August 22, 2024 • 26 mins
There's a fine line between radical and conservative. Well, that was the case for writer George Schuyler and activist Eldridge Cleaver, who went rogue and turned right-wing in the 1900s. Katie and Yves get into their political pump fakes.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media. You are by now, y'all know that we
(00:25):
are a fan of folks changing their minds. Got some
new information? Did somebody you love challenge something you said?
Just feel differently about something for reasons that you can't
explain yet, that's all good and well.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I've changed my mind plenty of times, and.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I have two And if we're reading, listening to other people,
and thinking critically, then we're probably downloading a lot of
new data. And that means that sometimes, hey, you just
got to update the operating system.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And that could be a small update, or that could
be a complete overhaul of our political opinions in value systems.
That's cool when it seems like the person sees the
light and steps out of their ignorance.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
But some folks hit a one to eighty on us
and woo, things get real sketchy. I'm Katie and I'm Eves.
Today's episode switching sides. From November nineteen thirty six to
April nineteen thirty eight, a writer named George Skyler published
(01:26):
two science fiction serials in the Pittsburgh Courier. They were
called The Black International and Black Empire. Black Empire continued
the story of the Black International. Yes, Skyler was black,
and yes, the serials tackle black issues. As you might
have guessed by the titles, the serials are fantastical stories
(01:48):
about a group of revolutionaries who overthrow white colonial rule
in Africa. Skyler initially published the serials under the pen
name Samuel I. Brooks.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Did people like the stories of the time?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, they did. The couriers Black readers read the stories
week after week in the paper and loved them. So
these serials were buried for a while after Skyler's death,
But in the nineteen nineties, Robert A. Hill and R.
Kent Rasmussen were editors at the Marcus Garvey Papers at
the University of California, Los Angeles. In their research, they
(02:21):
dug up Skyler's serials, and in nineteen ninety one, Northeastern
University Press published both of the serials as a book
called Black Empire. Now, the publisher, Penguin Random House is
calling it a quote pioneering work of afrofuturism and anti
racist fiction in its promotional copy.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Okay, afrofuturism, inter racist fiction go.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Off right and based on the plot that description sounds
pretty on point, right, but the narrative and Black Empire
and the story of its creation are more complex. Skyler
wrote this to a staffer at the Pittsburgh Courier. I
have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for the
Black International, which is hokum and hackwork of the purest vein.
(03:04):
I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism
and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure.
The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race.
It's giving troll, but you know it wasn't just foolishness
for its own sake. And let me tell you about Skyler.
(03:25):
In the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, Skyler was a
prolific and respected journalist. He wrote articles for the Pittsburgh Courier,
the New York Evening Post, and the Philadelphia Ledger, just
to name a few. He wrote a lot about race
in black and white owned newspapers. White folks didn't always
agree with its takes, and neither did black folks. In
(03:46):
nineteen twenty six, for instance, he wrote an article for
the Nation called the Negro Art Hokum. In it, he
argued that black American art should not be treated as
different from American art. He would have hated this podcast.
You know, I think you're right. He said in that
article that white artists and black artists were both influenced
by Europeans anyway. Then he continued with his brutal takedown.
(04:11):
He called out black artists and thinkers who learned from
Europeans and their institutions like W. E. B. Du Boyce, sculptor,
Mita Vo Warwick Fuller, painter Henry Osawa Tanner.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
So he was like dropping names, fire and shots directly, directly.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
He was not afraid to put those names on the paper. Okay.
And this is during the Harlem Renaissance when black art
and aesthetics are being celebrated. But that didn't matter to Skuyler.
He said that it made sense that their work wasn't
really black, since quote, the Afro American is merely a
lamp black Anglo.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Saxon Ooh just caught him koos like, and he called.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Them that in the way that a petty but descriptive
writer would. Langston Hughes wrote a rebuttal in the magazine,
and there were people calling for sk to be fired.
He wasn't anyway. He published the book Black No More
in nineteen thirty one. It's a satirical novel about a
black American scientist who invents a way to turn black
(05:11):
people into white people. So he's writing a lot about race,
but his interest in politics and race relations shows up
off the page too. He's involved with civil rights organizations
like the NUBACP, even though some of his opinions are controversial.
For instance, he's critical of forced integration. You know, he
had some stances that weren't typical for the time, but
(05:35):
still black folks would generally consider him on their side
soon though they couldn't say the same with confidence more
after the break. So far, George Schuyler was still good
with black folks. He has some controversial views that they
(05:56):
cide eyed him for, but he was fine. That is
until the nineteen thirty when he became more conservative. He
started writing anti communist articles and becoming involved in anti
communist organizations. He said that MLK shouldn't have gotten the
Nobel Peace Prize. He said black separatists should be feared
more than white segregationists, and he thought the US should
(06:18):
be hands off in South Africa during apartheid. A nineteen
sixty six article called him one of America's two busiest
Negro apologists for racial segregation and colonialism.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
That's a good drag, you know, they say. Not only
are you an apologist for racial segregation and colonial you busy,
you busy doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Takes up all of his time, a lot of time to.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Be doing this foolishness. I like that. I'm gonna put
that in my notebook.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah. And you know, for his stances, Scholar had racked
up some enemies, including the government. He was anti communists,
which is a plus for the FEDS. Of course, the
Kammis and leftist ideologies were big bad in the government's view,
and in the nineteen forties Skyler wrote at least fifty
columns about what he called the Communist conspiracy in the
Pittsburgh Courier. But the FBI still viewed Skyler as a threat.
