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Schuyler, George Samuel

5 articles on Schuyler, George Samuel

  • Schuyler, George Samuelimage available

    Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century

    Word Count: 1980      Includes:  Bibliography

    (b. 25 February 1895; d. 31 August 1977), writer and journalist. Active in journalism for more than five decades, George Samuel Schuyler significantly shaped the field of black journalism and is, next to his achievements as a writer of fiction, remembered as a controversial political thinker. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Eliza Jane and George Francis Schuyler, and he grew up in Syracuse, New York. His father, employed as the head chef at a local hotel, died when Schuyler was three years old. His mother remarried, and Joseph Eugene Brown, a cook and porter for the New York Central Railroad who worked hard to enable his family to live in a respectable middle-class environment, became Schuyler's stepfather. A sense of race pride was instilled in Schuyler from an early age, not only through books but also by learning ...
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  • Schuyler, George S.

    Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

    Word Count: 664     

    1895–1977
    Journalist and novelist known for his conservative political views and the first African American to be recognized primarily as a satirist. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Schuyler was raised in Syracuse, New York. He had what he considered an ideal childhood, in which he grew up believing that the United States, even with its considerable racial problems, was the best place for African Americans to live. He dropped out of high school to enlist in the United States Army and spent seven years in the service. During World War I (1914–1918) he served in France and attained the rank of first lieutenant.

    Upon returning to the United States after the war, Schuyler worked in menial jobs and lived with hobos in New York's Bowery before becoming a staff writer in 1923 for the Messenger,A. ...
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  • Schuyler, George Samuel

    Source: African American National Biography

    Word Count: 1758      Includes:  Further Reading | Obituary:

    (25 Feb. 1895–31 Aug. 1977) journalist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to George Francis Schuyler and Eliza Jane Fischer, both cooks. He was raised in Syracuse, New York, and often remarked that his family had never lived in the South and had never been slaves. That did not mean that they had not suffered discrimination, however, for as Schuyler wrote in his 1966 autobiography: “A black person learns very early that his color is a disadvantage in a world of white folks. This being an unalterable circumstance, one also learns to make the best of it” (Schuyler, 1).

    For Schuyler, that early exposure to racism came on his first day at school, when he registered three firsts: he was called “nigger,” fought the Italian American boy who used the slur, and received a bloody nose for his pains. After that experience, his mother ...
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  • Schuyler, George Samuelimage available

    Source: American National Biography Online

    Word Count: 1841      Includes:  Bibliography

    journalist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of George Francis Schuyler and Eliza Jane Fischer. Both of his parents were cooks; his father worked at a hotel. He grew up in Syracuse, New York, in a racially integrated community; as far as Schuyler knew, he was not the descendant of slaves. Although he left high school before finishing, Schuyler grew up reading the classics.

    Schuyler joined the U.S. Army at seventeen and wrote for the Service, a weekly read by the military. Serving in the segregated ...
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  • Schuyler, George S.

    Source: The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature

    Word Count: 870     

    (1895–1977), satirist, critic, and journalist. George Samuel Schuyler was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Eliza Jane Fischer and George S. Schuyler. He grew up in a middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood in Syracuse, New York, where he attended public schools until he enlisted in the army at the age of seventeen. He spent seven years (1912–1919) with the black 25th U.S. Infantry and was discharged as a first lieutenant.

    From early on, Schuyler possessed a high level of confidence and boasted of his family having been free as far back as the Revolutionary War. In 1921, Schuyler joined the Socialist Party of America, through which he connected with A. Philip Randolph, who hired him in 1923 as assistant editor for the Messenger; in that position, from 1923 to 1928, Schuyler also wrote a ...
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