Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert) Griggs

Born in Chatfield, Texas, in 1872, Sutton Elbert Griggs became known as an author, Baptist minister, educator, publisher, and activist. He studied in Dallas public schools, attended Bishop College, and continued his ministerial training at Richmond Theological Seminary before serving churches in the South.

Griggs is most closely associated with Imperium in Imperio (1899), a novel that imagines a hidden Black government within the United States and explores strategy, citizenship, and resistance. He also wrote other works of fiction and commentary, and his writing is often remembered for taking up racial injustice in a direct, political way.

Alongside his literary work, he was active in public life as a pastor and community leader. That mix of ministry, publishing, and advocacy gives his books their distinctive energy: they are not only stories, but attempts to think through the hardest questions facing Black Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.