The end of Latin American racial fraternities in the African American imaginary: George Schuyler’s trip through Latin America (1948)

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes African American intellectual George Schuyler’s 1948 Latin American travel narrative. His intent was to recount the experiences of Black people in the armies of Latin American countries in order to compare them to the experiences of Black people in the United States’ armed forces. That same year, US President Harry Truman, in an effort to attract the vote of Black citizens in a tight election race, signed an executive order that began the process of desegregating the army. The Pittsburgh Courier, where Schuyler worked, sponsored his trip to Latin America because it was interested in promoting the debate about including Black people in the armed forces. Before he left, Schuyler believed in the idea, shared by many Black leaders at the time, that Latin American countries were more racially inclusive than the United States, which enabled Black people there to be more upwardly mobile. However, witnessing the experiences of Black people in Latin America changed his mind. His account pointed to the coexistence of miscegenation and racial prejudice, a phenomenon that scholars of race relations at that time considered a contradiction.

Keywords:
racism; black press; travel narrative; racial democracy