Williams, John A[lfred] (1925–), Mississippi‐born author, reared in Syracuse, N.Y., from whose university he graduated after naval service in World War II. His novels include The Angry Ones (1960), a bitter book about Greenwich Village and the world of black musicians; Night Song (1961); Sissie (1963), presenting the sad life of an old black woman; The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), the autobiographical recollections of a dying black author in the U.S. and Europe; Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light (1969), depicting racial conflict in New York City; Captain Blackman (1972), about a black soldier wounded in the Vietnam War and the similarity of his experiences to those of blacks in earlier wars; Mothersill and the Foxes (1975), depicting a black man's experiences with love and sex; The Junior Bachelor Society (1976), about nine middle‐aged black men who grew up together and meet again after long separation; ! Click Song (1982), treating the difficulties a black man has in trying to become a successful novelist; The Berhama Account (1985), treating events on a Caribbean island; and Jacob's Ladder (1987), concerning a black U.S. military attaché trapped in a West African nation. Williams's other writings include poems; a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., The King God Didn't Save (1970); a biography of Richard Wright, The Most Native of Sons (1970); and This Is My Country Too (1965), about his experiences as a black man traveling in the U.S.

John A. Williams 1925–

Novelist and educator

Faced Threats From White Servicemen

Prize Rescinded

Novel Filmed as Miniseries

Selected Writings

Sources

Many African-American writers have addressed the theme of white racism in America and the ongoing struggles black Americans have waged against it. Few of those writers, however, have addressed the problem with the imagination of John A. Williams. In his over 20 books he has turned to a striking variety of subjects and techniques. He has written of the refined world of publishing and literature, but has also pioneered a darkly militant brand of speculative fiction that has drawn the attention of science-fiction readers. One of the senior figures in African-American fiction at the twentieth century’s end, John A. Williams seems positively youthful in the unflagging energy of his inventive powers.

Williams was born on December 5, 1925, on his grandfather’s farm near Jackson, Mississippi, but grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his parents—a laborer and a maid—lived. His neighborhood was a diverse, close-knit one, and he attended school and participated in scouting and other community activities. The Depression of the 1930s, however, broke Williams’s family apart. His parents divorced, and Williams dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy in 1943.

Faced Threats From White Servicemen

Sent to the Pacific at the height of World War II, he found that, in the still-segregated armed forces, his white countrymen could pose a more immediate danger than anything he faced from the Japanese. “The closest I came to being killed during the war,” he wrote in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, “...was when Americans, sailors, placed a .45 to my head and almost pulled the trigger.” After the war Williams was among the myriad service personnel who benefitted from the GI Bill. He returned to finish high school and went on to Syracuse University, where he graduated in 1950. He aspired to a career as a journalist.

At the time there were few black journalists working outside of black-owned publications, and Williams failed to take into account the discrimination he would encounter in the seemingly progressive publishing industry. In the early 1950s he worked variously in a steel mill, a supermarket, a public-relations firm, the CBS radio network, and a county welfare office. He moved with his wife and two children to New York in 1955 to take a marketing job with a publisher called Comet Press, but then founded a publication of his own, the Negro Market Newsletter. In the late 1950s Williams wrote for Ebony and Jet magazines, and also worked as a radio and television producer.

Prize Rescinded

All this wandering through the employment world served a purpose for Williams, who had begun to develop an ambition to write serious fiction. Many of his experiences would come to serve as raw materials for his novels, and his stint at Comet Press was lightly reworked in his first novel, One for New York, which

At a Glance…

Born December 5, 1925, near Jackson, Mississippi; raised in Syracuse, New York; son of John Henry and Ola Mae Williams; married Carolyn Clopton, 1947 (later divorced); married Lorrain Lsaac, 1965; three children, Gregory, Dennis, and Adam. Education: B.A., Syracuse University 1950; graduate study, Syracuse University, 1950-51. Military service: Served in U.S. Navy in Pacific theater, World War II.

Career: Writer. Case worker, county welfare department, Syracuse, NY, early 1950s; public relations, Doug Johnson Associates, 1952-54; staff member, CBS radio and television network, 1954-55; publicity director, Comet Press, 1955-56; publisher and editor, Negro Market Newsletter, 1956-58; European correspondent, Ebony and Jet magazines, 1958-59; radio and television announcer, public stations WOV and WNET, 1959; African correspondent, Newsweek, 1964-65; numerous visiting professorships and lectureships, 1969-93; professor of English, Rutgers University, 1979-1993.

Selected awards National Institute of Arts and Letters award, 1962; LL.D,, Southeastern Massachusetts University, 1978; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship; Lindback Award, Rutgers University, for distinguished teaching; American Book award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1983 (for Click Song).

