LOL! What you couldn’t know is that my uncle’s name is John and I wanted to be called John when I was in junior high. I tried to get my parents to change my name. They weren’t having it.
This sounds like a book to be read, but it is very near the truth too. I remember coming across an old black and white film of the 1940s, called 'Pinky', based on a novel of the same name, I believe, that portrayed the immense difficulty that those with both African and European ancestry who could be "white passing" had in finding their place in segregated American society. It was the existence of those "mixed race" people that led to the anti-miscegenation laws of the Jim Crow era South - the whites were terrified that they could accidentally marry and conceive children with a "white-passing" person. The dark irony of their fear was that the rape of enslaved women by their white owners to produce more slaves had already led to the extensive mixing of African and European genetics in the U.S. I recently read 'The Underground Railroad Records', a firsthand record, by a former slave, William Still, who worked on the Underground after his escape, of those who escaped slavery in the decades just before the Civil War - several of those in the record were able to use the fact that they look looked like their slaveowner fathers to escape undetected.
For all our many faults, we have a wild history. I’m always impressed by the stories of those who’ve figured out how to assert themselves despite the oppression they encounter.
Actually, some of these scenarios played out in the 1960s-1970s in the Mormon Church, which at that time had a policy that no one with "a single drop" of black blood could hold the LDS priesthood. (One) problem was the enormous inroads at that time of the LDS church in Brazil and other places in South America where many, many had such blood. What to do for leadership? The LDS solution: a new "revelation" removing the restriction on people of black blood.
On June 8, 1978, I heard an announcement from a national news service that the LDS Church had introduced a new policy regarding Negroes and their priesthood: The First Presidency had released a statement saying that “the long-promised day has come.” The statement portrayed LDS leadership as intercessors who had begged the Lord to change His mind about blacks, and that the Lord had relented. Unlike the revelations of the nineteenth century church, the exact text of this revelation was not given.
But I don’t think LDS President Spencer W. Kimball received anything more in that upper room than the end result of his realization that the Church had to make a decision between “revelation” and revenue. In the 1970s and 1980s a legal case that eventually was settled by the Supreme Court, Bob Jones University v. The United States, threatened the tax-exempt status of organizations that could be seen as discriminating against people of color. The Church must have seen in this the beginning of the kind of pressure that the United States government put on it before the polygamy “manifesto” was issued. It was mirrored in the case of Doug Wallace, a young Mormon who had passed his priesthood on to a black friend. When Wallace came up with what ex-Mormon writer Bob Witte called “an ironclad case,” and presented it to a judge, the judge apparently contacted President Kimball and told him that there’d better be a new revelation on the way giving the priesthood to blacks or Wallace would win this new case, with disastrous financial and publicity results for Mormondom.
However, one of the most prominent propelling forces that influenced the Kimball presidency was the explosive growth of the LDS Church in Brazil, and the pending temple dedication there. This was a temple in whose ordinances black men – and nearly half of all Brazilians are undeniably of black ancestry -- would not be able to participate.--from my book, The Mormon Mirage, Third Edition, Zondervan.)
Good one, Joel. It's very hard to summarize 'Black No More,' but you did it. You really have to read it -- and it's still a crazy ride. Schuyler was a brilliant journalist, a prolific one-man editorial page and world-traveling feature writer for the then-mighty Pittsburgh Courier for almost 40 years. He was, deservedly, known as 'the black Mencken.'
In my 2017 history book '30 Days a Black Man,' about a forgotten undercover journalism mission into the Jim Crow South of 1948 by a star white newspaperman, Ray Sprigle, I made sure to include as much of Schuyler as possible. https://www.amazon.com/30-Days-Black-Man-Forgotten/dp/1493026186
Schuyler was a truly complicated man. Everything about him, including his white Texas wife and their superstar daughter, Philippa, a piano prodigy who became a journalist and died covering Vietnam war, is off-the-charts nuts. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Philippa_Schuyler
It's impossible to sum up Schuyler's journalism career or capture his tremendous writing style and wit and treatment of race (all of which subscribers to Newspapers.com can find easily and fully by searching for the Pittsburgh Courier and Schuyler's name).
