Pioneers and Populists: Sutton E. Griggs, Oscar Micheaux, and Independent Black Publishing at the Turn of the Century

Recent scholarship on Black print cultures has paid close attention to self- and independent publication. These studies tend to center writer-publishers from the antebellum and Harlem Renaissance periods, arguing that Black authors published their works out of either financial necessity or desire for editorial independence. However, the causes and meanings of Black independent publishing changed during the postbellum, pre-Renaissance period. In this essay, I focus on Sutton E. Griggs and Oscar Micheaux, two early twentieth-century novelists who labored outside of and in opposition to both the Black press and white, mainstream publishers. Ultimately, I argue that Griggs's and Micheaux's use of commission presses carved new paths for Black writers to dissent against emerging trends in political and literary culture: US expansionism and the early corporatization of literary publishing. This essay urges scholars to treat turn-of-the-century commission presses as neglected archives of radical texts.