Spill Your Ink Prose Series

Nelson Peery grew up in rural Wabasha, Minnesota, the son of a postal service worker in the only African-American family in the town.

His high school education during the depression was supplemented by a year hoboing across the country, a year in which he gained experience that no school could teach about racism and the American economy. His award-winning memoir, Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary, describes these years and his years in the U. S. Army during World War II. He wrote Black Fire because no one had every told the story about the black soldier and he wanted to tell how a person became a revolutionary.