Overshadowed

Nashville, Tenn: The Orion Publishing Co, 1901. First edition. Very Good. Publisher's green cloth stamped in gilt and white. Octavo. 217 pp. A bit of dampstaining to cloth. Brown floral endpapers. Overall clean throughout with some marginal toning and some dustsoiling to final leaf. Occasional pencil marginalia. A Very Good copy of this rare novel by an innovative Black author.

Sutton E. Griggs (1872 - 1933) is best known for his utopian novel Imperium in Imperio (1899), in which he imagines a Black shadow government within the United States that aims to establish a separatist society in Texas. The novel, which has been called a precursor (truncated) to Afrofuturism, uses the imagined government (the Imperium) to explore the merits of Black nationalism; Griggs ultimately argues for the importance of an egalitarian integrated state above an all-Black society. Though not as imaginative as Imperium in Imperio, the present work addresses similar concerns about governmental power and the preservation of Black culture under a racist state, ending with the protagonist finally giving up on society and fleeing to the sea. Overshadowed is a social drama centering on Astral Herndon, a young Black man; his romance with Erma Wysong, a mixed race Black woman; and the trial of Erma's brother, John, who stands accused of murdering a white union organizer who denied him membership on the basis of his race. The story explores colorism; race and romance (particularly within the social structure of a Black church); and the dynamics between a majority Black community in the southern United States and the class of white politicians, police, and other local leaders that ruled over it. In the spirit of Griggs' earlier novel, Overshadowed ends with a grief-stricken Astral, following Erma's death, abandoning the United States and taking to the sea with their son. On the deck of the ship, he announces, "I renounce all citizenship in all lands whatsoever, and constitute myself a citizen of the ocean...until such time as the shadows which now envelope the darker races in all lands shall have passed away, away and away." Very Good. (Inventory #: 7221)