One of the most striking things about Black No More is not only that it satirizes white society’s reaction to Black Americans becoming white, but also that it contains caricatures of many of the real-life Black leaders at the time. At the National Social Equality League meeting in the book (which stands in for the real-life NAACP), a group of Black leaders attempts to figure out how to get Black people to maintain pride in their race rather than turning white. However, author George Schuyler implies that they are doing so not because they actually have that same pride, but because it profits them to espouse these beliefs. And because so many of them are direct proxies for figures like W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Madam C. J. Walker, Schuyler suggests that in reality, many Black leaders are just as hypocritical as the figures in the book—they preach racial solidarity while having little racial pride themselves.
The book’s character Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard parodies W. E. B. Du Bois, and Schuyler’s criticism of Beard—that he has very little in common with most Black Americans and wants very little to do with them—highlights Du Bois’s own hypocrisy. Beard’s description draws immediate comparison to Du Bois. Beard is the founder of the N.S.E.L.; writes a journal for the organization called The Dilemma; is a graduate of Harvard, Yale, and Copenhagen; and is described as having a “full spade beard.” Likewise, Du Bois founded the NAACP (an organization advocating for racial equality and justice); wrote a journal for the organization called The Crisis; was a graduate of Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin; and wore the same kind of beard. In this description, Schuyler thinly veils Du Bois in Beard, while also immediately setting up his critique. Just the pretentious name—Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard—implies that Schuyler believed Du Bois was haughty and elitist. Further descriptions add to the book’s critique, as it notes that Beard “denounc[ed] the Caucasians whom he secretly admired and laud[ed] the greatness of the Negroes whom he alternately pitied and despised” in his journal editorials. It goes on, explaining that Beard was completely unfamiliar with the “down-trodden black workers” and that even though he “deified” Black women, he employed “aught save octoroons.” In this way, Schuyler depicts Du Bois as someone who claimed to be proud of his race, but in reality, was hypocritically disdainful of the majority of Black Americans.
Schuyler also critiques Marcus Garvey through the character of Santop Licorice, who uses the “Back to Africa” movement to promote racial solidarity even though he doesn’t fully believe in it or take part in that same solidarity. The book introduces Licorice as the head of the Back-To-Africa Society, which advocates for Black Americans to immigrate to Africa. This bears comparison with Garvey, who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a Black nationalist organization that advocated for solidarity between members of the African diaspora and helped arrange for immigration for Black Americans who wanted to return to Africa. Yet just as Garvey never visited Africa himself, Schuyler writes that Licorice had never gone to Africa and had no intention of going there (merely profiting off of those who wanted to), pointing out his hypocrisy. Later in the book, one of the heads of the white supremacist group the Knights of Nordica considers asking some of the Black leaders to speak to his members because they have a common enemy in Black-No-More (a treatment that turns Black people white). This mirrors how Garvey had strong ties to members of the Ku Klux Klan because they both argued for racial separatism—again illustrating his hypocrisy in advocating for racial solidarity while working with the very people who oppress and murder his fellow Black Americans.
The book also criticizes businesspeople like Madam C. J. Walker, who is lauded as a self-made Black businesswoman even though she makes her fortune off products to make Black people appear more like white people. Madam C. J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove) is often credited as the first female self-made millionaire. But she made her fortune mostly off of hot combs and other products that made Black people’s hair look more like white people’s hair. This echoes the character of Sisseretta Blandish, who owns a hair salon in Harlem. She condemns people who take the Black-No-More treatment as not having any “race pride.” But the book points out that she found success in “making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible,” and as a result she was recently “elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the American Race Pride League,” just as Walker joined the Executive Committee of the NAACP. In this way, the book highlights Blandish’s (and thus, Walker’s) hypocrisy in stating that she shows race pride while making money off of products that portray white hair or features as the ideal.
Throughout his life, Schuyler’s critiques of Black leaders made him a controversial figure. But his caricatures illustrate that no one is above criticism, because he suggests that many Black leaders do not practice what they preach. While people like Du Bois, Garvey, and Walker are lauded for their success and leadership, Schuyler suggests that they, too, show their hypocrisy in gaining that success from products or ideas that they either do not believe in or that undermine racial solidarity.
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Leadership and Hypocrisy Quotes in Black No More
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.
Unlike Givens, he had no belief in the racial integrity nonsense nor any confidence in the white masses whom he thought were destined to flock to the Knights of Nordica. On the contrary he despised and hated them. He had the average Negro’s justifiable fear of the poor whites and only planned to use them as a stepladder to the real money.
While this organization had to depend to a large extent upon the charity of white folk for its existence, since the blacks had always been more or less skeptical about the program for liberty and freedom, the efforts of the society were not entirely unprofitable. Vistas of immaculate offices spread in every direction from the elevator and footfalls were muffled in thick imitation-Persian rugs. 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.
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. In limpid prose he told of the sufferings and privations of the down-trodden black workers with whose lives he was totally and thankfully unfamiliar. Like most Negro leaders, he deified the black woman but abstained from employing aught save octoroons. He talked at white banquets about “we of the black race” and admitted in books that he was part-French, part-Russian, part-Indian and part-Negro. He bitterly denounced the Nordics for debauching Negro women while taking care to hire comely yellow stenographers with weak resistance. In a real way he loved his people.
Mr. Licorice for some fifteen years had been very profitably advocating the emigration of all the American Negroes to Africa. He had not, of course, gone there himself and had not the slightest intention of going so far from the fleshpots, but he told the other Negroes to go. Naturally the first step in their going was to join his society by paying five dollars a year for membership, ten dollars for a gold, green and purple robe and silver-colored helmet that together cost two dollars and a half, contributing five dollars to the Santop Licorice Defense Fund […], and buying shares at five dollars each in the Royal Black Steamship Company, for obviously one could not get to Africa without a ship and Negroes ought to travel on Negro-owned and operated ships. The ships were Santop’s especial pride. True, they had never been to Africa, had never had but one cargo and that, being gin, was half consumed by the unpaid and thirsty crew before the vessel was saved by the Coast Guard, but they had cost more than anything else the Back-To-Africa Society had purchased even though they were worthless except as scrap iron.
