The Nigger Bible

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The Nigger Bible by Robert H. deCoy (MFA, Yale, 1951), published by Holloway House, Los Angeles, in 1967, 299 pages, aims to validate the word "nigger" as a self-identifier and to embed critical thinking skills about black personality types and categories. The author seeks to de-Christianize "Niggers" (including Black Muslims) and heavily dismantle the values of the New Left. The book contains one of the most insightful analyses of the cultural and racial significance of Mardi Gras.

The form is varied and might be described as a series of reflections. In the preface, Dick Gregory writes: "In abolishing and eliminating the Caucasian-Christian philosophical and literary forms while recording his Black Experiences, this writer has removed himself from their double-standard frames of reference."

The book contains considerable foresight, as the preferred terminology therein has become widely accepted in Black America.

Chapters (included solely to give some idea of the content of a book that is unusually difficult to characterize by other means):

Preface by Dick Gregory
Foreword: The First Nigger Testament
1: The Word Was Not for a Nigger
2: (1) Words in Testament to My Nigger Son, (2) The First Dictionary of Nigrite Words
3: Separation is "The Nigger Salvation"
4: What A Nigger Needs Most is a God
5: (1) Prelude to a Nigger Genesis, (2) deCoy's Song of Genesis
6: A Sermon to My Nigger Soul: (1) The Prayer, (2) The Text
7: What is this Power of Positive Thinking?
8: History Does Not Happen, It is Made
9: The Departure or "The Northward Flight of the Niggers"
10: Proverbs and Notes to My Nigger Son
11: Letters to the Nigger Children: (1) Discard the "Act of Christening," (2) Justice is a "White Woman," (3) Epistles to My Nigger Beings, (4) Niggers, God, Church and Ministry
12: A Drama in Nigger Neurosis
13: A Journey Back to the Mother City
14: The Mardi Gras! (1) National Observance of the Nigger Dream, (2) Oh Come to a Mardi Gras Morning
15: The Black Blueprint
16: Two Parables: (1) Dream of the Alabaster Daughter, (2) Super Spade at the Pearly Gates