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Black No More by George S. Schuyler is a merciless, misanthropic satire that mocks everyone from white supremacists to revered black leaders like Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois. The speculative fiction has a total of thirteen chapters. In this section, we shall summarise chapters one to six of the Afrofuturistic novel.
Chapter 1 Summary of Black No More
Chapter 1 of Black No More opens on New Year’s Eve, 1933, outside the Honky Tonk Club in Harlem. The protagonist, Max Disher, a debonair and “smooth coffee-brown” insurance agent, is lamenting his recent breakup with his “high yallah” girlfriend, Minnie. He meets his friend Bunny Brown, a short, plump bank teller, and the two decide to enter the club together. Both men share a common obsession: they prefer “yellow women,” though they find them expensive and difficult to keep.
Inside the club, Max is captivated by a tall, titian-haired blonde woman sitting with a party of white people from Atlanta. Hoping to get an invitation to join them, Max goes out of his way to buy a quart of liquor for the group. When he is ignored, Max boldly approaches their table and asks the beautiful blonde for a dance. She haughtily rejects him with a racial slur. She says, “I never dance with niggers!” Max is crushed and humiliated. He leaves the club, unable to get the Atlanta girl out of his mind.
The next morning, Bunny calls Max to share a sensational news story. Dr. Junius Crookman, a black biologist returning from Germany, has announced a scientific process to turn black people permanently white in three days using electrical nutrition and glandular control. Max immediately sees this as his only chance to escape the indignities of segregation and potentially win the blonde girl from Atlanta. He rushes to the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel to volunteer as the first test subject.
At the hotel, Dr. Crookman is surrounded by reporters and his financial backers, a numbers banker named Hank Johnson and a realtor named Chuck Foster. Dr. Crookman explains that his discovery was inspired by observing vitiligo, a disease that removes skin pigment. He proves his success by displaying a Senegalese man who has already been turned completely white. Max, who knows Crookman from the past, begs to be the first in line.
A few weeks later, the Black-No-More sanitarium opens to a massive, eager crowd of black citizens willing to pay the fifty-dollar fee for the treatment. Max pushes his way to the front of the line. He is taken to a secretive room and strapped into a terrifying, nickel-plated machine resembling an electric chair. Even though he is in fear at the sight, his desire for the freedom of a white skin and the girl from Atlanta gives him the resolve to undergo the mysterious procedure.
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 2 of Black No More begins with Max Disher emerging from the “Black-No-More” machine. He is now a pale-skinned, ash-blond Caucasian. He feels a sudden sense of superiority. He looks down upon the long line of Black people still waiting for the treatment. He is thrilled to be “indistinguishable from nine-tenths of the people of the United States.”
As he attempts to leave the sanitarium, he is mobbed by eager reporters and photographers. But he refuses to give his story away for free. He escapes into a taxi, only to find a white female reporter, Sybil Smith of The Scimitar, waiting inside. She offers him a thousand dollars for his exclusive story. Max agrees. He gives the alias “William Small” to protect his identity, though he is annoyed when his picture is plastered across the front page. He realises that he has traded the conspicuousness of a dark skin for the conspicuousness of fame.
Max takes Sybil out to a Broadway dinner and a cabaret. However, his first night as a white man is unexpectedly disappointing. He finds the white patrons’ joy forced and their dancing “gymnastic where the Negroes were sensuous.” This leads to a brief pang of nostalgia for the genuine gaiety of Harlem’s Black-and-tan clubs.
At 3:00 AM, Max returns to Harlem to gather his belongings. He visits his favourite speakeasy, Boogie’s place, where he struggles to convince the doorman and his best friend, Bunny Brown, of his identity. Once convinced, Bunny is amazed by Max’s transformation. Max gives Bunny a hundred-dollar bill so he can undergo the treatment too. They walk together to the sanitarium, observing a massive, desperate crowd of thousands of Black citizens held back by a riot squad, eager to pay their fifty dollars.
Max feels a fleeting moment of remorse about leaving his people, but realises he must sever ties because as a white man he would now be viewed with suspicion in Harlem. He returns to his rooming house and shocks his landlady, Mme. Sisseretta Blandish, the wealthy owner of a hair-straightening parlour who realises this new invention will destroy her business. The chapter ends with Max riding a taxi through Central Park in high spirits, headed to the Pennsylvania Station to catch a Pullman to Atlanta so he can track down the blonde girl who rejected him.
Chapter 3 Summary of Black No More
Chapter 3 of Black No More shifts the focus to the masterminds behind the Black-No-More sanitarium: Dr. Junius Crookman, Hank Johnson, and Chuck Foster. After just two weeks of operation, the business is a massive financial success. It brings in $35,000 a week and turns out a hundred whitened citizens a day.
