SOURCE: "Sutton Griggs' Imperium in Imperio," in Studies in Black Literature, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring, 1974, pp. 7-15.

In the following essay, Tatham examines Griggs's Imperium in Imperio as a guide to radical political action.

Be convinced . . . that the past is no forbidden vista upon which we dare not look, out of phantom fear of being, as the wife of Lot, turned into pillars of salt. Rather the past is an omniscient mirror: we gaze and see reflected there ourselves and each other—what we used to be, what we are today, how we got this way, and what we are becoming. To decline to look into the mirror of Then .. . is to refuse to view the face of Now.

—Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice

To ask questions . . . is equivalent to a new and itensified declaration of war . . . look at us and know us and you will know yourselves, for...