George Schuyler
Encyclopedia
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and social commentator known for his conservative views.
Early life
George Samuel Schuyler was born in Providence, Rhode IslandProvidence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
to George Francis (a chef) and Eliza Jane (Fischer) Schuyler. Schuyler's paternal great-grandfather was believed to be a black soldier who worked for Philip Schuyler
Philip Schuyler
Philip John Schuyler was a general in the American Revolution and a United States Senator from New York. He is usually known as Philip Schuyler, while his son is usually known as Philip J. Schuyler.-Early life:...
, whose surname the soldier adopted. Schuyler's maternal great-grandmother was a Malagasy
Malagasy people
The Malagasy ethnic group forms nearly the entire population of Madagascar. They are divided into two subgroups: the "Highlander" Merina, Sihanaka and Betsileo of the central plateau around Antananarivo, Alaotra and Fianarantsoa, and the côtiers elsewhere in the country. This division has its...
servant who married a ship captain from Saxe-Coburg
Saxe-Coburg
Saxe-Coburg was a duchy held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in today's Bavaria, Germany.After the Division of Erfurt in 1572, Coburg was part of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Eisenach, ruled by the Ernestine duke John Casimir jointly with his brother John Ernest. In 1596...
in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. Schuyler's father died when he was young. George spent his early years in Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
, where his mother moved their family after she remarried. In 1912, Schuyler, at age seventeen, enlisted in the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
and was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant, serving in Seattle and Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. He went AWOL after a Greek immigrant
Greek American
Greek Americans are Americans of Greek descent also described as Hellenic descent. According to the 2007 U.S. Census Bureau estimation, there were 1,380,088 people of Greek ancestry in the United States, while the State Department mentions that around 3,000,000 Americans claim to be of Greek descent...
, who was tasked to shine his shoes, refused to do so because of Schuyler's skin color. After turning himself in, Schuyler was convicted by a military court and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released after nine months as a model prisoner.
Socialist beginnings
After his discharge, Schuyler moved to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he worked as a handyman, doing odd jobs. During this period, he read many books which sparked his interest in socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. He lived for a period in the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel, run by black separatist Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
's Universal Negro Improvement Association
Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey. The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1990s, prior to Garvey's deportation from the United States of America, after which its...
(UNIA) and attended UNIA meetings. Schuyler dissented from Garvey's philosophy
Garveyism
Garveyism is an aspect of Black Nationalism which takes its source from the works, words and deeds of UNIA-ACL founder Marcus Garvey. The fundamental focus of Garveyism is the complete, total and never ending redemption of the continent of Africa by people of African ancestry, at home and abroad...
and began writing about his perspectives.
Although not fully comfortable with socialist thought, Schuyler engaged himself in a circle of socialist friends, including the black socialist group Friends of Negro Freedom. This connection led to Schuyler's employment by A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph was a leader in the African American civil-rights movement and the American labor movement. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly Negro labor union. In the early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the March on Washington...
and Chandler Owen's magazine, The Messenger
The Messenger Magazine
The Messenger was a political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the early 20th century that was important in the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City by Chandler Owen and A...
, the group's journal. Schuyler's column, Shafts and Darts: A Page of Calumny and Satire, came to the attention of Ira F. Lewis, manager of the Pittsburgh Courier
Pittsburgh Courier
The Pittsburgh Courier was an American newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was published from 1907 to 1965. Once the country's most widely circulated Black newspaper, the legacy and influence of the Pittsburgh Courier is unparalleled.A pillar of the Black Press, it rose...
. In 1924, Schuyler accepted an offer from the Courier to author a weekly column
Column (newspaper)
A column is a recurring piece or article in a newspaper, magazine or other publication. Columns are written by columnists.What differentiates a column from other forms of journalism is that it meets each of the following criteria:...
.
Early journalist days
By the mid-1920s, Schuyler had come to disdain socialism, believing that socialists were frauds who actually cared very little about negroNegro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
es. Schuyler's writing caught the eye of journalist/social critic H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
, who wrote "I am more and more convinced that he [Schuyler] is the most competent editorial writer now in practice in this great free republic." Schuyler contributed ten articles to the American Mercury during Mencken's tenure as editor, all dealing with Black issues, and all notable for Schuyler's wit and incisive analysis. Because of his close association with Mencken, as well as their compatible ideologies and sharp use of satire, Schuyler during this period was often referred to as "the Black Mencken."
In 1926, the Courier sent Schuyler on an editorial assignment to the South, where he developed his journalistic protocol: ride with a cab driver, then chat with a local barber
Barber
A barber is someone whose occupation is to cut any type of hair, and to shave or trim the beards of men. The place of work of a barber is generally called a barbershop....
, bellboy, landlord, and policeman. These encounters would precede interviews with local town officials. In 1926, Schuyler became the Chief Editorial Writer at the Courier. That year, he published a controversial article entitled "The Negro-Art Hokum" in The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
. (Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," a response to Schuyler's piece, appeared in the same magazine.) Schuyler objected to the segregation of art by race, writing about a decade after his "Negro-Art Hokum" article, "All of this hullabaloo about the Negro Renaissance in art and literature did stimulate the writing of some literature of importance which will live. The amount, however, is very small, but such as it is, it is meritorious because it is literature and not Negro literature. It is judged by literary and not by racial standards, which is as it should be."
In 1929, Schuyler's pamphlet, Racial Inter-Marriage in the United States, called for solving the country's race problem through miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
, which was then illegal in most states.