However, opposition is brewing. Foster reads aloud several alarming editorials from Southern newspapers warning that the “racial integrity of the Caucasian race” is under threat. The white press is particularly terrified because the vitiligo treatment is not hereditary, meaning that whitened individuals could marry white people and produce Black babies. Foster is worried, but the street-smart Hank Johnson is unconcerned, confident that his money and bribes can easily control the legislature and police.
The narrative pauses to provide the backstories of the three partners. Hank Johnson is a former chain-gang prisoner who worked his way up to become a wealthy Harlem “Numbers” banker. For him, Black-No-More is the most lucrative “graft” of his life. The second partner, Chuck Foster, is a cautious, conservative real estate agent who made his money navigating the housing shortages of the segregated Black Belt. As for the third partner, Dr. Junius Crookman, he is an educated, idealistic physician who genuinely believes he is solving the American race problem. Ironically, he considers himself a devoted “Race Man” who collects African art and studies Black history, yet he is married to a very light-skinned octoroon woman and is actively working to erase the physical existence of his race.
The second half of the chapter illustrates the devastating economic impact of Crookman’s machine on Harlem. Black citizens are frantically withdrawing all their funds from local banks, causing massive bank runs. Moving vans fill the streets as whitened individuals abandon their overpriced, segregated apartments to disappear into the broader white society. Their abandonment leaves landlords and instalment furniture businesses in ruin.
The chapter closes on Mme. Sisseretta Blandish, the wealthy owner of a hair-straightening parlour and an official in several “Race Pride” leagues. Her business is failing because her customers are saving their money for the permanent Black-No-More treatment. She realises she will soon be forced to undergo the treatment herself, though she mourns the fact that she will lose her high social standing in Harlem to become “just another white woman” in a society where white women are a “drug on the market.”
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 of Black No More opens on Easter Sunday in Atlanta, where Max Disher, now going by the name Matthew Fisher, has spent months searching in vain for the beautiful, haughty blonde girl who rejected him in New York.
Matthew’s experience as a white man has thus far been profoundly disappointing. He finds white society “uniformly less courteous and less interesting” than the Negro society he left behind. He frequently yearns for the “happy-go-lucky, jovial good-fellowship” of the black community and attempts to visit Auburn Avenue, Atlanta’s Black Belt, but is coldly rejected because, as a white man, he is viewed with deep suspicion.
With his funds dwindling to less than a hundred dollars, Matthew realises he must find a source of income. While observing the fierce opposition to Black-No-More from Southern businesses and newspapers, he recognises the hidden economic motive: so long as white workers are terrified of the “Negro menace,” they are too distracted to unionise, thus guaranteeing cheap labour for wealthy industrialists.
Matthew sees an opportunity to profit. He answers a newspaper advertisement for a mass meeting of a new white supremacist organisation called the “Knights of Nordica,” led by the Imperial Grand Wizard, Rev. Henry Givens. Givens is a corrupt, ignorant former evangelist and ex-Ku Klux Klan leader who started the Knights primarily as a new “graft” to enrich himself. Matthew boldly introduces himself to Givens as an anthropologist from the “New York Anthropological Society.” He uses his slick salesmanship to spin a terrifying (and completely fabricated) tale about the rapidly expanding threat of Black-No-More. He then warns that the purity of the white race is in imminent danger. Givens, on his part, is impressed by Matthew’s polished rhetoric and fake credentials. He eagerly invites him to speak at their mass meeting that night.
The narrative briefly introduces Givens’s family: his ignorant, prejudiced wife, and his beautiful, superficial twenty-year-old daughter, Helen, who has recently returned from a Northern “finishing school.” Though she despises the “crude and elemental” working-class people her father associates with, Helen’s curiosity about the “scientist” from New York prompts her to attend the meeting.
At Nordica Hall, Matthew observes the crowd of poor, beaten-down white mill workers. After a boisterous song leader whips the crowd into a religious frenzy which Matthew amusedly notes is exactly like “the religious orgies of the more ignorant Negroes,” Matthew takes the stage. He delivers a roaring, hour-long speech perfectly tailored to their prejudices. He shouts about white supremacy, the inferiority of Negroes, and the threat to their women.
As the crowd wildly applauds and rushes to pay their five-dollar membership fees, Matthew spots a familiar face in the front row: the titian-haired blonde from the Honky Tonk Club. He is so thrilled that he asks Givens to identify her. Givens chuckles and reveals that the girl is his daughter, Helen.
Chapter 5 Summary of Black No More
Chapter 5 of Black No More opens with Dr. Junius Crookman, Hank Johnson, and Chuck Foster arriving in Los Angeles in a private airplane to celebrate the opening of their fiftieth Black-No-More sanitarium. During a business meeting, Dr. Crookman reveals their staggering financial success. In just seven and a half months, they have processed over 370,000 patients, grossing $18.5 million. Hank Johnson explains that his role has been to use this massive wealth to bribe state and federal legislators to kill any bills aimed at shutting them down.
