I felt a mental censor - product of the fears which a Negro feels from living in America - standing over me, draped in white, warning me not to write.… “What will the white people think if I draw the picture of such a Negro boy? Will they not at once say: 'See, didn't we tell you all long the niggers are like that? Now, look, one of their own kind has come along and drawn the picture for us!'”… I knew that I could not write of Bigger convincingly if I did not depict him as he was: that is, resentful toward whites, sullen, angry, ignorant, emotionally unstable, depressed and unaccountably elated at times, and unable even, because of his own lack of inner organization which American oppression had fostered in him, to unite with the members of his own race.… There was another constricting thought that kept me from work.… I asked myself: “What will Negro doctors, lawyers, dentists, bankers, school teachers, social workers, and business men think of me if I draw such a picture of Bigger?”… But Bigger won over all these claims;… I felt with all my being that he was more important than what any person, white or black, would say or try to make of him, more important than any political analysis designed to explain or deny him, more important, even, than my own sense of fear, shame, and diffidence.