Obituaries : Novelist John Oliver Killens, 71; Wrote of Frustrations of Blacks

John Oliver Killens, a widely read novelist and biographer who also taught at major Eastern universities and founded the Harlem Writers Guild, died of cancer Tuesday in Brooklyn at age 71.

He was a former law school student whose experiences in the white-dominated and often racist U.S. Army of World War II turned him to producing books that bitterly reflected the black man’s frustrations both in and out of the military.

His first work, “Youngblood,” which he crafted in the early years of the Harlem Writers Guild, was published in 1954, just as the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation. It told of a small black populace in a rural Georgia town trying to establish their rights. As with many of Killens’ other novels, the book involved some exaggerated black vernacular that many critics believed detracted from his themes.

His “And Then We Heard the Thunder” was considered biographical and was a novel of a disillusioned black soldier who eventually joins other black GIs in a fire-fight with white soldiers. It was based on actual World War II incidents.

Killens’ other works included “The Cotillion: Or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd;” “Sippi;” “Black Man’s Burden;” “Great Gittin’ Up Morning: A Biography of Denmark Vesey” and “A Man Ain’t Nothin’ But a Man,” a biography of the legendary rail builder John Henry.