Meanwhile, the economic and social structure of black America is collapsing. With the masses eagerly spending their money to become white, black businesses, newspapers, churches, and fraternal organisations are facing bankruptcy. The most devastating impact, however, is on the professional “Race Men” and civil rights leaders whose entire livelihoods depend on the existence of the “Negro problem.”
These leaders are panic-stricken by their loss of income and relevance. So, they convene a summit at the headquarters of the National Social Equality League (N.S.E.L.) in New York. The meeting is led by Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard, an elitist intellectual who secretly despises the black masses he claims to champion. It features the who’s who of black leadership: conservative educator Col. Mortimer Roberts, data collector Dr. Joseph Bonds, and college president Rev. Herbert Gronne. They unanimously sign a resolution demanding the U.S. Attorney General halt Black-No-More’s operations.
In Washington, D.C., Attorney General Walter Brybe consults with Gorman Gay, the Republican National Chairman, about the resolution. Gay instructs Brybe to ignore the black leaders because they have no money. He reveals that the Republican party intends to extort the wealthy Black-No-More corporation for campaign funds instead. Brybe issues a dismissive letter stating the government cannot interfere with a legal business.
The chapter concludes with Santop Licorice, the fraudulent leader of the Back-To-Africa Society, facing complete financial ruin as his followers abandon him for Dr. Crookman’s machine. Having been excluded from Dr. Beard’s conference and desperate for cash, Licorice sends a telegram offering his services to Rev. Henry Givens, the white supremacist leader of the Knights of Nordica.
Schuyler uses this chapter to parody the prominent civil rights leaders of the Harlem Renaissance era. Apparently, the characters in the N.S.E.L. meeting are thinly veiled caricatures of real historical figures. Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard is a direct parody of W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard-educated, bearded intellectual who writes biting editorials, praises black women but only employs light-skinned secretaries, and boasts of his multi-racial ancestry. Col. Mortimer Roberts parodies Booker T. Washington, depicted as the head of an agricultural institute who tells white Southerners exactly what they want to hear to secure funding. Lastly, Santop Licorice represents Marcus Garvey, complete with a fake “Royal Black Steamship Company” (a nod to the Black Star Line), absurd titles, and a history of mail fraud.
Chapter 6 Summary
Chapter 6 of Black No More jumps to Easter Sunday, 1934. It marks a double celebration: the first anniversary of the Knights of Nordica (which now boasts a million members) and the wedding of Matthew Fisher (Max Disher) to Helen Givens, the daughter of the Imperial Grand Wizard. Matthew has become the Grand Exalted Giraw of the order and edits its sensationalist newspaper, The Warning, using buzzwords about the Pope, the Yellow Peril, and Bolshevism to keep the white working-class members terrified and continuously paying dues.
Matthew is now wealthy. He has a new bride. But he is far from being satisfied, especially as he realises he can extract even more money by exploiting the fears of Southern capitalists. He begins secretly meeting with local mill and factory owners. He offers them a sinister bargain: in exchange for hefty financial contributions, the Knights of Nordica will keep their white workers distracted with the “menace” of invisible blackness, thus preventing them from organising labour unions or demanding higher wages. The strategy works perfectly, as the poor white workers are too panicked about “white race integrity” to realise they are being economically exploited.
One day, Matthew is surprised in his office by a plump, white visitor who reveals himself to be Bunny Brown, his old friend from Harlem. Bunny had to undergo the treatment and flee North after getting caught with a married woman. Matthew is thrilled to have his savvy friend back. He immediately hires Bunny as his private secretary for $5,000. Matthew explains he has been secretly keeping the fraudulent Black nationalist Santop Licorice on the payroll to maintain racial agitation. He also tells Bunny that if Black-No-More finishes its job too quickly, the Knights of Nordica will lose their racist platform, and the money will dry up. So, the option is off the table. They must maintain the status quo.
Bunny travels to New York to check on the Black leaders and see if any can be hired to speak for the Knights. On the way, he reads a sensational headline: “WEALTHY WHITE GIRL HAS NEGRO BABY”. Because Dr. Crookman’s vitiligo treatment does not alter genetics, whitened individuals are having Black offspring. This triggers a nationwide panic. The fear of accidentally marrying or sleeping with a whitened Black person causes a sudden, massive decline in casual sex, “petting parties,” and rapid courtships, as white Americans become terrified of producing a Black child.
Dr. Crookman and his partners decide to capitalise on this new terror. They immediately launch a nationwide chain of “lying-in hospitals” where pregnant women can give birth secretly, and any Black babies can be permanently whitened within twenty-four hours. Bunny returns to Atlanta and reports that the old Harlem leaders are broke and gone, leaving only Santop Licorice, whom Matthew decides to finally cut from the payroll, joking that Licorice could make more money exhibiting himself in a “dime museum” as the last Black man in America.
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