Here's some of what I wrote about him in '30 Days,' which, whether it's Black History Month or not, I recommend to all who want to know about an uplifting story about good old-fashioned journalism and the depressing details of how horrible life was for 10 million blacks living under Jim Crow in 1948.
Here's my Schuyler intro:
Schuyler (SKY-lar), who lived in New York City, was arguably the country’s most talented and prolific black newspaperman from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s. He has been largely forgotten by blacks and whites. But at one time the Courier’s star columnist and was the most debate-provoking, most politically incorrect black social commentator and cultural critic in the country.
During the 1920s Schuyler was considered the preeminent satirist of the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930s he was known as “the Black Mencken” for his skepticism, iconoclasm, and political satire. He became widely known among whites and blacks after writing two satirical novels, including the highly praised and much discussed Black No More. The 1931 book, premised on the ability of blacks being able to quickly change their skins white, condemns and mocks America’s obsession with race. It makes fun of white and black people, skewers the KKK and the NAACP with equal ferocity, and savagely caricatures W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and other important blacks.
Schuyler was not merely the dominant political and intellectual voice of the Courier for forty-four years; he also wrote scores of articles in national magazines, went on speaking tours, and appeared on the radio.
In addition to his weekly “Views and Reviews” columns and editorials, he wrote articles for the paper under his own name and pen names, took long investigative trips to Africa and South America for the Courier, and traveled by car across the South to carefully report on the conditions and progress of blacks. When he spoke for the Courier, Schuyler’s most radical opinions were toned down or missing. But under his byline in his columns, he was mercilessly provocative.
Race was his favorite target. He satirized, questioned, or criticized every significant black or white person who had anything to say about the issue. Married to a white woman from Texas, he ridiculed the science and the morality behind anti-miscegenation laws. He believed race was an artificial social construct and argued that it was the individual that mattered, not his skin color or caste. As he said in one column, “it’s a pretty good policy not to think so much about a person’s color and to think more about his or her character.”
There was nothing tame, conforming, simple, or politically correct about what Schuyler thought about race or much else. A recovered Socialist, he disliked communism, socialism, fascism, Western and Soviet imperialism, Zionism, organized religion, FDR, the New Deal, bureaucracy, partisan politics, herd-thinking, hero worship, and mass protests. He assailed Negro intellectuals and elite whites. He accused FDR’s agri-cultural policies of being racist and helping wealthy landowners in the South at the expense of sharecroppers, white and black. Like Booker T. Washington, he believed black Americans, North or South, would achieve
the equality and greater progress they sought by succeeding individually in the capitalist free market, not through collective political action, social protest, and federal civil rights legislation. In the 1960s his savage criticism of Martin Luther King Jr. as a Communist-influenced troublemaker and opposition to the civil rights movement in general would end his incredible Courier career, wreck his reputation, and make him a pariah to most of his race.
This book is an amazing work of satire. Schuyler knew what the real score was in the America of his time, and he probably wouldn't be surprised at all at what it has now become.
This is why I subscribe to your SubStack, John. I had no idea this book existed, and now I can't wait to get a copy and read it!
Geez, I can't believe I called you John, Joel! My apologies. I commented before I had any caffeine!
LOL! What you couldn’t know is that my uncle’s name is John and I wanted to be called John when I was in junior high. I tried to get my parents to change my name. They weren’t having it.
