"Big Black Good Man" was published in French in 1958, three years before Richard Wright's death. It appears in the story collection Eight Men, one of the author's last works. Its themes of suspense, fear, and alienation mark it as typical of Wright's fiction. The story, although not one of the author's better-known works, is included in The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Daniel Halpern and published in 1987.