"John-Oliver-Killens"(January 14,1916-October 27,1987)

He was to Charles Myles Killens Sr.,a restaurant manager,and Willie Lee Coleman,an insurance company clerk.His parents were well read and kept abreast of trends and events important to African Americans.Along with John's great-grandmamma,his parents instilled in him pride in African American culture and a belief in the power of the arts to effect social change.


John graduated in 1933 from Ballard Normal School in Macon,a private institution run by the American Missionary Association and,at the time,one of the few secondary schools for African American in Georgia.With the aim of becoming a lawyer,John did his undergraduate course work at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville,Florida:Morris Brown College in Atlanta;and Howard University in Washington,D.C. He then attended the Robert H.Terrell Law School in Washington,D.C.,but quit before his final year to study creative writing at Columbia University in New York.


His college years encompassed other formative experiences: a stint at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB),military service,and marriage.His work with the NLRB turned him into a lifetime advocate for organization labor.During World War II (1941-45) John served from 1942-1945 in a U.S. Army amphibious unit.He spent more than two years in the South Pacific,and rose to the rank of master sergeant.In 1943 John married Grace Ward Jones,with whom he had two children:a son,John Charles,and a daughter,Barbara.


In the early 1950s John,who had settled in New York,joined three of his friends to form the Harlem Writers Guild.He polished his first  novel,Youngblood (1954),at meetings in members' homes.Spanning the Jim Crow era through the Great Depression,it portrays ordinary African Americans in the fictional rural community of Crossroads,Georgia,as they struggle to maintain their dignity and secure their rights.


His second novel,And then we Heard the Thunder (1963),is about a law student who,just as John did,interrupts his education to serve in an all-African American amphibious regiment in World War II.As an officer,the main character endures not only hardships of war but also the bigotry of his white fellow officers.Critic Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post wrote that it was "one of the few distinguished novels about World War II"and a "powerful-thought little-known examination of the lives  of black serviceman."Another of John's important work is the novel The Cotillion;or,One Good Bull is Half the Herd (1971),Satirzing pretensions,The Cotillion uproariously portrays the conflicts between militants and social climbers within African American society in the 1960s.


John wrote six novels for adults.Additional book-length works include works include Black Man Burden (1965),essays on race in America;Great Black Russian (1989),a biographical work on the poet Alexander Pushkin;and two books for young readers,Great Gittin' Up Morning (1975),a biography of Denmark Vesey,and  A man Ain't Nothin' but a Man (1975),which recounts the adventures of John Henry.John also wrote plays,screenplays,and numerous articles and short stories that appeared in publications ranging from Black Scholar and the New York Times to Ebony and Rdbook.His works have been published in some fifteen countries,and and a representative sampling remains in print today.


When John was not writing,he worked for social causes and racial equality.A man whose low-key manner belied his hard-edged activist beliefs,John knew both Martin Luther King Jr.and Malcolmn X- but identified more closely with the latter.John once wrote,"My fight is not to be a white man in a black skin,but to inject some blackblood,some black intelligence into the pallid mainstream of American life." As a writer-in-residence at Howard University;Fish University in Nashville,Tennessee; and Medgar Ever College in New York,John was known as a generous,encouraging mentor.He was instrumental in establishing African American writers' conferences at each of the schools.


John's many honors include the vice presidency of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters,a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1980),and a Distinguished Writer Award from the Middle Atlantic Writers Association (1984).The Before Columbus Foundation,which sponsors of the American Book Awards,cited John for lifetime achievement in 1985.He is also a member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.