Schuyler << SKY lur >> , George S. (1895-1977), was an African American novelist, journalist, and political activist. As a writer, he became known for his novel Black No More (1931). The novel is now considered a major work of satire from the Harlem Renaissance , a movement that promoted new directions in African American literature and other arts during the 1920’s and early 1930’s.
In Black No More, an African American doctor named Junius Crookman reveals he has discovered a drug that makes black people look like whites. The drug works by changing the pigment (coloring substance) in their skin. Crookman establishes clinics throughout the United States to meet the demand for the drug from blacks eager to become white and thus escape racial bigotry. The novel makes fun of both black and white public figures as well as American attitudes about race.
George Samuel Schuyler was born on Feb. 25, 1895, in Providence, Rhode Island, and was raised in Syracuse, New York. He served in the United States Army from 1912 to 1917. In 1924, he began a weekly column for the African American newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier. He also wrote for such national magazines as The American Mercury, The Crisis, and The Nation.
Schuyler’s second novel, Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia (1931), grew out of the author’s visit to the African nation of Liberia in 1931. Schuyler had gone to Liberia to investigate charges of domestic slavery and forced labor in the country. Schuyler also wrote a series of stories and short novels with African settings during the 1930’s.
Starting in the late 1940’s, Schuyler became a political conservative. He supported the controversial Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy . Schuyler joined the conservative anti-Communist John Birch Society in the 1960’s and contributed to its publications. Schuyler wrote Black and Conservative: The Autobiography of George S. Schuyler (1966). He died on Aug. 31, 1977.
