John Oliver Killens

John Oliver Killens (January 14, 1916 – October 27, 1987) was an American fiction writer from Georgia who wrote novels on African-American life.

Killens was born in Macon, Georgia, to Charles Myles Killens, Sr, and Willie Lee Killens. His father encouraged him to read Langston Hughes' writings, and his mother, who was president of Dunbar Literary Club, introduced him to poetry. Killens was an enthusiastic reader as a child and was inspired by writers such as Hughes and Richard Wright. His great-grandmother’s tales of slavery were another important factor in his gaining knowledge of traditional black mythology and folklore, which he later incorporated into his writings.

Killens graduated in 1933 from Ballard Normal School in Macon, a private institution run by the American Missionary Association and at the time one of the few secondary schools for blacks in Georgia. Planning to be a lawyer, he attended historically black colleges to study further at the college level and focus on law: Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida, Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Howard University in Washington DC, and in 1939 the Robert H. Terrell Law School in Washington, D.C. In his final year, he left in order to study creative writing at Columbia University in New York.

Killens enlisted in the army during World War II, serving as a member of the Pacific amphibious forces from 1942 to 1945. He spent more than two years in the South Pacific, and rose to the rank of master sergeant.

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