thurman’s Aesthetics in The
Blacker the Berry and Infants of the Spring.” Col-
lege Language Association Journal 37, no. 1 (1993):
81–93.
Ganter, Granville. “Decadence, Sexuality, and the Bo-
hemian Vision of Wallace Thurman.” MELUS 28,
no. 2 (2003): 83–104.
Glick, Elisa F. “Harlem’s Queer Dandy: African-
American Modernism and the Artifice of Black-
ness.” Modern Fiction Studies 49, no. 3 (2003):
414–442.
Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn. “Portrait of Wallace
Thurman.” In Remembering the Harlem Renais-
sance, edited by Cary D. Wintz, 289–312. New
York: Garland, 1996.
Hughes, Langston. “Harlem Literati in the Twenties.”
In Remembering the Harlem Renaissance, edited
by Cary D. Wintz, 393–394. New York: Garland,
1996.
Silberman, Seth Clark. “Looking for Richard Bruce
Nugent and Wallace Henry Thurman: Reclaiming
Black Male Same-Sexualities in the New Negro
Movement.” In Process 1 (1996): 53–73.
Lawrence T. Potter, Jr.Till, Emmett (1941–1955)
The story of Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till is the tragic
story of a 14-year-old black Chicago youth who
was brutally lynched in Money, Mississippi, on Au-
gust 28, 1955. His so-called crime was to whistle at
Carolyn Bryant, a 22-year-old white woman, the
night before. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and his
stepbrother, J. W. Milam, sought revenge for the
youth’s naive act of indiscretion. Till’s naiveté lay
in the fact that, as a young northern boy, he did not
understand southern etiquette, which demanded
that white women must be protected from any and
all infractions or violations by black males, whom
southerners stereotypically perceived as black
brutes. Till and his innocent whistling act fit the
profile. What makes Till’s murder so poignant is
the victimization of a youth who brought to the
scenario his innocence as a child and the naiveté
of a northerner.
Throughout the last half of the 20th century,
many black writers made Till’s murder a central
theme in their works. Writers often used the gro-
tesque image of his bloated face and body lying in
an open coffin as demanded by his mother as the
frontispiece for works produced during the CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT of the 1950s and the 1960s. In
such works, Till’s plight evoked both empathy for
the murdered child and commitment from black
adults, who collectively vowed never to allow such498 Till, Emmett