Daddy Was a Number Runner is linked to its own black roots in a number of ways. Written in the Watts Writers’ Workshop that novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg founded soon after the Los Angeles riots of 1965, the novel uncovers black history and identifies the strands that have meaning for Francie—and for readers. The novel is a tough initiation story, but by the end, Francie has gained insights into the world around her that are still useful. In fact, she has gained her identity in the context of historical reality.

In that regard, the novel resembles Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) as black urban initiation novels. What sets Daddy Was a Number Runner apart is its historical accuracy. Meriwether does not make up history for Francie to enjoy but instead puts her through what Meriwether herself undoubtedly experienced as an adolescent in Harlem. Francie hears the powerful and charismatic Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., preach in his Abyssinian Baptist Church. She sneaks off to have a chicken dinner at the cafeteria run by the followers of the evangelist Father Divine. She hears street speakers echoing Marcus Garvey, she sees the riots over the Scottsboro boys (nine black youths falsely accused of an Alabama rape), and she witnesses the celebrations after Joe Louis knocks out Max Baer. This is a real Harlem, in a real Depression; what Francie learns is her social identity within it.

In the midst of a touching initiation story—a novel in which a young woman learns to beat the violence and sexual abuse around her, and at the same time to gain her own sexual identity—is a larger story of the responsibilities of that self to a larger world. Daddy Was a Number Runner is, in the best sense, a political novel. Late in the book, for example, Francie listens to a street speaker:What are we doing to help ourselves? I tell you, brothers and sisters, the black man in this country must make his own life. The crying Negro must die. The cringing Negro must die. If he don’t kill hisself the environment will, and we been dying for too long. The man who gets the power is the man who develops his own strength.

As Robert (Maude’s brother-in-law), Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., her own father, and others have been telling Francie almost since the beginning of the novel, African Americans must themselves end their economic exploitation and gain political power. By the close of her story, Francie has learned this important message; increasingly, in the 1970’s, others learned it also. For the more than half a million people who have shared the novel since its publication, the message continues to ring true.