"Black No More" by George S. Schuyler (1931)
**Legitimately one of the most astoundingly brilliant and absolutely brutal works of satire I've ever read**
This book is dedicated
to all Caucasians in the great republic
who can trace their ancestry
back ten generations
and confidently assert that there are no
black leaves, twigs, limbs or branches on
their family trees.
Let's start at the beginning. This book, set in then-modern times of Prohibition-era America, is one of the first ever works of Afrofuturism as it imagines a technology that allows Black (or, presumably, anyone) Americans to undergo a treatment that renders them white. Completely indistinguishable from someone of European descent, these newly white Americans are free to integrate into Caucasian society. And, well, hilarity ensues
Now, even considered as a period piece, this is an incredible glimpse into 1930s America. In the opening scene, our main character is talking his with his best friend--both of them war veterans who fought in France in the Great War--about this new treatment that has just been announced. He thinks, "It looked as though science was to succeed where the Civil War had failed." It's a stark and frankly very pointed reminder that, even at the time, everyone knew that the Civil War had not accomplished the goal of achieving equality for Black Americans. Now, a hundred years later . . . still a work in progress, I guess
But yes, Schuyler writes with a palpable sense of glee as he talks about white society's completely inability to handle the disappearance of its pariahs. Oh, and his main character, a converted Negro named Max, ends up an influential member of the "Knights of Nordica", a society aiming to protect and preserve white purity in America. You can hear the author's laughter spilling out of the page
Though it's satire, his description of the slow collapse of social order is darkly plausible. And within this there are caricatures that ring true even today. For example, he writes of one of the "Christian" leaders of an racist organization:
Mrs. Givens was a Christian. There was no doubt about it because she freely admitted it to everybody, with or without provocation. Of course she often took the name of the Creator in vain when she got to quarreling with Henry; she had the reputation among her friends of not always stating the exact truth; she hated Negroes; her spouse had made bitter and profane comment concerning her virginity on their wedding night; and as head of the ladies’ auxiliary [she embezzled the members' dues]; but that she was a devout Christion no one doubted. She believed the Bible from cover to cover, except what it said about people with money
That person still exists today, in 2026. We're a mere five years away from this books centennial, and I have absolutely no doubt that characterization will ring true then as well. That's how this book goes, just viciously cutting descriptions of the worst that American has to offer:
The audience was composed of the lower stratum of white working people: hard-faced, lantern-jawed, dull-eyed adult children, seeking like all humanity for something permanent in the eternal flux of life. The young girls in their cheap finery with circus makeup on their faces; the young men, aged before their time by child labor and a violent environment; the middle-aged folk with their shiny, shabby garb and beaten countenances; all ready and eager to be organized for any purpose except improvement of their intellects and standard of living.
So. If the book had only done that, if it had stopped there, it would have already been fun. Like, a ton of fun. Fun to write and fun to read. But Schuyler didn't stop there
What catapulted it into legendary tier is the moment, about a third of the way through, which it switches from satirizing the contemporary white establishment . . . and goes to mocking the contemporary black establishment. Because our narrator goes to the offices of the National Social Equality League (a sendup of the NAACP about as subtle as the "Knights of Nordica" mocking the Klan) . . . who are as upset as the white racists, because without black people there is no one to donate to their campaigns:
The national office of the militant Negro organization, the National Social Equality League, was agog. Telephone bells were ringing, mulatto clerks were hustling excitedly back and forth, messenger boys rushed in and out. Located in the Times Square district of Manhattan, it had for forty years carried on the fight for full social equality for the Negro citizens and the immediate abolition of lynching as a national sport . . . while the large staff of officials was eager to end all oppression and persecution of the Negro, they were never so happy and excited as when a Negro was barred from a theater or fried to a crisp. Then they would leap for telephones, grab telegraph pads and yell for stenographers; smiling through their simulated indignation at the spectacle of another reason for their continued existence and appeals for funds.
Like, I am by no means well-versed in this era of the Civil Rights movement . . . and even I was able to spot the character who was an obvious stand-in for W. E. B. DuBois. I have to assume that it was even more obvious to readers at the time. I'm sorry to be posting block quotes, but my jaw was on the floor reading these and all I can do is just pass them along:
In a very private inner office of the N. S. E. L. suite, Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard, founder of the League and a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Copenhagen (whose haughty bearing never failed to impress both Caucasians and Negroes) sat before a glass-topped desk, rubbing now his curly gray head, and now his full spade beard. For a mere six thousand dollars a year, the learned doctor wrote scholarly and biting editorials in 'The Dilemma' denouncing the Caucasians whom he secretly admired and lauding the greatness of the Negroes whom he alternately pitied and despised.
