Black Fire

This memoir was finished when Nelson Peery, a hitherto unknown hero, adventurer and rebel, was "old enough to be honest with (him)self and the typewriter." But it was started when Peery was only 24, and it retains all the hope of a young man who fully expected the world to live up to the promises and values he fought for in World War II. Culminating in his increasingly insurrectionary acts, this is the story of the making of a revolutionary. It tells of the climate and experiences that convinced Peery to war against racism and classism. Though he may be compared to Eldridge Cleaver and Malcolm X, the world Peery describes is a different one - that of Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Like Wright, Peery was eventually drawn to communism, but one of his own invention: a worldwide revolution of people of colour which, in the heady days of 1945, Peery thought would be the way of the future. Raising hell in Minnesota, fighting racism in Louisiana, and being seditious in the Philippines are some of the adventures Peery found himself in.