Black No More

By George Schuyler.

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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.

Preface

Over twenty years ago a gentleman in Asbury Park, NJ began manufacturing and advertising a preparation for the immediate and unfailing straightening of the most stubborn Negro hair. This preparation was called Kink-No-More, a name not wholly accurate since users of it were forced to renew the treatment every fortnight.

During the intervening years many chemists, professional and amateur, have been seeking the means of making the downtrodden Aframerican resemble as closely as possible his white fellow citizen. The temporarily effective preparations placed on the market have so far proved exceedingly profitable to manufacturers, advertising agencies, Negro newspapers and beauty culturists, while millions of users have registered great satisfaction at the opportunity to rid themselves of kinky hair and grow several shades lighter in color, if only for a brief time. With America’s constant reiteration of the superiority of whiteness, the avid search on the part of the black masses for some key to chromatic perfection is easily understood. Now it would seem that science is on the verge of satisfying them.

Dr. Yusaburo Noguchi, head of the Noguchi Hospital at Beppu, Japan, told American newspaper reporters in October 1929, that as a result of fifteen years of painstaking research and experiment he was able to change a Negro into a white man. While he admitted that this racial metamorphosis could not be effected overnight, he maintained that “Given time, I could change the Japanese into a race of tall blue-eyed blonds.” The racial transformation, he asserted, could be brought about by glandular control and electrical nutrition.

Even more positive is the statement of Mr. Bela Gati, an electrical engineer residing in New York City, who, in a letter dated August 18, 1930 and addressed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said, in part:

“Once I myself was very strongly tanned by the sun and a European rural population thought that I was a Negro, too. I did not suffer much but the situation was disagreeable. Since that time I have studied the problem and I am convinced that the surplus of the pigment could be removed. In case you are interested and believe that with the aid of your physicians we could carry out the necessary experiments, I am willing to send you the patent specification … and my general terms relating to this invention. … The expenses are so to say negligible.”

I wish to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to Mr. V. F. Calverton for his keen interest and friendly encouragement and to my wife, Josephine Schuyler, whose cooperation and criticism were of great help in completing Black No More.

George S. Schuyler

New York City,
September 1, 1930

Black No More

Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933–1940

I

Max Disher stood outside the Honky Tonk Club puffing a panatela and watching the crowds of white and black folk entering the cabaret. Max was tall, dapper and smooth coffee-brown. His negroid features had a slightly satanic cast and there was an insolent nonchalance about his carriage. He wore his hat rakishly and faultless evening clothes underneath his raccoon coat. He was young, he wasn’t broke, but he was damnably blue. It was New Year’s Eve, 1933, but there was no spirit of gaiety and gladness in his heart. How could he share the hilarity of the crowd when he had no girl? He and Minnie, his high “yallah” flapper, had quarreled that day and everything was over between them.

“Women are mighty funny,” he mused to himself, “especially yallah women. You could give them the moon and they wouldn’t appreciate it.” That was probably the trouble; he’d given Minnie too much. It didn’t pay to spend too much on them. As soon as he’d bought her a new outfit and paid the rent on a three-room apartment, she’d grown uppity. Stuck on her color, that’s what was the matter with her! He took the cigar out of his mouth and spat disgustedly.

A short, plump, cherubic black fellow, resplendent in a narrow-brimmed brown fedora, camel’s hair coat and spats, strolled up and clapped him on the shoulder: “Hello, Max!” greeted the newcomer, extending a hand in a fawn-colored glove, “What’s on your mind?”

“Everything, Bunny,” answered the debonair Max. “That damn yallah gal o’ mine’s got all upstage and quit.”

“Say not so!” exclaimed the short black fellow. “Why I thought you and her were all forty.”

“Were, is right, kid. And after spending my dough, too! It sure makes me hot. Here I go and buy two covers at the Honky Tonk for tonight, thinkin’ surely she’d come and she starts a row and quits!”

“Shucks!” exploded Bunny, “I wouldn’t let that worry me none. I’d take another skirt. I wouldn’t let no dame queer my New Year’s.”

“So would I, Wise Guy, but all the dames I know are dated up. So here I am all dressed up and no place to go.”

“You got two reservations, aint you? Well, let’s you and me go in,” Bunny suggested. “We may be able to break in on some party.”

Max visibly brightened. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “You never can tell, we might run in on something good.”

Swinging their canes, the two joined the throng at the entrance of the Honky Tonk Club and descended to its smoky depths. They wended their way through the maze of tables in the wake of a dancing waiter and sat down close to the dance floor. After ordering ginger ale and plenty of ice, they reared back and looked over the crowd.

Max Disher and Bunny Brown had been pals ever since the war when they soldiered together in the old 15th regiment in France. Max was one of the Aframerican Fire Insurance Company’s crack agents, Bunny was a teller in the Douglass Bank and both bore the reputation of gay blades in black Harlem. The two had in common a weakness rather prevalent among Aframerican bucks: they preferred yellow women. Both swore there were three things essential to the happiness of a colored gentleman: yellow money, yellow women and yellow taxis. They had little difficulty in getting the first and none at all in getting the third but the yellow women they found flighty and fickle. It was so hard to hold them. They were so sought after that one almost required a million dollars to keep them out of the clutches of one’s rivals.

“No more yallah gals for me!” Max announced with finality, sipping his drink. “I’ll grab a black gal first.”

“Say not so!” exclaimed Bunny, strengthening his drink from his huge silver flask. “You aint thinkin’ o’ dealin’ in coal, are you?”

“Well,” argued his partner, “it might change my luck. You can trust a black gal; she’ll stick to you.”

“How do you know? You ain’t never had one. Ever’ gal I ever seen you with looked like an ofay.”

“Humph!” grunted Max. “My next one may be an ofay, too! They’re less trouble and don’t ask you to give ’em the moon.”

“I’m right with you, pardner,” Bunny agreed, “but I gotta have one with class. None o’ these Woolworth dames for me! Get you in a peck o’ trouble. … Fact is, Big Boy, ain’t none o’ these women no good. They all get old on the job.”

They drank in silence and eyed the motley crowd around them. There were blacks, browns, yellows, and whites chatting, flirting, drinking; rubbing shoulders in the democracy of night life. A fog of tobacco smoke wreathed their heads and the din from the industrious jazz band made all but the loudest shrieks inaudible. In and out among the tables danced the waiters, trays balanced aloft, while the patrons, arrayed in colored paper caps, beat time with the orchestra, threw streamers or grew maudlin on each other’s shoulders.

“Looky here! Lawdy Lawd!” exclaimed Bunny, pointing to the doorway. A party of white people had entered. They were all in evening dress and in their midst was a tall, slim, titian-haired girl who had seemingly stepped from heaven or the front cover of a magazine.