Blake; Or, The Huts of America

Blake, or the Huts of America (1859-1862) is a novel by Martin Delany. Serialized in The Anglo-African Magazine, the novel has had a complicated publishing history due to the loss of the physical issues in which the final chapters appeared in May 1862. Despite this, Blake, or the Huts of America is considered a brilliantly unique work of fiction from an author known more for his activism and political investment in black nationalism. Through the eyes of his hero Henry Blake, Delany envisions a future of revolutionary possibility and radical resistance to slavery and oppression. Though it was largely ignored upon publication, the novel gained traction with the Black Power and Pan-Africanist Movements in the twentieth century and has earned praise from such scholars as Samuel R. Delany, who described it as “about as close to an sf-style alternate history novel as you can get.” Born free, Henry Blake is stolen into slavery from his family in the West Indies and taken to the Mississippi pl