William H. Grier, a psychiatrist whose book “Black Rage,” written with his colleague Price M. Cobbs, drew widespread attention to the psychic damage inflicted by racism and the causes of black anger, a topic of intense interest in the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Sept. 3 at a hospice in Carlsbad, Calif. He was 89.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, said his son Geoffrey.
Dr. Grier and his co-author, who together ran a psychiatric clinic in San Francisco, opened the eyes of a broad audience to the psychological rather than the economic consequences of racism, drawing on case studies to illustrate their points. “Black Rage,” published by Basic Books in 1968, laid out in unsparing terms the psychic tightrope that black Americans walked, their self-image, family structures and worldview distorted by the weight of white oppression.
The authors listed a host of ills: the low self-esteem of black women, told by the dominant white culture that they were physically unattractive; the hostility of black men toward black women, a reaction to the protective passivity enforced by black mothers; the instability of black families, undermined by the inability of parents to protect their children from the hostile forces surrounding them.
One hallmark of the black psyche, the authors wrote, was “cultural paranoia,” a justified suspicion of the people and institutions around them that could, under pressure, veer toward paranoid schizophrenia.
Since the days of slavery, they argued, blacks had adopted an outward style of ingratiating deference that masked a seething anger. “As a sapling bent low stores energy for a violent backswing,” they wrote, “blacks bent double by oppression have stored energy which will be released in the form of rage — black rage, apocalyptic and final.”
The book was unremittingly bleak by design. “This dismal tone has been deliberate,” the authors wrote in the final pages. “It has been an attempt to evoke a certain quality of depression and hopelessness in the reader and to stir these feelings. These are the most common feelings tasted by black people in America.”
“Black Rage” was hailed as a timely analysis of a people in crisis. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a review in The New York Times, called it “one of the most important books on the Negro to appear in the last decade.” He added, “The thesis is understated, deliberately dismal, and intensely eloquent; its impact is overwhelming.”
William Henry Grier, known as Bill, was born on Feb. 7, 1926, in Birmingham, Ala. When he was 12, his father, Henry, lost his job at the post office and the family moved in with relatives in Detroit.
After attending public schools, he enrolled at the historically black Howard University at 16 but transferred after a year to the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in 1945 and a medical degree three years later. He did his residency at Harlem Hospital Center.
Dr. Grier trained as a psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan., and served in Korea with the Army during the Korean War, attaining the rank of captain. He then returned to Detroit, where he established a private psychiatric practice and taught at Wayne State University.
In the mid-1960s, he was hired by the city of San Francisco to run its Child Psychiatric Clinic. He and Dr. Cobbs, almost the only black psychiatrists in the city, sought each other out and together created a clinic, the Pacific Psychotherapy Lab.
As they began sharing ideas, the nucleus of “Black Rage” developed. “At some point we said, ‘Wait, we’re talking about this, we hear about it from our patients, we feel it ourselves, so let’s write about it,’ ” Dr. Cobbs said in an interview. “Let’s examine the psychic state of black people in America today.”
“Black Rage” thrust Dr. Grier into the spotlight. Immediately after the book was published, KRON, the local NBC television station, followed him and Dr. Cobbs on a walk on Fillmore Street as they explained the issues discussed in the book. ABC broadcast a special on the book called “To Be Black.”
The prominent black scholar Kenneth B. Clark, a professor of social psychology at City College, criticized “Black Rage” in The New York Times Book Review as simplistic, unscholarly and overly impressed with the originality of its findings. But most critics found the book readable, persuasive and sobering.
The authors followed up with “The Jesus Bag” (1971), a critical analysis of the role of religion in black life. It was not nearly as successful as “Black Rage.”
After serving as chairman of the department of psychiatry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville in the early 1970s, Dr. Grier started a psychiatric practice in San Diego, from which he retired in the 1990s.
His first marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Mozell, died in the early 1980s. In addition to his son Geoffrey, Dr. Grier, who lived in Leucadia, Calif., is survived by his wife, Corrie Ort; another son, David Alan, an actor best known for his work on the television series “In Living Color”; a daughter, Elizabeth Ann Grier; a stepson, Derrek Karmoen; a stepdaughter, Saminah Karmoen; and two grandchildren.
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