On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather Friends Media. You are by now, y'all know that we 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.
I've changed my mind plenty of times, and.
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.
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.
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 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 about a group of revolutionaries who overthrow white colonial rule in Africa. Skyler initially published the serials under the pen name Samuel I. Brooks.
Did people like the stories of the time?
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 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.
Okay, afrofuturism, inter racist fiction go.
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. 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. 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 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.
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.
So he was like dropping names, fire and shots directly, directly.
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.
Saxon Ooh just caught him koos like, and he called.
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 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 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
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
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.
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.
Takes up all of his time, a lot of time to.
Be doing this foolishness. I like that. I'm gonna put that in my notebook.
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.
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 the Japs instead of taking the part of his own people and other loyal Americans.
I have the same questions that FBI.
Tell me about it, Katie, just like.
Why are you going up for them but then talking bad about the sol rests movement?
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.
They treating people like that in South Africa. That you said we should mind our business.
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 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,
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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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.
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
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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.
Like, not only left them, like turned on them.
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 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.
I feel like he would do really well in twenty twenty four as like a Blacks for Trump guy.
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 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 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 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 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 T because he had actually been involved in that truth. So the delusion is strong in the turn for him.
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 you come at a prison, you know, the panther's not really rocking with you no more. Isn't just a financial thing?
I think it very well could be.
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.
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.
Like that your brain was a compromised and now you think like this.
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, 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.
Yeah.
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 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.
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 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
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 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. 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 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.
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 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 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.
They wanted people to know about their conservatism.
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 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 what you say and admiring you and respecting your words, that can that really does have influence for sure.
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?
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 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 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.
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, 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.
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. 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.