THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR, 1969 novel by Sam Greenlee telling the fictional story of Dan Freeman, the first Black officer—who is secretly a Black nationalist—recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who subsequently leaves the agency to use his specialized training to help foment a neo-Marxist militant revolution among the young Black “freedom fighters” of Chicago. It was rejected by many mainstream publishers but eventually published by Allison & Busby, a UK publishing house, in March 1969, and later by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Company in the US. The book materialized during a time of radical politics and alternative social movements, and Greenlee lays out a political vision defined by class struggle, a key analytic for understanding and mobilizing the concept of race in America.
The book is generally thought to have inspired the “Blaxploitation” genre of films in the 1970s and was adapted into a 1973 film bearing the same name, directed by Ivan Dixon and co- produced by Dixon and Greenlee. The film has gained notoriety for its depiction of armed resistance and revolution, but Spook also anticipated the nexus between independence struggles in the Third World and Black insurrection against Euro-American colonialism. It is therefore unsurprising that it was deemed threatening to (mostly White) audiences.
The word “spook” in the title is intended to be read in different ways. On the one hand it refers to spies, but it is also a racial slur that demeans Black people as superstitious and fearful. Beyond this, “spook” also suggests the fear of armed Black resistance that perpetually haunts White America’s consciousness, conjuring a vision of America on the brink of insurrection, but the terror lies beyond fear of revolt to the haunt itself: the spook is Blackness.