(07:11):
A nineteen forty three FBI report said the following, he
is always waging a fight for the Japanese and turned
out in California. He will write an article on this
subject every few weeks, blaming the US for putting these
Japanese Americans in camp. He spends a lot of paper
in ink worrying about them. It is difficult to understand
why he, a Negro, should be so much concerned about
(07:33):
the Japs instead of taking the part of his own
people and other loyal Americans.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I have the same questions that FBI.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Tell me about it, Katie, just like.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Why are you going up for them but then talking
bad about the sol rests movement?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Right? I think the way that he presented that argument
was just like, Okay, if they're doing this to the Japanese,
then they would do this to everyone like they would
treat everyone like this.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
They treating people like that in South Africa. That you
said we should mind our business.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I mean it doesn't. I think a lot of
things that don't flow through logic for him. But yeah,
it wasn't like he always denied the terror that black
folks were dealing with. So he acknowledged the fact that
black people have been through a lot, that they've been
resourceful and resilient, and that they've had to put up
with white folks bs over all these years. But the
(08:21):
thing is he thought that liberals were horribly misguided in
the way that they dealt with the race issue. In
nineteen sixty six, he published an autobiography that's appropriately titled
Black and Conservative. He says in the autobiography, I had opposed
all of the Marches on Washington and other mob demonstrations,
recognizing them as part of the Red techniques of agitation, infiltration,
(08:45):
and subversion. This was indicated by the fact that invariably
they were proposed, incited, managed handled by professional collectivist agitators
whose only interest in the workers was to exploit them.
He also goes on to say that the civil disobedience
and teardowns of white people will just make black folks
(09:06):
more enemies, and it won't solve any problems, and he
had a problem with how the media uplifted the opinions
of civil rights leaders and not their critics. In his
later years, the Black Delegation pretty much disowned him, but
he stayed on the conservative wave until he died in
nineteen seventy seven. Deep sigh, Right, it seemed like he
(09:28):
did a lot of waffling, like back and forth, switching
between things that didn't make sense, like you brought up
just now. Because he often called people who were in
the civil rights movements who were protesting people who he
considered black militants. He would often call them agitators. But
if like, just if you're looking at everything he's saying
and he's like, he's very prolific. He's written a lot
(09:49):
of stuff as a journalist, Like he is agitating too.
That's literally what he's doing. He's asking for a contrarian opinion.
He's presenting contrarian opinions in ways that are a pretty
harsh and brutal, sometimes in the way that he phrases them.
But in addition to that, he knows that his opinions
are contrary to the ones that a lot of other
people have at the same time, and to make it
(10:11):
seem like agitation is something that's to be condemned or
looked down upon, are disparaged. It feels pretty antithetical to
everything that he's doing because he is agitating as well.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, I wonder learning about his comments about what he
wrote about in when he serialized the book, saying like,
oh I just did this and it was like a joke. Basically,
I wondered, like did he ever switch? Because I feel
like there's a lot of like black people who will
like write black stuff because they know it'll sell, but
(10:44):
they really don't feel like in community with other black people.
M I feel like that's what he was on because
he's like, oh, I put like this racial chauvinism and
it was, you know, a big Koko move he says.
So I'm like, did you ever switch? Because I read
Black note More that was my first thing I read
from him, and I was like, Oh, this guy he
(11:04):
has a lot to say about white people. He has
a lot to say about like black liberals in the
leadership class. Like there's a character in the book that
was like Madam C. J. Walker and was like, oh,
like y'all not upset, y'all got nappy hair? No more
like how am I going to get rich? Or the
NAACP leader who's like, oh, y'all not getting lynch? No
(11:24):
more like how am I going to get a check?
So he had, you know, those impulses, which I got
those two, but it was really like about how society
treats black people and how like being racist like literally
doesn't make sense. That's what I got from the book.
But I think he could have just been doing it
for a check all along.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
There is a general sense in his ideology that's like
even without racism, like we would always there would be
some sort of oppression, Like there are other things that
everybody deals with, and he's critical of the way that
you know, a lot of protesters at the time, a
lot of people who were involved in the civil rights movement,
the way that they uplifted or I guess in his
view maybe belabored the point of racism and the divisions
(12:06):
that it created. But yes, it does seem like the
switch happened for him pretty early on, or he always
had these ideas because he at first seemed to be
dipping and dabbling in Marxism and in communist ideals. He
was reading socialist things, and from what I can tell,
(12:26):
sources have made it seem like, oh, he was reading
these things and that he was into these things at
the time. But I think there was an element of
he was reading them and he was into them as
a measure of just information gathering and trying to get
a lay on what his actual political ideologies were, and
that he may not have been that aligned with them
ever in the first place, is just something a direction
in which he was thinking about going other people who
(12:49):
shared some of his ideals, who did care about blackness,
so that's the thing, Like overall he cared about black
people's continuation, about the progress of the race seemingly, but
had beef with the way that everybody else did it.