This sounds like a book to be read, but it is very near the truth too. I remember coming across an old black and white film of the 1940s, called 'Pinky', based on a novel of the same name, I believe, that portrayed the immense difficulty that those with both African and European ancestry who could be "white passing" had in finding their place in segregated American society. It was the existence of those "mixed race" people that led to the anti-miscegenation laws of the Jim Crow era South - the whites were terrified that they could accidentally marry and conceive children with a "white-passing" person. The dark irony of their fear was that the rape of enslaved women by their white owners to produce more slaves had already led to the extensive mixing of African and European genetics in the U.S. I recently read 'The Underground Railroad Records', a firsthand record, by a former slave, William Still, who worked on the Underground after his escape, of those who escaped slavery in the decades just before the Civil War - several of those in the record were able to use the fact that they look looked like their slaveowner fathers to escape undetected.
For all our many faults, we have a wild history. I’m always impressed by the stories of those who’ve figured out how to assert themselves despite the oppression they encounter.
Actually, some of these scenarios played out in the 1960s-1970s in the Mormon Church, which at that time had a policy that no one with "a single drop" of black blood could hold the LDS priesthood. (One) problem was the enormous inroads at that time of the LDS church in Brazil and other places in South America where many, many had such blood. What to do for leadership? The LDS solution: a new "revelation" removing the restriction on people of black blood.
How convenient!
On June 8, 1978, I heard an announcement from a national news service that the LDS Church had introduced a new policy regarding Negroes and their priesthood: The First Presidency had released a statement saying that “the long-promised day has come.” The statement portrayed LDS leadership as intercessors who had begged the Lord to change His mind about blacks, and that the Lord had relented. Unlike the revelations of the nineteenth century church, the exact text of this revelation was not given.
But I don’t think LDS President Spencer W. Kimball received anything more in that upper room than the end result of his realization that the Church had to make a decision between “revelation” and revenue. In the 1970s and 1980s a legal case that eventually was settled by the Supreme Court, Bob Jones University v. The United States, threatened the tax-exempt status of organizations that could be seen as discriminating against people of color. The Church must have seen in this the beginning of the kind of pressure that the United States government put on it before the polygamy “manifesto” was issued. It was mirrored in the case of Doug Wallace, a young Mormon who had passed his priesthood on to a black friend. When Wallace came up with what ex-Mormon writer Bob Witte called “an ironclad case,” and presented it to a judge, the judge apparently contacted President Kimball and told him that there’d better be a new revelation on the way giving the priesthood to blacks or Wallace would win this new case, with disastrous financial and publicity results for Mormondom.
However, one of the most prominent propelling forces that influenced the Kimball presidency was the explosive growth of the LDS Church in Brazil, and the pending temple dedication there. This was a temple in whose ordinances black men – and nearly half of all Brazilians are undeniably of black ancestry -- would not be able to participate.--from my book, The Mormon Mirage, Third Edition, Zondervan.)
Fascinating. Thanks!
I just purchased the audiobook on Libro.fm and can’t wait to start the book.
You’re in for a treat!
On Chapter 3. It does not play around, you are immediately plunged into the story. Absolutely loving it!
Schuyler is one of the smartest writers of the era -- I used to teach his essay "The Negro-Art Hokum,” (The Nation, June 16, 1926) until I couldn't.
This is the only book of his I’ve read so far, though I’ve got a copy of his memoir here on my shelves as well.
It seems like a must read. Thanks for introducing it to me.
My pleasure!
Just got it from the library to read.
Excellent. You’re in for a treat!
Was the film The Watermelon Man taken from parts of this book ? Can’t remember what year it was.
I don’t think so, but it plays with similar ideas.
What an interesting thought experiment. Now I'm going to be mulling on the idea of "what if all X we're suddenly Y" in all sorts of categories!
Yes! It’s kind of wild.
I am in total agreement with Helen & Thaddeus. Wow. What an amazing find & story. Look forward to finishing on my Kindle. Thank you.
My pleasure!
Good one, Joel. It's very hard to summarize 'Black No More,' but you did it. You really have to read it -- and it's still a crazy ride. Schuyler was a brilliant journalist, a prolific one-man editorial page and world-traveling feature writer for the then-mighty Pittsburgh Courier for almost 40 years. He was, deservedly, known as 'the black Mencken.'
