Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow

by Brooks E. Hefner

A deep dive into mid-century African American newspapers, exploring how Black pulp fiction reassembled genre formulas in the service of racial justice

In recent years, Jordan Peele’s Get Out , Marvel’s Black Panther , and HBO’s Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new.   As Brooks E. Hefner’s Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American , Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy.  These popular stories differ significantly from contemporaneous, now-canonized African American protest novels that tend to represent Jim Crow America as a deterministic machine and its Black inhabitants as doomed victims. Widely consumed but since forgotten, these genre stories—and Hefner’s incisive analysis of them—offer a more vibrant understanding of African American literary history.   

Genres: Nonfiction, History

216 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2021

Reviews

[X]

A survey on Black pulp/genre fiction in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, this book is fascinating for the sheer level of historical detail it contains. I hope more of the serials and short stories this book quotes from are able to be published in full one day. (One name I’m noting here so I don’t forget - Cora Moten.)

The classic academic writing structure, this book starts with a chapter on theory, does a chapter on the context of the Black publishing industry (i.e., Black pulp fiction was usually published in Black newspapers), three chapters on specific genres (romance, spec fic and heroic fiction), and concludes with a sort of synopsis chapter about where the literature went next. (Historical fiction, paperback novels, etc.) Why reinvent the wheel, here are my thoughts in that same order:

THEORY
The author is essentially arguing that while Black lit fic writers of the 30s/40s/50s were always having to write to a dual audience, racially speaking, and the stories they told were often tragic, Black pulp fiction was by Black authors for Black readers, and often focused on presenting fantasies of desire, heroism, racial justice, etc. - “both the pleasures of genre and the radical challenges to Jim Crow culture.” (Similarly, he argues that prior to the 20s/30s Black publications were focused on “uplifting” readers and discussing serious topics, but thanks to the massive increase in literacy in the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th, a much broader reading public came into existence. The author quotes census data as showing that the African American literacy rate was 19.2% in 1870 and 85.4% in 1930, which - yeah, that’s massive!)

The author’s argument “for” Black pulp fiction is essentially the same kind of argument that people make for the value of romance and other genre fiction today in lots of different contexts, so it didn’t blow my mind, but since this specific topic (Black pulp fiction) is really not my area of expertise I found the lit review of it all to be interesting. I frankly had no idea Henry Louis Gates Jr.’ academic background was in this area, I don’t know enough to say whether he’s “right” or this author is “right” in critiquing/problematizing him - but the English majors out there would love to get into it about that I’m sure, so I’ll leave it to them lol.

MY problematizing is that it feels odd to read a(n apparently) white author write about how Black pulp fiction was “giving writers an opportunity to explore generic formulas and readers the chance to experience the pleasures of genre in an exclusively Black space, away from the gaze of white readers,” when - this author is literally a white reader combing back through what may have been but by definition is no longer a Black space. Because he’s in there. As I said above, I found this book valuable for the wealth of detail it includes - and in general this book is well-written and very well-researched as an academic text - but I found it… l guess I’ll say ineffective that the author chose not to address that element of discordance in his argument.

ROMANCE
This chapter was fantastic - I think any romance fan out there would find it super interesting. A couple highlights:

- Gertrude Schalk, a Black writer who wrote romance stories for both Black and white publications under various pseudonyms. The author does some interesting comparison between romance as she wrote it for her different audiences, particularly on the way that the stories for white readers were extremely extremely sanitized and conservative, while the writing for Black readers had a lot more realism, in good (women can be friends rather than romantic rivals!) and bad (acknowledgement of the threat of sexual violence) ways. I have (and I offer this apropos of nothing) often said that Eunice Carter has been LONG overdue a biopic - look her up! You will agree with me! Schalk seems like she falls into that same category, but in a fun, zany, His Girl Friday kind of way.

- The Baltimore Afro-American’s extremely hilarious move in the spring of 1934 to directly ask their newspaper subscribers “Where Is Your Boiling Point on the Race Question: How Much Can You Read about Interracial Love and Sex without Getting Sore?” (…no pun intended?), which they followed up on by publishing lots of letters to the editor they’d received about it (60% for, 40% against) and then spent the next four months publishing interracial romance stories. You gotta give (60% of) the people what they want!!

- There’s some particularly interesting stuff in the section on those interracial romance stories - about author perspective (e.g., Black authors writing the white perspective in Black/white interracial romances), types of representation, and the ways in which racial justice and racial equity are hypothesized/fantasized about/etc. through the medium of romance fiction.

SPEC FIC
I was struck by the section of this chapter on “The Black Stockings,” a 1937 dystopian serial (& response to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 “It Can’t Happen Here”) by William Thomas Smith, about a demagogue rising to power in the US on the platform that all Black people should be kicked out of the country/murdered………. “The Black Stockings” per Hefner “imagines the rise of fascism as first and foremost rooted in racial animosity and American nativism.” Ring any bells?

(You’re like, oh god, please, stop, the bells are so loud already!)

This chapter delves in detail into the plot & resolution of “The Black Stockings” - SUPER interesting.

Unrelated… did anyone else know W.E.B. DuBois wrote a spec fic romance novel??