And it just seemed like he tended more and more
right over time, So dipping and dabbling, maybe this, maybe that,
(13:09):
maybe left, maybe right, maybe somewhere in the middle. And
then over time he just got pretty conservative and started
to say things that didn't really make sense, but also
forefronted a lot of the I want government to be
hands off approach. Okay, a pioneer, I mean, a model
for so many people today. But after the break, we'll
(13:30):
talk about a person who Skyler might have considered a
black militant. Just two years after Skyler published Black and Conservative,
Eldridge Cleaver's autobiography, Sold on Ice came out. But Cleaver
(13:53):
wasn't anything like Skyler in the nineteen sixties, Skyler was
critical of militant black activist and he denounced separatism. Cleaver,
on the other hand, was a prominent member of the
Black Panther Party in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Cleaver
served time in California prisons for cannabis charges and assault
(14:14):
with the intent to murder. He read a lot while
he was locked up. He read folks like Malcolm X,
Thomas Paine, Richard Wright, and Karl Marx. He also wrote
about his own personal politics while he was in prison.
By the time he got out of prison in nineteen
sixty six, he had a bunch of essays that were
published in Ramparts magazine. These essays would eventually be put
(14:35):
into book form in Soul on Ice. In that autobiography,
Clever makes some disgusting admissions about raping women. He said
in hindsight that he didn't approve of his actions, but
either way it went. The Black Panther Party brought him
into the fold. When he got out of prison in
nineteen sixty eight, Cleaver was caught up in a shootout
(14:56):
between Black Panther Party members and the Oakland police, so
he fled the US and lived in exile in Mexico, Cuba, Algeria,
and France. Cleaver's relationship with leaders of the party soon
became strained, and in nineteen seventy one he left the
Black Panthers.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Like, not only left them, like turned on them.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Right, Yeah, He denounced them and he went back to
the US. In nineteen seventy five, his attempt at murder
charges were dropped and he had to do community service.
But things got really weird. He became a born again
Christian after dumping his old allegiance to Marxism, and he
was disgraced. He was no longer a respected revolutionary. Black
(15:39):
folks in the revolution didn't want much to do with him,
but Cleaver was deep in his new conservative bag. Anyway.
He continued on his crusade against black radicalism and Satanic communism,
and he did his best to lead people to Jesus
in a way from black nationalism.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I feel like he would do really well in twenty
twenty four as like a Blacks for Trump guy.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I agree with you. I mean, think about it. Look
at his story of transformation. He went from a militant
black rebel to a docile Bible thumper. But you know,
the white Christians tossed him to the side after a
while too. He became a Mormon. He got involved in
other kind of Christian leaning islam leaning religious situations, just
(16:26):
kind of of his own creation. He became addicted to
crack and he became an anti communist Republican. In nineteen
eighty two, he gave a speech at Yale's Afro American
Student Center. He said that the US is the freest
and most democratic country in the world. He also said,
quote Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the
(16:47):
federal government house clothe and feed black people. I am
glad about that because it will force blacks to unify
and lobby for their needs. Cleaver tried to run for
a Senate seat in California as a Republican, but that
bid failed. He died in nineteen ninety eight, and by
then all of the groups Cleaver had associated with had
(17:09):
pretty much distanced themselves from him, the Evangelicals, the Conservatives,
and the Panthers gone. It's interesting, as a person who
was involved in the Black Panthers knowing how integral self
sufficiency and arming ourselves and working together in a cooperative
way was integral to the Black Panther Party's mission, that
(17:30):
he would say that anybody else needed to do anything
to get black people to unify and lobby for their needs,
like obviously you know they don't because you did it.
I think that makes it clear how delusional he actually was.
He was saying things that were literally the opposite of
the truth, and he knew that truth had a capital
(17:51):
T because he had actually been involved in that truth.
So the delusion is strong in the turn for him.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I wonder if you like got paid in any way,
because I know that's a more common thing. Like the
lady who was the woman behind roe V Wade said that, like,
you know, pro life Christians paid her to say that
she regretted getting an abortion and being the face of it,
and she just needed money, you know. So it's like
(18:22):
you come at a prison, you know, the panther's not
really rocking with you no more. Isn't just a financial thing?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I think it very well could be.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Is it a drug thing? You know that senator Fetterman
I think his name is, who had a stroke and
became conservative after being super liberal. Yeah, I should have laughed,
But it's funny to me because this man had had
a stroke, meaning there was no action going to your brain.
You survived, and now you're a conservative.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I mean, wilder things have happened. I mean that's pretty wild.