Ever since the first sanitarium of Black-No-More, Incorporated, started turning Negroes into Caucasians, the National Social Equality League’s income had been decreasing. No dues had been collected in months and subscriptions to the national mouthpiece, 'The Dilemma,' had dwindled to almost nothing. Officials, long since ensconced in palatial apartments, began to grow panic-stricken as pay days got farther apart. They began to envision the time when they would no longer be able for the sake of the Negro race to suffer the hardships of lunching on canvasback duck at the Urban Club surrounded by the white dilettante, endure the perils of first-class Transatlantic passage to stage Save-Dear-Africa Conferences or undergo the excruciating torture of rolling back and forth across the United States in drawing-rooms to hear each other lecture on the Negro problem.
The sheer gall of Schuyler to write this. Holy hell, I loved it
And he didn't even stop there. As much glee as he took writing about the powerful white folks' consternation, there was just as palpable schadenfreude as he writes about the economic downfall of those members of the Black community who made their money on skin-whitening and hair-straightening techniques. I'm sure Madam C. J. Walker loved this passage:
Madame Sisseretta Blandish sat disconsolately in an armchair near the front door of her ornate hair-straightening shop, looking blankly at the pedestrians and traffic passing to and fro. These two weeks had been hard ones for her. Everything was going out and nothing coming in. She had been doing very well at her vocation for years and was acclaimed in the community as one of its business leaders. Because of her prominence as the proprietor of a successful enterprise engaged in making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible, she had recently been elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the American Race Pride League.
. . . awkward
I loved this book because because of the fact that Schuyler pulls absolutely no punches. In the tradition of some of the all-time great works of satire, there are absolutely no good or moral characters. Everyone sucks here, from the racists Klansmen to the ivory-towered Civil Rights activists to the street-level grifters to the easily manipulated blue-collar schmucks to the self-absorbed academics to the . . . everyone. It's glorious
And yet, he doesn't stop there. Because in the end, as all the best satires do, Schuyler has a really important point to make. Because see, Schuyler was a socialist. And the most important thing he talks about in this book is how the absence of the Negro is absolutely devastating for the elite class, because that racial tension is exactly how they've been presenting workers from unionizing. It's pointed out very early in the novel, a seemingly throwaway paragraph that's in fact the thesis of the whole book:
Then he recalled what a Negro street speaker had said one night on the corner of 138th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York: that unorganized labor meant cheap labor; that the guarantee of cheap labor was an effective means of luring new industries into the South; that so long as the ignorant white masses could be kept thinking of the menace of the Negro to Caucasian race purity and political control, they would give little thought to labor organization. It suddenly dawned upon Matthew Fisher that this Black-No-More treatment was more of a menace to white business than to white labor.
As the book goes on, it's even more obvious. One of the key events of the middle section of the novel is Max (now renamed as "Matthew" in his new life), in his role within the Knights of Nordica, going out to break up an impending strike. He does so by stoking racial tensions among the worker, starting rumors that certain union bosses are in fact secret Negroes that have disguised themselves with the treatment. Though satire, this passage is hard to read as the ease with which he breaks the labor movement is depressingly realistic:
It had indeed become Matthew’s trade and he was quite adept at it. What had happened at Paradise had also happened elsewhere. There were no more rumors of strikes. The working people were far more interested in what they considered, or were told was, the larger issue of race. It did not matter that they had to send their children into the mills to augment the family wage; that they were always sickly and that their death rate was high. What mattered such little things when the very foundation of civilization, white supremacy, was threatened?
Writing this here in 2026, as we see politician whip up culture war issues in order to consolidate their power . . . well. It's saddening how little things have changed in a century. In fact, to the still-present race issues we've now added fear about trans athletes and so many other issues (we literally have officials speaking on the floor of congress about furries. Who cares? Politicians who want to divide us care). The playbook hasn't changed in over a hundred years (and far longer than that)
But that's why this book is such an important read
This is a truly fantastic book. It's also less than 150 pages. Oh and it's IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, free to read online. Give it a runthrough. It's almost as fresh now as it was nearly a century ago
I loved this book
“Oh, he knows how to charm the yokels. He’ll appeal to the American people to call upon the Administration to close up the sanitariums of Dr. Crookman and deport everybody connected with Black-No-More.”“You can’t deport citizens, silly,” Bunny remonstrated.“That don’t stop you from advocating it. This is politics, Big Boy.”
::siiiiiigh::
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