HEROIC FICTION
This chapter is essentially on contemporary adventure fiction about “heroic” characters - for example, a Senegalese ace pilot who enlists with the French in WWI after the Germans kill his family in Dakar, and later visits the American South and kills a bunch of racists (Jacques Lenglet, written by James H. Hill), or a former professional football player who travels through the South undercover as a chauffeur, humiliating racists and dating a new girl in every story (Black Robin, written by H.L. Faggett). Yet again, some really interesting insight into fiction that has largely not been preserved, or has been preserved in a way that is totally unaccessible for the general public.

Although this book in general is very focused on the era it’s about, and not so interested in making comparisons to modern fiction/media, this chapter did have a reference to BlacKkKlansman - in plot and tone and subject matter it seems like there’s a through line between the heroic fiction of the 40s/50s and the film. Interesting! Like a lot of the random details in this book it feels like there is so much more that could be written about this.

Another fun fact - apparently William Thomas Smith also wrote a short story called “The Dark Knight” in 1930 (!) - it was about a boxer turned crime fighter. Would love to read that, just saying!

THE END
Essentially - as a genre fiction fan and proponent, I found this book very engaging. It is academic in style, but I also found it readable because of the pulp subject matter (read: fun!) and the level of primary source detail the author provides.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

an essential first look at an area of literature that is criminally understudied. this certainly isn't the definitive work on the subject, but a useful text to lay the groundwork for future scholarship into pre-1950s sf-adjacent works

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Amazing archival research! I felt a little bogged down during the opening chapter, but the studies of individual genres were enthralling.

[Maileen Hamto]

African-American literary contributions during the Jim Crow era involved radical imaginings of racial justice and the heroic obliteration of White supremacy, thanks to the courageous creators of short fiction and serial narratives in Black-run newspapers. Professor Brooks E. Hefner of James Madison University explored and critiqued African-American romance, hero-adventure, westerns, crime, and science fiction from the 1920s to mid-1950s in “Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow.” Hefner reveals the dauntless envisioning of emancipatory futures by Black writers and illustrators.

In his analysis, Hefner reviewed genre fiction featured in the pages of the "Pittsburgh Courier" and the "Baltimore Afro-American" periodicals. Works of fiction in these newspapers had huge readership among middle- and working-class Black devotees, creating a literary underground of readers during the tenuous period of Jim Crow segregation. Hefner looks closely at how writers explored, reassembled, and expanded fiction genres to advance the discourse of racial justice amid the oppressive sociopolitical environment of the time.

Many stories were unapologetically pro-Black and pro-justice. Some primary themes included interracial relationships, sexual objectification of Black women, tearing down White supremacist institutions, and racial retribution. Black genre writers define on their own terms what sociopolitical progress looks like when the interests of Blacks are prioritized. Decades before the wide-scale direct action and protests that marked the Civil Rights movement, Black writers used the power of the pen to convey their vision for a future when Black people had agency and control over their own lives and destinies.

Reading Hefner's critique as an immigrant woman of color who identifies with Generation X, I was roused by the power of resistance literature in stoking imagination about the promise and hope of liberation. I am a student of people-powered decolonization movements in other parts of the world, including my home country, the Philippines. Learning about Black fiction during the Jim Crow era underscored the fearlessness displayed by Black editors, writers, and creators of African American periodicals, who used the medium to provide an avenue to advance the values of racial equity. Even though these writings were not granted credibility by the literary establishment of the time, these writings have accomplished a great deal in contributing to the narrative of racial justice, cultural preservation, and liberation from White supremacy.

[Leinani Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full review to be posted in the 2/23/22 edition of Real Change News

In "Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow," James Madison University professor Brooks E. Hefner shares the history of pulp fiction by Black authors in the early 20th century. Hefner details the rise and fall of publishing houses and papers that focused on Black American genre fiction.

For those unfamiliar, the "pulp" genre is named because of the cheap paper that the magazines were printed on. Pulp is often associated with noir but can encompass any sort of genre fiction, from crime to sci-fi to romance.

When I was in high school, I once became sick with a fever of over a hundred degrees. My dad came over and said he knew the best cure for being sick: watching pulp movies. After an entire evening of ridiculous and cheap flicks that spanned from gritty detective Blaxploitation to kung-fu classics, I did actually feel better. I began to love the pulp genre.

I ended up reading "Black Pulp" in the middle of Harlem, one of the cultural cornerstones of Black thought and creativity; however, I was struck by how the book didn't feel accessible to me or nearly anyone from the community. While I believe Hefner is writing about an incredible topic, “Black Pulp” didn't speak to me as a Black person in any way. Instead, it felt like it was for white academics.

Full review in 2/23/22 edition of Real Change News, Seattle WA

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an ambitious and thorough examination of black writers weaving their ways among segregated publishers, adapting voices to differing audiences, but perhaps forging more authentic voices in black publications. Because pulp has a mixed heritage, it may be that the writer has gone to the ends of the earth to encourage serious examination of this genre. There is some loss of joy along the way, which is a shame, but nonetheless, the book is a contribution to black literary history and criticism.