You could go up from there. But you know how
they talk about the people who learned completely new languages
after they go into a cod or a stroke or something.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Like that your brain was a compromised and now you
think like this.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, so I think it's a mixture of all the things.
His ex wife, Kathleen Cleaver, said that after he came
back to the US and he wasn't the same. So
I also wonder what happened while he was in exile.
I mean, I'm sure there he talked a little bit
about being in Algeria and his book sold on fire.
But I'm sure there are stories that we don't know,
(19:29):
and maybe there are ways that causes led to consequences
that maybe he doesn't even understand how one thing led
to the other either or didn't. But it's clear that
something went wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
But also you know, he had been his reasoning was
illogical and problematic from the very beginning, and just all
of the sexual vibe lens that he committed, the ways
that he spoke about women, he went all right already
(20:08):
and unfortunately, I mean this is I mean, his story
is pretty dark to me, you know, And I think
that all of those things compiled, they all compounded when
you add the Christianity element of it, the evangelical element
of it, and also going this far in these lames.
(20:29):
So what if he was paid only to be completely
rejected and left alone by all of these people that
were supposed to be the ones who were I don't know,
giving him access to whatever he was aiming for. I
can't say what that thing was. But yeah, for both
(20:49):
Skylar and for Cleaver, they both had these turns from
being really upstate people in the community. Like a lot
of people admired the way that they thought. They both
shared things through writing. Two people who were cast to
(21:10):
the side. You know, they weren't at the end of
their lives. It didn't seem like they had as much stature,
Their reputations weren't as good as they were in the
beginning of their lives. But it seemed like with Skyler
there were fewer like external conditions of like environmental risk
factors that were imposed upon Skyler. There were fewer of
(21:32):
those for Skylar, it seemed like than there were for
Eldridge Cleaver. But for both of them, yeah, it seems
like things definitely went downhill. But there are so many
of their written words left over about their lives that
makes it easier to get a glimpse into how they thought.
(21:53):
But as we've talked about before on this show, when
people write their own things, they're often unreliable narrators. We
can't fully trust and believe that everything that they're saying
is truth. But at least in the case, they both
wrote autobiographies memoirs, so we know things that actually happened
as they reported them, and we also get to see
(22:17):
a little bit of their internalized thoughts about why they
chose to be conservative. I mean, Skyler wrote a whole
book on being black and Conservative, so he clearly that
was in nineteen sixty six, so he had plenty of
time to think about its views of being black and conservative.
You know, at that point he had already started shifting
very heavily in that direction for many decades at that point.
(22:41):
But it's still I think helpful for us as things
are still divided, very much so divided today, to look
at examples of people and like how they were radicalized,
and just think of all of the examples today of
people and how they get their misinformation and disinformation off
of the Internet, and how propaganda of the day influences
(23:03):
us to think in certain ways, and how sometimes we
don't have the people around us, or we don't have
the capability or capacity to be able to process those
things in ways which we can kind of come back
down to the ground in reality. I think there are
good examples of that because they're intelligent men, but these
things like the communist propaganda that were happening during the
(23:24):
Red Scare clearly affected them. And not only is it
that we still have their writing to see their views,
it's like they were sharing that with so many people.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
They wanted people to know about their conservatism.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, and that's when you have a platform, like Clever
did and like Scholar did. They both had big platforms,
particularly when Cleaver was in the Black Panther Party in
those years when he first got out of prison. In
his work soul on Ice came out, a lot of
people were reading it and a lot of people were
(24:05):
looking to him as an early leader in the Black
Panther Party, So he had clout. Both of these men
had cloud so that you know, we can say things
in our basements all day long, Yeah, but when you
got thousands or if not millions of people listening to
(24:27):
what you say and admiring you and respecting your words,
that can that really does have influence for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And now it is time for role credits. The segment
where we give credit to a person, place, or thing
that we've encountered during the week eves. Who are what
would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I would like to give credit to animals in like
urban spaces. So I just I saw deer that were
hanging out around a conference center that I was at recently.
You know, segull just chilling, you know, I have. There
are community cats. There's a community cat that I take
care of at home. There are birds, you know that
(25:07):
I was talking to someone yesterday about the birds always
moving into a nest and the fact that they didn't
come back this year for both of us that always
move into a nest that stays like in near my home.
But you know, animals are everywhere, and it's nice to
just come back to things sometimes and like where you're
walking around and running into people and doing all these
(25:27):
mundane worldly things that you know are really important to
you as a human, and then just to stop for
a second and think about this is nature right here
in my face. It can be pretty grounding sometimes. So
that's what I like to give credit to today.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, I like that. I'd like to give credit to
think in the spirit of this episode, accepting people where
are they at right now? You ain't got to worry
about what they was doing in nineteen sixty six what
you're doing for me lately. And I think you just
get a lot of peace when you just accept people like, Okay,
this is how you are. It's just how you are,
(26:03):
and I can respond to it accordingly. And I think
that's what people did with these meta So I want
to give credit to that ethic. Yeah, and we'll see
y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
By y'all. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and
Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco
and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also
send us an email at hello at on Theme dot show.
