Sutton E. Griggs
Portrait of Sutton E. Griggs published in 1901
Born	June 19, 1872 Chatfield, Texas
Died	January 2, 1933(1933-01-02) (aged 60) Houston, Texas
Occupation	Novelist minister theologian
Nationality	American
Genre	African American literature, western fiction
Subject	Social Justice, Racial Segregation and Integration
Notable works	Imperium in Imperio, The Hindered Hand
Spouse	Emma Williams
Relatives	Allen R. Griggs (father), Emma Hodge Griggs (mother), Eunice Griggs (daughter)

Sutton Elbert Griggs (June 19, 1872 – January 2, 1933) was an author, Baptist minister, and social activist. He is best known for his novel Imperium in Imperio, a utopian work that envisions a separate African-American state within the United States. He was African-American.

Biography

Early years

Griggs was born Elbert Sutton Griggs (he later changed the order of his given names) in 1872 in Chatfield, Texas, to the Rev. Allen R. and Emma Hodge Griggs, the second of eight children.^[1] His grandfather was born free in Africa before transport to America as an enslaved man.^[2] His father, a former Georgia slave, became a prominent Baptist minister and founder of the first black newspaper and high school in Texas. Sutton worked closely with his father on the National Baptist Convention's Education Committee. He wrote frequently later in life of his deep respect for his parents' characters and accomplishments.^[3]

Sutton Griggs attended Bishop College in Marshall, Texas and Richmond Theological Seminary. Upon graduation, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Berkley, Virginia. There he married Emma Williams, a teacher, in 1897. In 1899, he became pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in East Nashville and corresponding secretary of the National Baptist Convention. From 1894 to 1898, Griggs served as co-founder and publisher of the Virginia Baptist newspaper.^[4]

Career

Griggs was a prolific author, writing more than thirty books and pamphlets in his lifetime and selling them door-to-door or at the revival meetings at which he preached. His first novel, Imperium in Imperio, published in 1899, is his most famous. In 1901, Griggs founded the Orion Publishing Company to sell books to the African American market. None of his four subsequent novels achieved the success of Imperium in Imperio, but he produced a steady stream of social and religious tracts, as well as an autobiography.

An admirer of W. E. B. Du Bois and a supporter of the Niagara Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Griggs was strongly influenced by contemporary social theory. He believed that the practice of social virtues alone could advance a culture and lead to economic success.^[5] The more radical ideas expressed in his novels, particularly Imperium in Imperio, have led him to be sometimes characterized as a militant separatist in the mold of Marcus Garvey. During his lifetime, however, his integrationist philosophy and courting of white philanthropy earned him the scorn of self-help advocates.^[6] His 1923 nonfiction book Guide to Racial Greatness; or The Science of Collective Efficiency advocated for racial uplift through collective efficiency.^[7]

Griggs's careers in both the church and social welfare sphere were active and itinerant. In Houston, he helped establish the National Civil and Religious Institute. In 1914, he founded the National Public Welfare League. From 1925 to 1926, he served as president of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, which his father helped found. His longest tenure—19 years as pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Memphis—saw him act on his belief in the social mission of churches, providing the only swimming pool and gymnasium then available to African Americans in the city.

Death and legacy

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 stripped the Tabernacle of investment funds and led to its bankruptcy. Griggs returned to Hopewell Baptist Church in Denison, Texas, then to a brief pastorship in Houston. Shortly after resigning that post in 1933, he died in Houston, and was buried in Dallas.^[1]

Griggs as an author

Griggs's first novel follows a familiar formula: two childhood friends are separated by wealth, education, skin tone, and political outlook; one is a militant and one an integrationist. A traumatic incident galvanizes the more moderate friend into action, and the two work together to redress the injustice.

Imperium in Imperio (1899) follows this plotline with a startling twist: the revelation of an African American "empire within an empire," a shadow government complete with a Congress based in Waco, Texas. The light-skinned and more militant Bernard Belgrave who has been hand-picked to serve as president advocates a takeover of the Texas state government, while the dark-skinned Belton Piedmont argues for assimilation and cooperation. Bernard reluctantly has Belton executed as a traitor only after Belton resigns from the Imperium (an act that is tantamount to suicide), leaving the potentially violent and unstable Bernard in control of the Imperium as the novel ends.^[8]

The Hindered Hand, written in 1905 as a direct reply to Thomas Dixon's The Leopard's Spots, contains graphic accounts of sexual violence and lynching, and was among the most popular African-American novels of the period. In the novel's third edition, Griggs published a supplement entitled "A Hindering Hand: The Poor White and the Negro" which further criticized Dixon for instilling racism among poor whites against African Americans.^[9]

With a stiff prose style and long rhetorical passages punctuated by melodramatic events, Griggs' novels are not models of "literary" styling. However, for the African-American audiences for which they were written, the novels provided a rare opportunity to read about the political and social issues that preoccupied them, including violence, racism, and the pursuit of political and economic justice. At the time of his death, his works had been largely forgotten in wider literary circles.^[2]

Although he outsold more famous contemporaries, Griggs remained largely invisible in literary histories of the time. A re-issue of Imperium by the Arno Press in 1969 revived interest in Griggs, and the West Virginia University Press has since republished all five of his novels.^[4] Imperium has been embraced as an important addition to the history of utopian literature, western fiction, and African-American literature.