The Best Black Book You Never Heard Of

"Oh, George, never mind the white people," here interposed Mrs. Garie. "Never mind them; tell us about the coloured folks; they are the ones I take the most interest in." -The Garies and Their Friends, by Frank J. Webb

For so long literary success for African Americans was based primary on how well their work met the political and social expectations of the white American reading audience, how well it spoke to white desires and needs. As a result, scores of amazing African American writers were largely ignored because they didn't fit the socio-political requirements of the whites of their era.

No book was more destined for failure during its own era than The Garies and Their Friends, by Frank J. Webb. It wasn't the first African American novel: it was probably the third. The book was published in 1857, a time when African American literature and abolitionist literature were synonymous. Shockingly, instead of writing a story about southern slavery, Webb wrote a pre-Civil War novel that focused on Philadelphia's black middle-class. Rather than criticizing white southerners, Webb instead turned his eye on the deadly violence of racist white northerners.

Most significant, after nearly a century of African American literature being solely a conversation between a black writer and a white audience, Frank J. Webb was the first author to write a book whose intended audience was his own people. The novel's primary message is clear: we must invest in our families, we must build our own communities, and by joining together we can protect ourselves and our interests. Over 125 years later, Bill Cosby would do the same thing with The Cosby Show, and it would still seem innovative.

The Garies and Their Friends is the first book written by a black person, for black people. And that's why you've never heard of it.

To see how clueless Webb's white contemporaries were to what he was doing, read Harriet Beecher Stowe's bizarre preface, where she erroneously declares that The Garies is about southern slavery, that it is basically nonfiction, and (in a stunning act of denial) that the actual historic mob violence in Philadelphia that the book took as inspiration was not the work of racist northerners but instead the result of "Southern influence."

The Black Literary Canon is ours to load. If we remove the white normative gaze, what are we left with? What would a merit based black canon look like? That's what is so exciting about it: there are hidden treasures out there waiting to be discovered. There is a forgotten fortune buried out there that will serve as our inheritance. There are literary ancestors to be discovered. There are histories to be made.

Get the FREE ebook of The Garies and Their Friends here.

Buy the complete collection of Frank J. Webb's writing here.

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