"You're a helluva good writer. Why don't you write a black success novel?" "I don't have the imagination." -- FROM CHESTER HIMES' "THE END OF A PRIMITIVE"

IN 1937, Chester Himes completed the first draft of his first, and arguably most provocative, novel, a hard-hitting account of homosexual love amid the madness, flames and riots of prison life. Himes himself would say of the work, "the protagonist of my prison story was a Mississippi white boy but ... obviously it was the story of my own prison experiences." The novel -- which Himes alternately called "Yesterday Will Make You Cry," "Present Tense" and "Black Sheep" -- underwent six significant rewrites over the course of 15 years before it was finally released under the title "Cast the First Stone." Although Himes' reputation had begun to soar with the publication of "The Lonely Crusade" and "If He Hollers Let Him Go" (which were written and published in the 1940s), "Cast the First Stone" had been cut in half since the original draft, changed from third person to first and purged of all but its most obvious homoerotic themes. But most shockingly of all, the work had literally been white-washed: Several of the major characters who were black in earlier drafts were bleached white in order to appease the book's jittery and conservative publisher. For all the indignities that Himes suffered, it turns out he fared considerably better than dozens of other writers who make up a lost legacy of African-American noir. In their lifetime, most wrote for publishing houses that didn't appreciate their talents and didn't have a clue as to how to market and sell them. It is little wonder their works failed to catch on. History has been even less kind. Today, it is almost as if these authors never existed, and their searing, scorched-earth accomplishments are all but forgotten. NEXT PAGE: The Godfather of Black Pulp Fiction