(26:40):
Head to on Themet Show to check out the show
notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media. You are by now, y'all know that we
(00:25):
are a fan of folks changing their minds. Got some
new information? Did somebody you love challenge something you said?
Just feel differently about something for reasons that you can't
explain yet, that's all good and well.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I've changed my mind plenty of times, and.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I have two And if we're reading, listening to other people,
and thinking critically, then we're probably downloading a lot of
new data. And that means that sometimes, hey, you just
got to update the operating system.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And that could be a small update, or that could
be a complete overhaul of our political opinions in value systems.
That's cool when it seems like the person sees the
light and steps out of their ignorance.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
But some folks hit a one to eighty on us
and woo, things get real sketchy. I'm Katie and I'm Eves.
Today's episode switching sides. From November nineteen thirty six to
April nineteen thirty eight, a writer named George Skyler published
(01:26):
two science fiction serials in the Pittsburgh Courier. They were
called The Black International and Black Empire. Black Empire continued
the story of the Black International. Yes, Skyler was black,
and yes, the serials tackle black issues. As you might
have guessed by the titles, the serials are fantastical stories
(01:48):
about a group of revolutionaries who overthrow white colonial rule
in Africa. Skyler initially published the serials under the pen
name Samuel I. Brooks.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Did people like the stories of the time?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, they did. The couriers Black readers read the stories
week after week in the paper and loved them. So
these serials were buried for a while after Skyler's death,
But in the nineteen nineties, Robert A. Hill and R.
Kent Rasmussen were editors at the Marcus Garvey Papers at
the University of California, Los Angeles. In their research, they
(02:21):
dug up Skyler's serials, and in nineteen ninety one, Northeastern
University Press published both of the serials as a book
called Black Empire. Now, the publisher, Penguin Random House is
calling it a quote pioneering work of afrofuturism and anti
racist fiction in its promotional copy.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Okay, afrofuturism, inter racist fiction go.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Off right and based on the plot that description sounds
pretty on point, right, but the narrative and Black Empire
and the story of its creation are more complex. Skyler
wrote this to a staffer at the Pittsburgh Courier. I
have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for the
Black International, which is hokum and hackwork of the purest vein.
(03:04):
I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism
and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure.
The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race.
It's giving troll, but you know it wasn't just foolishness
for its own sake. And let me tell you about Skyler.
(03:25):
In the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, Skyler was a
prolific and respected journalist. He wrote articles for the Pittsburgh Courier,
the New York Evening Post, and the Philadelphia Ledger, just
to name a few. He wrote a lot about race
in black and white owned newspapers. White folks didn't always
agree with its takes, and neither did black folks. In
(03:46):
nineteen twenty six, for instance, he wrote an article for
the Nation called the Negro Art Hokum. In it, he
argued that black American art should not be treated as
different from American art. He would have hated this podcast.
You know, I think you're right. He said in that
article that white artists and black artists were both influenced
by Europeans anyway. Then he continued with his brutal takedown.
(04:11):
He called out black artists and thinkers who learned from
Europeans and their institutions like W. E. B. Du Boyce, sculptor,
Mita Vo Warwick Fuller, painter Henry Osawa Tanner.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
So he was like dropping names, fire and shots directly, directly.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
He was not afraid to put those names on the paper. Okay.
And this is during the Harlem Renaissance when black art
and aesthetics are being celebrated. But that didn't matter to Skuyler.
He said that it made sense that their work wasn't
really black, since quote, the Afro American is merely a
lamp black Anglo.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Saxon Ooh just caught him koos like, and he called.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Them that in the way that a petty but descriptive
writer would. Langston Hughes wrote a rebuttal in the magazine,
and there were people calling for sk to be fired.
He wasn't anyway. He published the book Black No More
in nineteen thirty one. It's a satirical novel about a
black American scientist who invents a way to turn black
(05:11):
people into white people. So he's writing a lot about race,
but his interest in politics and race relations shows up
off the page too. He's involved with civil rights organizations
like the NUBACP, even though some of his opinions are controversial.
For instance, he's critical of forced integration. You know, he
had some stances that weren't typical for the time, but
(05:35):
still black folks would generally consider him on their side
soon though they couldn't say the same with confidence more
after the break. So far, George Schuyler was still good
with black folks. He has some controversial views that they
(05:56):
cide eyed him for, but he was fine. That is
until the nineteen thirty when he became more conservative. He
started writing anti communist articles and becoming involved in anti
communist organizations. He said that MLK shouldn't have gotten the
Nobel Peace Prize. He said black separatists should be feared
more than white segregationists, and he thought the US should
(06:18):
be hands off in South Africa during apartheid. A nineteen
sixty six article called him one of America's two busiest
Negro apologists for racial segregation and colonialism.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
That's a good drag, you know, they say. Not only
are you an apologist for racial segregation and colonial you busy,
you busy doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Takes up all of his time, a lot of time to.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Be doing this foolishness. I like that. I'm gonna put
that in my notebook.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah. And you know, for his stances, Scholar had racked
up some enemies, including the government. He was anti communists,
which is a plus for the FEDS. Of course, the
Kammis and leftist ideologies were big bad in the government's view,
and in the nineteen forties Skyler wrote at least fifty
columns about what he called the Communist conspiracy in the
Pittsburgh Courier. But the FBI still viewed Skyler as a threat.
