When Chester Himes was thirteen the Himes family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they bought a house and remained for two years; they then moved to Cleveland, where Himes grew into adulthood.
Himes maintained that he was the product of two opposing traditions: the body-servant tradition and the field-hand tradition. His mother was almost white; her progenitors were related to a slave owner and became house servants. His father was a very dark man whose ancestors worked in the fields. What resulted was an intraracial family feud that disrupted Himes's early life. His mother felt that her white heritage made her superior to her husband whom she dominated and humiliated. Himes respected his father, but he maintained "my father was born and raised in the tradition of the southern Uncle Tom; that tradition derived from an inherited slave mentality which accepts the premise that white people know best, that blacks should accept what whites offer and be thankful." Himes resented his father's lack of courage and acquiescence to whites and to his wife. There is constant friction between a white female (or near-white female) and a black male in four of his first five novels, and this theme is undoubtedly autobiographical.
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