In my 2017 history book '30 Days a Black Man,' about a forgotten undercover journalism mission into the Jim Crow South of 1948 by a star white newspaperman, Ray Sprigle, I made sure to include as much of Schuyler as possible. https://www.amazon.com/30-Days-Black-Man-Forgotten/dp/1493026186
Schuyler was a truly complicated man. Everything about him, including his white Texas wife and their superstar daughter, Philippa, a piano prodigy who became a journalist and died covering Vietnam war, is off-the-charts nuts. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Philippa_Schuyler
It's impossible to sum up Schuyler's journalism career or capture his tremendous writing style and wit and treatment of race (all of which subscribers to Newspapers.com can find easily and fully by searching for the Pittsburgh Courier and Schuyler's name).
Here's some of what I wrote about him in '30 Days,' which, whether it's Black History Month or not, I recommend to all who want to know about an uplifting story about good old-fashioned journalism and the depressing details of how horrible life was for 10 million blacks living under Jim Crow in 1948.
Here's my Schuyler intro:
Schuyler (SKY-lar), who lived in New York City, was arguably the country’s most talented and prolific black newspaperman from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s. He has been largely forgotten by blacks and whites. But at one time the Courier’s star columnist and was the most debate-provoking, most politically incorrect black social commentator and cultural critic in the country.
During the 1920s Schuyler was considered the preeminent satirist of the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930s he was known as “the Black Mencken” for his skepticism, iconoclasm, and political satire. He became widely known among whites and blacks after writing two satirical novels, including the highly praised and much discussed Black No More. The 1931 book, premised on the ability of blacks being able to quickly change their skins white, condemns and mocks America’s obsession with race. It makes fun of white and black people, skewers the KKK and the NAACP with equal ferocity, and savagely caricatures W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and other important blacks.
Schuyler was not merely the dominant political and intellectual voice of the Courier for forty-four years; he also wrote scores of articles in national magazines, went on speaking tours, and appeared on the radio.
In addition to his weekly “Views and Reviews” columns and editorials, he wrote articles for the paper under his own name and pen names, took long investigative trips to Africa and South America for the Courier, and traveled by car across the South to carefully report on the conditions and progress of blacks. When he spoke for the Courier, Schuyler’s most radical opinions were toned down or missing. But under his byline in his columns, he was mercilessly provocative.
Race was his favorite target. He satirized, questioned, or criticized every significant black or white person who had anything to say about the issue. Married to a white woman from Texas, he ridiculed the science and the morality behind anti-miscegenation laws. He believed race was an artificial social construct and argued that it was the individual that mattered, not his skin color or caste. As he said in one column, “it’s a pretty good policy not to think so much about a person’s color and to think more about his or her character.”
There was nothing tame, conforming, simple, or politically correct about what Schuyler thought about race or much else. A recovered Socialist, he disliked communism, socialism, fascism, Western and Soviet imperialism, Zionism, organized religion, FDR, the New Deal, bureaucracy, partisan politics, herd-thinking, hero worship, and mass protests. He assailed Negro intellectuals and elite whites. He accused FDR’s agri-cultural policies of being racist and helping wealthy landowners in the South at the expense of sharecroppers, white and black. Like Booker T. Washington, he believed black Americans, North or South, would achieve
the equality and greater progress they sought by succeeding individually in the capitalist free market, not through collective political action, social protest, and federal civil rights legislation. In the 1960s his savage criticism of Martin Luther King Jr. as a Communist-influenced troublemaker and opposition to the civil rights movement in general would end his incredible Courier career, wreck his reputation, and make him a pariah to most of his race.
Bill, thanks for weighing in and including the background on Schuyler. What a phenom!
This book is an amazing work of satire. Schuyler knew what the real score was in the America of his time, and he probably wouldn't be surprised at all at what it has now become.
I bet he’d be a ruthless commentator today.
I had not heard of this one, either! (Though the premise reminds me very much of The Sneetches, from the venerable Dr. Seuss.)