The Roots and Routes of Black Emancipation in Sutton Griggs's Imperium in Imperio

abstract:Using James Clifford's theorization of roots and routes and Rinaldo Walcott's conception of future-oriented Black expressivity, I show how Sutton Griggs's Imperium in Imperio (1899) discursively creates a space that is both real and imagined wherein Black life and conceptions of freedom and citizenship in the South are re-visioned. I show that this re-visioning renders Texas as what Edward Soja would term a "Thirdspace," distinct from the North and the South, where Black survival and flourishing are imaginable.