Letter 11

Christian Complains about Schuyler 

Critique of the State of Black Letters

PITTSBURGH COURIER 

2628 Centre Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA.,

Mayflower 1401

Dear Mr. Christian: 

Many thanks for your cordial letter and for the poetry clippings from the Louisiana Weekly. I am very glad to see it and congratulate both you and the newspaper for inaugurating and maintaining it. I am sorry that this paper has no poetry department.

I certainly did not mean to convey the impression that no one was thinking of belles letters but me. I am aware that there are thousands of lovers of fine writing in Aframerica. My only wish was that there might be some medium known to and available to all in which the best might appear, such as The Crisis in the days of DuBois, the Opportunity magazine when edited by Charles S. Johnson, and the old Messenger magazine when Randolph, Owen and I were guiding its destinies.

I regret that you should think some readers had to tell me about the need for such a medium ('getting me told'). I should certainly feel ashamed if after fifteen years in and around the writing and publishing game I should have to be reminded by readers (none has mentioned it, as a matter of fact) of the desirability of a medium for the development of fine writing. Naturally I cannot devote my column to it often -- there are many other things upon which to comment.

Your letter, however, is very thought-provoking and I plan to quote here and there from it in the hope of arousing further interest, 

Sincerely yours, 

George S. Schuyler

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George Schuyler (1895-1977), born in Providence , Rhode island, enlisted with the United States Army in 1912 and worked his way to the rank of lieutenant.

After the First World war Schuyler moved to New York City where he worked as a laborer and later as a journalist on The Messenger in 1923. For awhile a member of the socialist Party, Schuyler contributed to a wide variety of radical journals including Opportunity, Crisis, and Nation.

During the McCarthy era Schuyler moved sharply to the right and contributed to American Opinion, the journal of the John Birch Society. In 1947 Schuyler published The Communist Conspiracy Against the Negroes. Black and Conservative (1966), his autobiography, was published in 1966. George Schuyler died in 1977.

Jeffrey B. Leak ed. Rac(E)Ing to the Right: Selected Essays of George S. Schuyler. University of Tennessee Press, 2001