Editor’s note: This article first appeared at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
“Why does Black History Month ignore the author of ‘the most talked about column in Negro America?,’” asks a column by Mary Grabar in The American Spectator. Grabar is certainly qualified to ask. For years she has worked on a major biography of George Schuyler. Who was Schuyler, and why has he been forgotten?
“This once famous, trailblazing writer has been memory holed,” notes Grabar.
That has happened for political-ideological reasons, because Schuyler was a prominent conservative, plus a stalwart anti-communist who spent much time calling out black and white leftists sympathetic to Marxism-Leninism—an ideology that once nearly enticed Schuyler himself, but that he thoroughly repudiated and brilliantly dissected. “He sounded the alarm about communists from the time he first began working for a publication, the black socialist monthly the Messenger, in 1923,” noted Grabar.
Once he landed at the great Pittsburgh Courier, arguably America’s leading black newspaper, Schuyler was more outspoken. So much so that even the Courier got nervous.
“By the 1960s, Schuyler became persona non grata in black publications, including the Pittsburgh Courier,” writes Grabar. “Schuyler began writing more for such [conservative] publications as the Manchester Union Leader, American Opinion, and Human Events. In 1966, the Pittsburgh Courier was sold, and Schuyler’s 42-year association was ended.”
I appreciate Grabar’s interest in Schuyler. In fact, in September 2017, I did a column for the Trib on Schuyler for the 40th anniversary of his death. I noted that he was not from Pittsburgh, but the perch given him for over 40 years by the Pittsburgh Courier made him hugely influential.
My recollection and Grabar’s are especially apt this time of year, i.e., Black History Month. Grabar is troubled that always on short lists of prominent black Americans hailed this month are Marxists such as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson, who was a literal Stalinist.
Hughes declared: “Put one more ‘S’ in the USA to make it Soviet. The USA when we take control will be the USSA.” In one poem, Hughes put it this way: “Goodbye Christ, Lord Jehovah; Beat it on away from here, make way for a new guy with no religion at all; A real guy named Marx, Communism, Lenin, Peasant, Stalin, worker, me.”
To George Schuyler, that was outrageous. It was less poetry than sophistry. Worse, it was tragically wrong thinking about a lethal ideology responsible for the deaths of countless millions.
And yet, today, it is the writings of Langston Hughes that are read in public schools, not Schuyler’s. Paul Robeson is celebrated, including with a Paul Robeson Cultural Center at Penn State, among other things named for him in our universities. They’re conveniently disassociated from that terrible ideological baggage. When writers like me bring it up, we’re portrayed as the bad guys—as conservative reprobates.
As for George Schuyler, not only was he never suckered by these deadly ideologies, but he sounded the alarm against them. He took on the likes of DuBois and Hughes and Robeson. It was a key reason why he was indeed once the most influential black columnist in the country.
So, why is Schuyler not remembered during Black History Month? The reason is prejudice: political prejudice. And that is a shame. George Schuyler was a great American and a great talent.
