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Born in Chatfield, Texas on 19 June 1872, the son of an ex-slave and a mother whose name is unrecorded, Sutton Elbert Griggs attended public school in Dallas, before graduating from Bishop College in Marshall, Texas and Richmond Theological Seminary in Virginia. Following his ordination, Griggs assumed a pastorate at the First Baptist Church in Berkeley, Virginia, for two years, during which time he married Emma J. Williams, who was working as a public school teacher. At the age of twenty four, Griggs moved to Tennessee, where he became the corresponding secretary of the National Baptist Convention and pastor of the First Baptist Church of East Nashville. During his thirty-one years in Tennessee, Griggs worked tirelessly as a "race man," serving as state secretary for the Niagara Movement (a precursor to the NAACP), and organizer of the National Public Welfare League, a society that encouraged cooperation between the races and supported a philosophy of racial uplift for African Americans. In his later years, Griggs returned to Texas, where he continued his work with civic and religious institutions until his death in 1933. However, it is his work as an orator and writer of more than thirty religious and political texts, autobiographical essays, and sermons, each analyzing the problems caused by racial differences in America that make Griggs such a dynamic and influential figure in African American culture.1
Griggs' Imperium In Imperio (1899) is considered by many to be the first political novel written by an African American.2 Set in the Reconstruction South, Imperium tells the story of two young boys, dark skinned Belton Piedmont, and mulatto Bernard Belgrave. The narrative follows the disparate paths of each boy in their development to adulthood through three distinct sections. The first section (chapters 1-8) reveals the formal education of Belton and Bernard and shows how a warped perception and valuation of skin color among whites affects the treatment of each boy and limits their opportunities for economic, social, and political advancement. The second sections (chapters 9-14) examine Belton and Bernard's foray into the world of business, politics, and romance, each situation influenced by the suffocating and inescapable conditions concomitant with living in a racist white society. The novel's final sections (chapters 15-20) document the existence of a secret...