The Spook Who Sat by the Door (African American Life)

Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in the late 1960s. With its focus on the militancy that characterized the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man's reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy in ways that make the novel autobiographical and personal. As a tale of a reaction to the forces of oppression, this book is universal.

Dan Freeman, the spook who sat by the door, is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Black Chicagoans to combat racism as Freedom Fighters in this explosive novel.