(07:11):
A nineteen forty three FBI report said the following, he
is always waging a fight for the Japanese and turned
out in California. He will write an article on this
subject every few weeks, blaming the US for putting these
Japanese Americans in camp. He spends a lot of paper
in ink worrying about them. It is difficult to understand
why he, a Negro, should be so much concerned about
(07:33):
the Japs instead of taking the part of his own
people and other loyal Americans.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I have the same questions that FBI.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Tell me about it, Katie, just like.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Why are you going up for them but then talking
bad about the sol rests movement?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Right? I think the way that he presented that argument
was just like, Okay, if they're doing this to the Japanese,
then they would do this to everyone like they would
treat everyone like this.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
They treating people like that in South Africa. That you
said we should mind our business.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I mean it doesn't. I think a lot of
things that don't flow through logic for him. But yeah,
it wasn't like he always denied the terror that black
folks were dealing with. So he acknowledged the fact that
black people have been through a lot, that they've been
resourceful and resilient, and that they've had to put up
with white folks bs over all these years. But the
(08:21):
thing is he thought that liberals were horribly misguided in
the way that they dealt with the race issue. In
nineteen sixty six, he published an autobiography that's appropriately titled
Black and Conservative. He says in the autobiography, I had opposed
all of the Marches on Washington and other mob demonstrations,
recognizing them as part of the Red techniques of agitation, infiltration,
(08:45):
and subversion. This was indicated by the fact that invariably
they were proposed, incited, managed handled by professional collectivist agitators
whose only interest in the workers was to exploit them.
He also goes on to say that the civil disobedience
and teardowns of white people will just make black folks
(09:06):
more enemies, and it won't solve any problems, and he
had a problem with how the media uplifted the opinions
of civil rights leaders and not their critics. In his
later years, the Black Delegation pretty much disowned him, but
he stayed on the conservative wave until he died in
nineteen seventy seven. Deep sigh, Right, it seemed like he
(09:28):
did a lot of waffling, like back and forth, switching
between things that didn't make sense, like you brought up
just now. Because he often called people who were in
the civil rights movements who were protesting people who he
considered black militants. He would often call them agitators. But
if like, just if you're looking at everything he's saying
and he's like, he's very prolific. He's written a lot
(09:49):
of stuff as a journalist, Like he is agitating too.
That's literally what he's doing. He's asking for a contrarian opinion.
He's presenting contrarian opinions in ways that are a pretty
harsh and brutal, sometimes in the way that he phrases them.
But in addition to that, he knows that his opinions
are contrary to the ones that a lot of other
people have at the same time, and to make it
(10:11):
seem like agitation is something that's to be condemned or
looked down upon, are disparaged. It feels pretty antithetical to
everything that he's doing because he is agitating as well.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, I wonder learning about his comments about what he
wrote about in when he serialized the book, saying like,
oh I just did this and it was like a joke. Basically,
I wondered, like did he ever switch? Because I feel
like there's a lot of like black people who will
like write black stuff because they know it'll sell, but
(10:44):
they really don't feel like in community with other black people.
M I feel like that's what he was on because
he's like, oh, I put like this racial chauvinism and
it was, you know, a big Koko move he says.
So I'm like, did you ever switch? Because I read
Black note More that was my first thing I read
from him, and I was like, Oh, this guy he
(11:04):
has a lot to say about white people. He has
a lot to say about like black liberals in the
leadership class. Like there's a character in the book that
was like Madam C. J. Walker and was like, oh,
like y'all not upset, y'all got nappy hair? No more
like how am I going to get rich? Or the
NAACP leader who's like, oh, y'all not getting lynch? No
(11:24):
more like how am I going to get a check?
So he had, you know, those impulses, which I got
those two, but it was really like about how society
treats black people and how like being racist like literally
doesn't make sense. That's what I got from the book.
But I think he could have just been doing it
for a check all along.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
There is a general sense in his ideology that's like
even without racism, like we would always there would be
some sort of oppression, Like there are other things that
everybody deals with, and he's critical of the way that
you know, a lot of protesters at the time, a
lot of people who were involved in the civil rights movement,
the way that they uplifted or I guess in his
view maybe belabored the point of racism and the divisions
(12:06):
that it created. But yes, it does seem like the
switch happened for him pretty early on, or he always
had these ideas because he at first seemed to be
dipping and dabbling in Marxism and in communist ideals. He
was reading socialist things, and from what I can tell,
(12:26):
sources have made it seem like, oh, he was reading
these things and that he was into these things at
the time. But I think there was an element of
he was reading them and he was into them as
a measure of just information gathering and trying to get
a lay on what his actual political ideologies were, and
that he may not have been that aligned with them
ever in the first place, is just something a direction
in which he was thinking about going other people who
(12:49):
shared some of his ideals, who did care about blackness,
so that's the thing, Like overall he cared about black
people's continuation, about the progress of the race seemingly, but
had beef with the way that everybody else did it.
