John Oliver Killens
John Oliver Killens (1916-1987) was an influential African American novelist, playwright, and civil rights activist born in Macon, Georgia. He was an educated individual, having attended multiple prestigious institutions, including Howard University and New York University. Killens played a significant role in the Harlem Writers Guild as a co-founder and its first chair, and he was also involved with the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. His literary contributions include novels, essays, and screenplays, with notable works such as "And Then We Heard the Thunder" and "The Cotillion: Or, One Good Bull is Half the Herd," both of which received Pulitzer Prize nominations.
Killens' writing was deeply rooted in African American experiences, heavily influenced by stories from his paternal great-grandmother, who lived through the era of slavery. He actively participated in the civil rights movement, including the famed Montgomery bus boycott, and he held various academic positions, including a writer-in-residence at several universities. His posthumously published work, "Great Black Russian," explored the life of Alexander Pushkin and highlighted his African heritage. Throughout his career, Killens received numerous accolades, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and awards from various literary organizations, underscoring his significant impact on American literature and culture.
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John Oliver Killens
Writer
- Born: January 14, 1916
- Birthplace: Macon, Georgia
- Died: October 27, 1987
- Place of death: Brooklyn, New York
Biography
John Oliver Killens was born in 1916 in Macon, Georgia, the son of Charles Myles, Sr., and Willie Lee (Coleman) Killens. He attended Edward Waters College, Morris Brown College, Atlanta University, Howard University, Robert H. Terrell Law School, Columbia University, and New York University. He was employed at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1936 until 1942, when he began a three-year stint in the army during World War II. After his military service, Killens worked at the NLRB in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1950, he cofounded the Harlem Writers Guild and served as the organization’s first chair; he was also vice president of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, which was founded in 1969. Killens was active in the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1970, and was one of the participants in the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. He lectured at various institutions of higher learning and was a writer-in-residence at Fisk University, Howard University, Columbia University, Bronx Community College, and Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, where a chair was established in Killens’s name and where the National Black Writers Conference, founded by Killens and novelist Elizabeth Nunez, has been held since 1986.
Although he is best known as a novelist and his short stories appear in a variety of publications, Killens wrote in other genres as illustrated by his collection of essays, Black Man’s Burden (1965); two young adult works, Great Gittin’ Up Morning: A Biography of Denmark Vesey (1972), and A Man Ain’t Nothin’ But a Man: The Adventures of John Henry (1975); and two screenplays: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), and Slaves (1969), a collaboration with Herbert J. Biberman and Alida Sherman. In addition, Killens and Jerry W. Ward, Jr., edited an anthology entitled Black Southern Voices (1992).
Many of Killens’s books were influenced by his paternal great-grandmother, who was seven years old when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. As a boy, Killens listened to her stories about days gone by, and she told him, “The half ain’t never been told!” Years later Killens, remembering his great-grandmother’s words, changed his career plans in order to document African American life, and he most eloquently fulfilled that goal in his six novels. Two of his novels, And Then We Heard the Thunder, which is based on racism in the military during World War II, and The Cotillion: Or, One Good Bull is Half the Herd, >which satirizes members of the African American bourgeoisie, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Killens’s posthumously published fiction, Great Black Russian: A Novel on the Life and Times of Alexander Pushkin, was the result of twelve years of research, including trips to the Soviet Union in 1968 and 1970. Great Black Russian was one of the first novels to acknowledge Pushkin’s African ancestry. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize nominations, Killens’s other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship as well as awards from the Afro-Arts Theatre (1955), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1957), Harlem Writers Guild (1978), Middle-Atlantic Writers Association (1984), and Before Columbus Foundation (1986).