Sam Greenlee

Samuel Eldred Greenlee, Jr. (July 13, 1930 – May 19, 2014) was an American writer of fiction and poetry. He is best known for his novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, first published in March 1969 in London by the recently founded small imprint Allison & Busby (with Ghanaian-born Margaret Busby as its editor), having been rejected by dozens of mainstream publishers, that is now considered a cult classic served in Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Greece between 1957 and 1965. In 1958, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for bravery during the 14 July Revolution in Baghdad.

Leaving the USIA after eight years, he stayed on in Greece, where he undertook further study (1963–64) at the University of Thessaloniki, and lived for three years on the island of Mykonos with his Dutch-born first wife, Nienke de Jonge.

Writing career The Spook Who Sat by the Door It was while living on Mykonos that Greenlee began to write his first and best known novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, which was the story of a black man, Dan Freeman, who is recruited as a CIA officer and having mastered the skills of espionage then uses them to lead a black guerrilla movement in the United States. Greenlee drew on his own background and his career in the US Foreign Service, and in a 1973 interview with the Washington Post he said: "My experiences were identical to those of Freeman in the CIA....Everything in that book is an actual quote. If it wasn't said to me, I overheard it." or intelligence agent ("because they’re supposed to be invisible", Greenlee said), the dual meaning going beyond the more obvious use of the word "('because we're supposed to be scared of ghosts,' Greenlee said). ... But his sardonic wordplay, Greenlee insisted, had a third layer of meaning: 'that an armed revolution by Black people haunts White America, and has for centuries.

Rejected multiple times by mainstream publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door was eventually published in London in March 1969 by fledgling company Allison and Busby, Greenlee having been introduced to young Ghanaian-born publisher Margaret Busby by a mutual friend, poet Alexis Lykiard, who had met him in Mykonos. The book achieved significant critical attention and was subsequently published in the US by Richard W. Baron. In 2011, an independent documentary entitled Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who Sat by the Door was filmed by Christine Acham and Clifford Ward, about the making and reception of the Spook film, in which Greenlee spoke out about the suppression of the film soon after its release. In a chance meeting with Aubrey Lewis (1935–2001), one of the first Black FBI agents to have been recruited in 1962 by the FBI, Greenlee was told that The Spook Who Sat by the Door was required reading at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, which annually chooses 25 films that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Other writings Other works by Greenlee include Baghdad Blues, a 1976 novel based on his experiences traveling in Iraq in the 1950s and witnessing the 1958 Iraqi revolution, Blues for an African Princess (a 1971 collection of poems), and Ammunition (poetry, 1975). He also wrote short stories, plays (although he found no producer for any of them),

Later years

Greenlee lived in Ghana and Spain for some years, before returning to Chicago in the late 1980s. subsequently, from a long-term relationship with Maxine McCrey, he had a daughter, Natiki. In 1990, he was named the Poet Laureate of Chicago. He taught screenwriting at Columbia College Chicago and hosted a talk show on WVON radio. On June 6, 2014, Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History sponsored an evening of celebration in his honor, attended by his daughter Natiki Montano.

In 2018, Greenlee was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, the website of which notes: "For Greenlee, his art and his life seemed inseparable, and his masterful output relied on the Chicago to which he was born, raised, and forever devoted, no matter how far his adventures took him."

On July 13, 2022, which would have been his 92nd birthday, Sam Greenlee Day was celebrated around Chicago's South Side.