And it just seemed like he tended more and more
right over time, So dipping and dabbling, maybe this, maybe that,
(13:09):
maybe left, maybe right, maybe somewhere in the middle. And
then over time he just got pretty conservative and started
to say things that didn't really make sense, but also
forefronted a lot of the I want government to be
hands off approach. Okay, a pioneer, I mean, a model
for so many people today. But after the break, we'll
(13:30):
talk about a person who Skyler might have considered a
black militant. Just two years after Skyler published Black and Conservative,
Eldridge Cleaver's autobiography, Sold on Ice came out. But Cleaver
(13:53):
wasn't anything like Skyler in the nineteen sixties, Skyler was
critical of militant black activist and he denounced separatism. Cleaver,
on the other hand, was a prominent member of the
Black Panther Party in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Cleaver
served time in California prisons for cannabis charges and assault
(14:14):
with the intent to murder. He read a lot while
he was locked up. He read folks like Malcolm X,
Thomas Paine, Richard Wright, and Karl Marx. He also wrote
about his own personal politics while he was in prison.
By the time he got out of prison in nineteen
sixty six, he had a bunch of essays that were
published in Ramparts magazine. These essays would eventually be put
(14:35):
into book form in Soul on Ice. In that autobiography,
Clever makes some disgusting admissions about raping women. He said
in hindsight that he didn't approve of his actions, but
either way it went. The Black Panther Party brought him
into the fold. When he got out of prison in
nineteen sixty eight, Cleaver was caught up in a shootout
(14:56):
between Black Panther Party members and the Oakland police, so
he fled the US and lived in exile in Mexico, Cuba, Algeria,
and France. Cleaver's relationship with leaders of the party soon
became strained, and in nineteen seventy one he left the
Black Panthers.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Like, not only left them, like turned on them.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Right, Yeah, He denounced them and he went back to
the US. In nineteen seventy five, his attempt at murder
charges were dropped and he had to do community service.
But things got really weird. He became a born again
Christian after dumping his old allegiance to Marxism, and he
was disgraced. He was no longer a respected revolutionary. Black
(15:39):
folks in the revolution didn't want much to do with him,
but Cleaver was deep in his new conservative bag. Anyway.
He continued on his crusade against black radicalism and Satanic communism,
and he did his best to lead people to Jesus
in a way from black nationalism.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I feel like he would do really well in twenty
twenty four as like a Blacks for Trump guy.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I agree with you. I mean, think about it. Look
at his story of transformation. He went from a militant
black rebel to a docile Bible thumper. But you know,
the white Christians tossed him to the side after a
while too. He became a Mormon. He got involved in
other kind of Christian leaning islam leaning religious situations, just
(16:26):
kind of of his own creation. He became addicted to
crack and he became an anti communist Republican. In nineteen
eighty two, he gave a speech at Yale's Afro American
Student Center. He said that the US is the freest
and most democratic country in the world. He also said,
quote Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the
(16:47):
federal government house clothe and feed black people. I am
glad about that because it will force blacks to unify
and lobby for their needs. Cleaver tried to run for
a Senate seat in California as a Republican, but that
bid failed. He died in nineteen ninety eight, and by
then all of the groups Cleaver had associated with had
(17:09):
pretty much distanced themselves from him, the Evangelicals, the Conservatives,
and the Panthers gone. It's interesting, as a person who
was involved in the Black Panthers knowing how integral self
sufficiency and arming ourselves and working together in a cooperative
way was integral to the Black Panther Party's mission, that
(17:30):
he would say that anybody else needed to do anything
to get black people to unify and lobby for their needs,
like obviously you know they don't because you did it.
I think that makes it clear how delusional he actually was.
He was saying things that were literally the opposite of
the truth, and he knew that truth had a capital
(17:51):
T because he had actually been involved in that truth.
So the delusion is strong in the turn for him.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I wonder if you like got paid in any way,
because I know that's a more common thing. Like the
lady who was the woman behind roe V Wade said that, like,
you know, pro life Christians paid her to say that
she regretted getting an abortion and being the face of it,
and she just needed money, you know. So it's like
(18:22):
you come at a prison, you know, the panther's not
really rocking with you no more. Isn't just a financial thing?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I think it very well could be.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Is it a drug thing? You know that senator Fetterman
I think his name is, who had a stroke and
became conservative after being super liberal. Yeah, I should have laughed,
But it's funny to me because this man had had
a stroke, meaning there was no action going to your brain.
You survived, and now you're a conservative.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I mean, wilder things have happened. I mean that's pretty wild.
You could go up from there. But you know how
they talk about the people who learned completely new languages
after they go into a cod or a stroke or something.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Like that your brain was a compromised and now you
think like this.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, so I think it's a mixture of all the things.