In 1931, Schuyler published Black No More
Black No More
Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940 is a 1931 Harlem Renaissance era satire on American race relations by George S. Schuyler . He targets both the KKK and NAACP in condemning the ways in which race functions as both...
, which tells the story of a scientist who develops a process that turns black people to white, a book that has since been reprinted twice. Between 1936 and 1938 he published in the Pittsburgh Courier a weekly serial, which he later collected and published as a novel titled Black Empire. Schuyler also published the highly controversial book Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia, a novel about the slave trade created by freed American slaves who settled Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
in the 1820s.
In the 1930s, Schuyler published scores of short stories in the Pittsburgh Courier under various pseudonyms. He was published in many prestigious black journals, including Negro Digest, The Messenger
The Messenger Magazine
The Messenger was a political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the early 20th century that was important in the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City by Chandler Owen and A...
, and W.E.B. DuBois's The Crisis
The Crisis
The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois , Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.The original title of the journal was...
. Schuyler's journalism also appeared in such mainstream magazines as The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
and Common Ground
Common Ground
Common Ground may refer to:* Common ground * Grounding in communication * The commons, publicly owned areas, especially those for meeting* Common land, ground where the public have traditional rights, such as grazing...
, and in such newspapers as The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
and The New York Evening Post (forerunner of the New York Post).
Later years
From 1937 to 1944, Schuyler was the business manager of the NAACP. During the McCarthy Era, Schuyler moved sharply to the political right and contributed to American Opinion, the journal of the John Birch SocietyJohn Birch Society
The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing....
. In 1947, he published The Communist Conspiracy against the Negroes. Schuyler’s conservatism was a counterpoint to the predominant liberal philosophy of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1964, while working for the Pittsburgh Courier, Schuyler expressed opposition to Martin Luther King Jr.'s being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
, writing, "Dr. King's principal contribution to world peace has been to roam the country like some sable Typhoid Mary, infecting the mentally disturbed with perversions of Christian doctrine, and grabbing fat lecture fees from the shallow-pated." The Courier editor, Robert L. Vann, refused to publish the essay and subsequently dismissed Schuyler from the paper.
Outlets for Schuyler’s written work diminished until he was an obscure figure at the time of his death in 1977. As the liberal black writer Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...
notes in his introduction to a 1999 republication of Black No More
Black No More
Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940 is a 1931 Harlem Renaissance era satire on American race relations by George S. Schuyler . He targets both the KKK and NAACP in condemning the ways in which race functions as both...
, Schuyler's 1931 race satire, in the final years of Schuyler’s life it was considered taboo in black circles to even interview the aging writer.
He wrote a syndicated column (1965-77) for the North American Newspaper Alliance
North American Newspaper Alliance
The North American Newspaper Alliance was a large newspaper syndicate that flourished between 1922 and 1980.Founded by John Neville Wheeler, NANA employed some of the most noted writing talents of its time, including Grantland Rice, Joseph Alsop, Michael Stern, Lothrop Stoddard, Dorothy Thompson,...
.
Schuyler's autobiography, Black and Conservative, was published in 1966.
Family
In 1928, Schuyler married Josephine Lewis Cogdell, a liberal white Texan heiress. Their daughter, Philippa SchuylerPhilippa Schuyler
Philippa Duke Schuyler was a noted American child prodigy and pianist who became famous in the 1930s and 1940s as a result of her talent, mixed race parentage, and the eccentric methods employed by her mother to bring her up....
(1931-1967), was a child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
and noted concert pianist who later followed her father's footsteps and embarked on a career in journalism.
Selected writings
- Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia, 1931
- Black No MoreBlack No MoreBlack No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940 is a 1931 Harlem Renaissance era satire on American race relations by George S. Schuyler . He targets both the KKK and NAACP in condemning the ways in which race functions as both...
: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free A.D. 1933-1940, 1931 - Devil Town: An Enthralling Story of Tropical Africa, (novella) (published pseudonymously in the Pittsburgh Courier, June-July 1933)
- Golden Gods: A Story of Love, Intrigue and Adventure in African Jungles, (novella) (published pseudonymously in the Pittsburgh Courier, December 1933-February 1934)
- The Beast of Bradhurst Avenue: A Gripping Tale of Adventure in the Heart of Harlem, (novella) (published pseudonymously in the Pittsburgh Courier, March-May 1934)
- Strange Valley (novella) (published pseudonymously in the Pittsburgh Courier, August-November 1934)
- Black Empire, 1936-1938, 1993 (originally published pseudonymously in the Pittsburgh Courier in serial form as two separate works under the titles The Black Internationale and Black Empire) Google Books
- Ethiopian Stories, 1995 (originally published pseudonymously in the Pittsburgh Courier in serial form as two separate works under the title The Ethiopian Murder Mystery and Revolt in Ethiopia) Google Books
- Black and Conservative, 1966
- Rac(e)ing to the Right: Selected Essays of George S. Schuyler, 2001
External links
- About George Schuyler
- Negro Art-Hokum - essay
- Justice of George S. Schuyler, Policy Review, August-September 2000
- George S. Schuyler, All American
See also
- African AmericanAfrican AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
- African American cultureAfrican American cultureAfrican-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...
- African American historyAfrican American historyAfrican-American history is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans held in the United States from 1619 to 1865...
- AfrofuturismAfrofuturismAfrofuturism is an emergent literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise,...
- American literatureAmerican literatureAmerican literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
- List of African-American writers