John A. Williams, Syracuse, NY native

John A. Williams grew up in Syracuse, New York, “apple-knocker country, where summers are splendid and winters war against the psyche.  Black people seem to have entered Syracuse history around 1769.”  His paternal grandmother was born there in 1820, and she married in 1838.” His mother’s family was from Mississippi, and she left in her late teens and settled in  Syracuse where she met John’s father.

He wrote his first novel, The Angry Ones, in a single-room-occupancy hotel in Manhattan in 1956. It was published in 1960 by Ace Books. He wrote for Gent, Dude and Nugget in that interim. Night Song was published in 1961, a tribute to the journeymen jazz musicians who played around Syracuse.  He won the Prix de Rome, but the award was withdrawn for whispers that the interracial relationship in the book may have been autobiographical.  A 1966 film starring Dick Gregory, based on this book was called Sweet Love. Sissie was published in 1963, which is his favorite of his early sixties’ novels. Chester Himes wrote to Williams “I can say now that your last two books, Night Song and Sissie put you at the very top of all American Negro writers who have lived.”

The Protectors, drug warrior and top cop, Harry J. Anslinger, couldn’t write (go figure) but wanted to tell his story. Williams ghost wrote under the pseudonym J. Dennis Gregory. 

He wrote the introduction to Richard Wright’s White Man, Listen!  Holiday Magazine published his articles about travelling the United States, a Travels with Charlie, except of course, “from a black writer’s point of view,” given a title that Williams didn’t much like “This Is My Country Too.”

In 1967, his best known book The Man Who Cried I Am was published.  It was a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection and saw six New American Library printings before the Thunder’s Mouth Press reissue in 1986. 

He co-edited Amistad I and II, a literary journal that include an interview with Chester Himes, the first fiction of Gayl Jones, an excerpt from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and writing by Richard Wright. 

Flashbacks is his collection of articles, most of which were previously published. The Junior Bachelor Society (1976) is “one of those books you have to get out of your system. A tribute perhaps to a better past, or to old friendships.”

Captain Blackman is a novel about a wounded Vietnam solider and his fever dream travelling through time as a solider is other American wars. 

!Clicksong! was Williams favorite of his novels, a book about being a black writer in twentieth century America. It was well reviewed and a fan favorite.  

He wrote, with his son Dennis, a profile of Richard Pryor.  He is the author of non-fiction, poems and plays.  

Williams was more than a peripheral figure. He deserves a wider audience. I offer a collection of much of his work, a collection that is inscribed and from the former personal collection of Peter Dzownkoski, of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Rochester Library.