His ex wife, Kathleen Cleaver, said that after he came
back to the US and he wasn't the same. So
I also wonder what happened while he was in exile.
I mean, I'm sure there he talked a little bit
about being in Algeria and his book sold on fire.
But I'm sure there are stories that we don't know,
(19:29):
and maybe there are ways that causes led to consequences
that maybe he doesn't even understand how one thing led
to the other either or didn't. But it's clear that
something went wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
But also you know, he had been his reasoning was
illogical and problematic from the very beginning, and just all
of the sexual vibe lens that he committed, the ways
that he spoke about women, he went all right already
(20:08):
and unfortunately, I mean this is I mean, his story
is pretty dark to me, you know, And I think
that all of those things compiled, they all compounded when
you add the Christianity element of it, the evangelical element
of it, and also going this far in these lames.
(20:29):
So what if he was paid only to be completely
rejected and left alone by all of these people that
were supposed to be the ones who were I don't know,
giving him access to whatever he was aiming for. I
can't say what that thing was. But yeah, for both
(20:49):
Skylar and for Cleaver, they both had these turns from
being really upstate people in the community. Like a lot
of people admired the way that they thought. They both
shared things through writing. Two people who were cast to
(21:10):
the side. You know, they weren't at the end of
their lives. It didn't seem like they had as much stature,
Their reputations weren't as good as they were in the
beginning of their lives. But it seemed like with Skyler
there were fewer like external conditions of like environmental risk
factors that were imposed upon Skyler. There were fewer of
(21:32):
those for Skylar, it seemed like than there were for
Eldridge Cleaver. But for both of them, yeah, it seems
like things definitely went downhill. But there are so many
of their written words left over about their lives that
makes it easier to get a glimpse into how they thought.
(21:53):
But as we've talked about before on this show, when
people write their own things, they're often unreliable narrators. We
can't fully trust and believe that everything that they're saying
is truth. But at least in the case, they both
wrote autobiographies memoirs, so we know things that actually happened
as they reported them, and we also get to see
(22:17):
a little bit of their internalized thoughts about why they
chose to be conservative. I mean, Skyler wrote a whole
book on being black and Conservative, so he clearly that
was in nineteen sixty six, so he had plenty of
time to think about its views of being black and conservative.
You know, at that point he had already started shifting
very heavily in that direction for many decades at that point.
(22:41):
But it's still I think helpful for us as things
are still divided, very much so divided today, to look
at examples of people and like how they were radicalized,
and just think of all of the examples today of
people and how they get their misinformation and disinformation off
of the Internet, and how propaganda of the day influences
(23:03):
us to think in certain ways, and how sometimes we
don't have the people around us, or we don't have
the capability or capacity to be able to process those
things in ways which we can kind of come back
down to the ground in reality. I think there are
good examples of that because they're intelligent men, but these
things like the communist propaganda that were happening during the
(23:24):
Red Scare clearly affected them. And not only is it
that we still have their writing to see their views,
it's like they were sharing that with so many people.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
They wanted people to know about their conservatism.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, and that's when you have a platform, like Clever
did and like Scholar did. They both had big platforms,
particularly when Cleaver was in the Black Panther Party in
those years when he first got out of prison. In
his work soul on Ice came out, a lot of
people were reading it and a lot of people were
(24:05):
looking to him as an early leader in the Black
Panther Party, So he had clout. Both of these men
had cloud so that you know, we can say things
in our basements all day long, Yeah, but when you
got thousands or if not millions of people listening to
(24:27):
what you say and admiring you and respecting your words,
that can that really does have influence for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And now it is time for role credits. The segment
where we give credit to a person, place, or thing
that we've encountered during the week eves. Who are what
would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I would like to give credit to animals in like
urban spaces. So I just I saw deer that were
hanging out around a conference center that I was at recently.
You know, segull just chilling, you know, I have. There
are community cats. There's a community cat that I take
care of at home. There are birds, you know that
(25:07):
I was talking to someone yesterday about the birds always
moving into a nest and the fact that they didn't
come back this year for both of us that always
move into a nest that stays like in near my home.
But you know, animals are everywhere, and it's nice to
just come back to things sometimes and like where you're
walking around and running into people and doing all these
(25:27):
mundane worldly things that you know are really important to
you as a human, and then just to stop for
a second and think about this is nature right here
in my face. It can be pretty grounding sometimes. So
that's what I like to give credit to today.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, I like that. I'd like to give credit to
think in the spirit of this episode, accepting people where
are they at right now? You ain't got to worry
about what they was doing in nineteen sixty six what
you're doing for me lately. And I think you just
get a lot of peace when you just accept people like, Okay,
this is how you are. It's just how you are,
(26:03):
and I can respond to it accordingly. And I think
that's what people did with these meta So I want
to give credit to that ethic. Yeah, and we'll see
y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
By y'all. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and
Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco
and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also
send us an email at hello at on Theme dot show.
(26:40):
Head to on Themet Show to check out the show
notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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