ass and taking names" Killens became friends with actor Harry Belafonte, who after establishing his production company HarBel wanted to adapt William P. McGivern's crime novel Odds Against Tomorrow as a film. Belafonte picked Abraham Polonsky as the screenwriter, but since Polonsky had been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Killens generously agreed to act as his front and was credited with the screenplay for the film. In 1996 the Writers Guild of America restored credit to Polonsky for the film under his own name. Killen's second novel, And Then We Heard the Thunder (1962), was about the treatment of the black soldiers in the military during World War II, when the armed forces were still segregated. Critic Noel Perrin ranked it as one of five major works of fiction of World War II. Killens's third novel, Sippi (1967), focused on the voting rights struggles of African Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Slaves (1969), a historical novel, was developed from the screenplay for the film of the same name, intended to accompany its release. In The Cotillion; or, One Good Bull Is Half the Herd (1971), Killens explored upper-class African-American society. In addition to novels, Killens also wrote plays, screenplays, and many articles and short stories. He published these works in a range of media, including The Black Scholar, The New York Times, Ebony, Redbook, Negro Digest and Black World. According to Kira Alexander, "On June 7, 1964, Killens reached his largest audience when his essay 'Explanation of the "Black Psyche" was published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine." He produced five further articles, which were published in Black Man's Burden. Killens taught creative-writing programs at Fisk University, Howard University, Columbia University, and Medgar Evers College. In 1986, he founded the National Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College. Named in the author's honor, The Killens Review of Arts & Letters is published twice a year by the Center. Personal life On June 19, 1943, Killens married Grace Ward Jones. They had two children together: a son, Jon Charles (born 1944), and a daughter, Barbara (born 1947). In 1987, Killens died of cancer, aged 71, at the Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center in Brooklyn, New York. He was living in Crown Heights. Bibliography Novels Youngblood (1954), novel And Then We Heard the Thunder (1962), novel Sippi (1967), novel Slaves (1969), novel The Cotillion; or, One