Crazy Kill (1959), The Big Gold Dream (1960), All
Shot Up (1960), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965),
Blind Man with a Pistol (1969), and Plan B (post-
humously published in 1993). His two detectives,
Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, were a
hit on the big screen when the movie adaptation of
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) became the proto-
type for a flood of blaxploitation films during the
early 1970s. He was also recognized as a forefather
of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT by burgeoning black
talents ISHMAEL REED and JOHN A. WILLIAMS.
Bringing his prolific career to an end, Himes
wrote two autobiographies, The Quality of Hurt
(1972) and My Life of Absurdity (1976). Today, the
legacy of Himes’s black noir vision lives on in WAL-
TER MOSLEY’s Easy Rawlins books. Still, Himes’s
life and his art demand greater recognition as one
of the most perceptive records of the race, class,
and gender conflicts of 20th-century American
literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fabre, Michel. From Harlem to Paris: Black American
Writers in France, 1840–1980. Urbana: University
Illinois Press, 1993.
Margolies, Edward, and Michel Fabre. The Several
Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1997.
Milliken, Stephen F. Chester Himes: A Critical Ap-
praisal. Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1976.
Muller, Gilbert H. Chester Himes. Boston: Twayne,
1989.
Reed, Ishmael. “Chester Himes: Writer.” Black World
(March 1972): 23–38, 83–86.
Sallis, James. Chester Himes: A Life. New York: Walker
and Company, 2000.
Soitos, Stephen. The Blues Detective. Amherst: Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press, 1996.
Brian Dolinar
historically black colleges and
universities (HBCUs)
The Higher Education Act of 1965 defines his-
torically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)
as “any historically black college or university
that was established prior to 1964, whose prin-
ciple mission was, and is, the education of black
Americans.” From the establishment of the first
HBCU in 1837, the Institute for Colored Youth
(the present-day Cheyney University of Penn-
sylvania), these institutions of higher learning
provided training for African Americans when
none was to be found in the American univer-
sity system. Before the Supreme Court’s decision
in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overruled
its Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) “separate but equal”
decision, HBCUs were virtually the only viable
choice for higher education accessible to most Af-
rican Americans.
State governments, philanthropic and religious
societies, African-American organizations, and
individuals founded many HBCUs just after the
Civil War. At the turn of the 20th century, BOOKER
T. WASHINGTON and W. E. B. DUBOIS debated what
the mission of these universities should be: voca-
tional or professional. Irrespective of their identi-
fied mission and curriculum, these institutions,
some built on former slave plantations, offered
and continue to offer culturally and historically
rich links to past struggles as well as connections
to a legacy of African-American intellectual pur-
suits. They have produced a vast number of Afri-
can-American professionals who would have been
denied opportunities elsewhere. Today, HBCUs
stand as “reservoirs of culture, tradition, and op-
portunity” for many minority, and an increas-
ing number of nonminority, students. The 107
HBCUs currently in existence are located mostly
in the southeastern United States.
Although historically most HBCUs have not
established formal creative writing programs,
they continue to produce and nurture African-
American writers. For example, in 1966, JOHN O.
KILLENS organized, at Fisk University, the first Na-
tional Black Writers Conference, which brought
together artists such as AMIRI BARAKA, NELLA LAR-
SON, and HAKI R. MADHUBUTI for a series of work-
shops. Contact with these artists influenced NIKKI
GIOVANNI, then a student at Fisk. Other notable lit-
erary personalities who are the products of HBCUs
include DuBois, ALAIN LOCKE, LANGSTON HUGHES,historically black colleges and universities 249