writers such as RALPH ELLISON, ED BULLINS, and
ISHMAEL REED.
Schuyler’s second novel appeared in the same
year as Black No More. He traveled to Liberia in
the first half of 1931, secretly investigated rumors
of slavery, and drew on this experience for Slaves
Today: A Story of Liberia. The novel explores the
tensions between native Liberians and the Libe-
rian descendants of former American slaves whom
Schuyler implicated in a contemporary slave trade
of their own. Slaves Today was the last complete
novel Schuyler published. He continued to write
short stories, novellas, and novels, but these works
appeared serially and often under Schuyler’s vari-
ous pen names. Four African novellas have been
collected and published posthumously in Black
Empire (1991) and Ethiopian Stories (1994). These
pan-Africanist works highlight Schuyler’s anti-
colonial sentiments and further complicate any
tendency to dismiss him as a mere Uncle Tom.
Schuyler’s autobiography Black and Conserva-
tive (1966) provides valuable recollections of the
Harlem Renaissance and its major figures, but the
book drew the ire of critics who took offense at
Schuyler’s dismissal of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
as a communist plot. Rac[e]ing to the Right (2001),
a recently published collection of essays, offers a
valuable selection of Schuyler’s writing. The pro-
cess of recovering and reconsidering Schuyler’s
work appears likely to continue as more scholars
and students engage one of the most controversial
figures of African-American literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain.” In The Norton Anthology of African
American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay, 1311–14. New York: W.
W. Norton, 1997.
Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in
Black and White. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1995.
Leak, Jeffrey B. Introduction. In Rac[e]ing to the Right:
Selected Essays of George S. Schuyler, by George S.
Schuyler. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
2001.
Peplow, Michael W. George S. Schuyler. Twayne’s
United States Author Series, 349. Boston: Twayne,
1980.
Schuyler, George S. “Do Negroes Want to Be White?”
In Rac[e]ing to the Right: Selected Essays of George
S. Schuyler, edited by Jeffrey B. Leak, 68–72. Knox-
ville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001.
———. “The Negro-Art Hokum.” In The Norton An-
thology of African American Literature, edited by
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay, 1171–- New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Andrew Leiter
Scott-Heron, Gil (1949– )
Often referred to as a modern griot and still best
known for his classic poem and rap song “The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1974), the poet,
novelist, musician, and songwriter Gil Scott-Heron
has forged, over the last 30 years, one of the most
influential, varied, and critically underconsidered
bodies of work in modern African-American cul-
tural production.
Scott-Heron was born in Chicago, Illinois
on April 1, 1949, to a mother who was a college-
educated librarian and a father who was a Jamai-
can professional soccer player. After his parents’
divorce, the young Scott-Heron was taken to
Lincoln, Tennessee to live with his maternal grand-
mother. While in Lincoln, he became one of three
black students chosen to integrate the elementary
school system in the adjoining city of Jackson.
Shaken and, to some extent, politicized by this
experience, Scott-Heron was later reunited with
his mother in the Bronx, where he would experi-
ence and critically observe the northern and urban
manifestations of the types of racism that he had
experienced in the South.
Having begun writing poetry in his early teens,
Scott-Heron left New York to attend the histori-
cally black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Al-
though he left after a year, at Lincoln he met the
musician Brian Jackson, who, over the course of
a series of groundbreaking albums, became Scott-
Heron’s most significant musical collaborator.452 Scott-Heron, Gil