Addresses: Home —Teaneck, NJ; Office—Department of English, Rutgers, NJ, 07102.

was published in 1960 as The Angry Ones. In the words of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, the book “tells the story of Steve Hill, an artist who fights his own personal war against American racism.” The artist works at a publishing house called Rocket Press. Williams followed up that work in 1961 with Night Song, a novel set in the jazz world with a protagonist who resembled the then recently deceased saxophonist Charlie Parker. Reviewers, in search of a work of fiction that evoked the ambition and sensibilities of jazz, generally praised the book.

Williams entered Night Song in the competition for the prestigious Prix de Rome, a literary prize that would enable the author to spend a year in Rome, Italy, with all expenses paid. The novel won the award, but controversy broke loose after the prize foundation’s director revoked Williams’s award. According to Williams, the switch came about because of suspicions that aspects of the novel—specifically an interracial marriage—reflected Williams’s own life. The eventual prize winner defended Williams in his acceptance speech, but the experience left Williams embittered. It was not long before his fiction took a more militant turn.

His third novel, Sissie, dealt with African-American family relationships, but his next book, The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), took a sharp new turn. It depicted a dying African-American journalist who uncovers a genocidal U.S. government plot, the King Alfred Plan, designed to eradicate the nation’s black population. The work, which remains perhaps Williams’s best known, drew praise for its skillful integration of historical fact into a nightmarish narrative; a section of the book detailed a mass confinement of African Americans not far removed from what had actually been provided for by the U.S. Congress in the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950.

Williams’s next two books also focused strongly on racial conflict. Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light: A Novel of Some Probability tells of a race war that erupts after an Irish policeman kills a black teenager, and 1972’s Captain Blackman, a novel with a fantasy element unusual in serious fiction, depicts a 200-year-old soldier, representative of the unheralded contributions of African-American service members in general, who has fought in all America’s wars from the Revolutionary War era to the present. By the 1970s, the soldier’s compatriots have become so disillusioned that they organize a conspiracy to infiltrate and neutralize the American military’s nuclear capability.

Novel Filmed as Miniseries

Some of Williams’s later novels expand on the themes introduced in his earlier work. Click Song, published in 1982, returns to the world of literature and publishing; Williams has said that he considers this novel his finest work. Jacob’s Ladder (1987) returns to the theme of large-scale racial conflict, portraying the plight of an African American solider sent to an African country that is trying to resist the global influence of the United States. Williams turned to more mainstream material and experienced popular success with The Junior Bachelor Society (1976), which followed the lives of nine African-American friends. The book, was made into a mini-series entitled The Sophisticated Gents by the NBC television network in 1981.

Williams has also been known for nonfiction works. Africa: Her History, Lands and People (1963) stressed the ancient roots of African cultures well before such a focus had gained general currency. This Is My Country Too (1965) collected journalistic travel narratives in which Williams exposed the realities of Southern segregation, and Minorities in the City (1975) investigated urban experiences. Williams penned biographies of two prominent African Americans: The Most Native of Sons (1970) told the life story of Richard Wright, and The King God Didn’t Save (also published in 1970) was notable and controversial for its partially negative depiction of its subject, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

With his son Dennis, a magazine editor, Williams wrote another biography, If I Stop I’ll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor (1991). He has also edited literary anthologies, written a play and a film screenplay, and published numerous short stories and journalistic pieces. Despite his Prix de Rome setback, Williams has received recognition from other literary and cultural organizations; among his many awards are those from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Institute for Arts and Letters. Between 1979 and 1993 he taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey, after which he retired to write full-time. In 1999 he was inducted into the Black Literary Hall of Fame.

Selected Writings

Novels

The Angry Ones, 1960 (later republished under original title One for New York).

Night Song, 1961.

Sissie, 1963.

The Man Who Cried I Am, 1967.

Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light: A Novel of Some Probability (capitalization of title varies), 1969.

Captain Blackman, 1972.

Mothersill and the Foxes, 1975.

The Junior Bachelor Society, 1976.

Click Song (also known as !Click Song), 1982.

The Berhama Account, 1985.

Jacob’s Ladder, 1987.

Nonfiction

Africa: Her History, Lands and People, 1963.

This Is My Country Too, 1965.

The Most Native of Sons (biography of Richard Wright), 1970.

The King God Didn’t Save (biography of Martin Luther King Jr.), 1970.

Minorities in the City, 1975.

if I Stop I’ll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor, 1991 (with Dennis Williams).

Anthologies edited

The Angry Black (reissued as Beyond the Angry Black), 1962.

Amistad I, 1970.

Amistad II, 1971.

The McGraw-Hill Introduction to Literature, 1985.

Sources

Books

Bain, Robert, et al., eds., Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary, Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

Metzger, Linda, et al., eds., Black Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors, Gale, 1989.

Ousby, Ian, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Pederson, Jay, ed., St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, St. James, 1996.

Smith, Jessie Carney, ed., Notable Black American Men, Gale, 1999.

Periodicals

Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1999, p. 17.

—James M. Manheim