Black No More Character Analysis

Max Disher / Matthew Fisher

Protagonist Max Disher is a Black American in 1931 New York. While he appreciates Harlem’s cultural institutions, he also faces painful discrimination, which becomes particularly evident when he meets a blonde girl who turns him… read analysis of Max Disher / Matthew Fisher

Dr. Junius Crookman

Dr. Crookman is the creator of the “Black-No-More” treatment, which makes Black people look white. He initially researches and creates the treatment—with the help of his business associates Foster and Johnson—in order to remove… read analysis of Dr. Junius Crookman

Rev. Henry Givens

Henry Givens is the leader of the Knights of Nordica, Mrs. Givens’s husband and Helen’s father. He is an ex-evangelist and former member of the Ku Klux Klan, where he siphoned money… read analysis of Rev. Henry Givens

Helen Givens/The Blonde Girl

Helen Givens is Rev. Givens’s daughter, who ultimately becomes Max’s wife. Helen is introduced as a nameless beautiful blonde girl at the Honky Tonk Club, where she cruelly rejects Max’s advances because he… read analysis of Helen Givens/The Blonde Girl

Samuel Buggerie

Samuel Buggerie is a nervous, bald statistician who comes from one of the First Families of Virginia. He believes that the best way to tell “pure” white people from others is to study family trees… read analysis of Samuel Buggerie

Arthur Snobbcraft

Arthur Snobbcraft is the President of the Anglo-Saxon Association. A strong believer in white supremacy and racial purity, Snobbcraft teams up with Max and the Knights of Nordica despite the fact that he looks down… read analysis of Arthur Snobbcraft

Bunny Brown

Bunny Brown is Max’s best friend. After Max turns white from the “Black-No-More” treatment, Max sponsors Bunny’s own treatment, allowing Bunny to become white and follow Max to Atlanta. There, Bunny becomes Max’s assistant… read analysis of Bunny Brown

Santop Licorice

Santop Licorice is the founder and leader of the Back-to-Africa Society. The book critiques him as a hypocrite, because he both praises racial solidarity but he also dislikes other Black leaders like Beard. Licorice… read analysis of Santop Licorice

Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard/Karl von Beerde

Beard is the founder of the National Social Equality League. Though he preaches racial solidarity, the book implies that he secretly admires white people and pities and despises other Black Americans. Beard tries to appeal… read analysis of Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard/Karl von Beerde

Mrs. Sisseretta Blandish/Sari Blandine

Mrs. Blandish is a businesswoman and Max’s landlady at the beginning of the novel. She owns a hair salon in Harlem, New York, which helps Black people straighten and relax their hair to make… read analysis of Mrs. Sisseretta Blandish/Sari Blandine

Hank Johnson

Hank Johnson is one of Dr. Crookman’s business partners. Ten years prior to the beginning of the novel, he was in a chain gang and then worked his way up to become one of… read analysis of Hank Johnson

Alex McPhule

Alex McPhule is a reverend who founds a new kind of Christianity and spreads it in Happy Hill, Mississippi. He claims that God has visited him and is going to send him a Sign on… read analysis of Alex McPhule

Walter Williams

Walter Williams is one of the leaders whom Dr. Beard gathers to condemn the “Black-No-More” treatment. Williams is a heavy-set white man (though Williams claims he is proud to be part of Black society because… read analysis of Walter Williams

Matthew Fisher Jr.

Matthew Fisher Jr. is Max and Helen’s son. His birth prompts Max to reveal to Helen that he is actually Black, as Matthew Jr. has darker skin. After Helen learns of her own Black… read analysis of Matthew Fisher Jr.

Minor Characters

Joseph Bonds

Joseph Bonds is the leader of the Negro Data League. He convinces others of the necessity to conduct studies on socioeconomic conditions so that they will donate to the League, but his data has little practical effect. Eventually Bonds receives the “Black-No-More” treatment and works for Gorman Gay.

Charles “Chuck” Foster

Chuck Foster is one of Dr. Crookman’s business partners. He is a Black American real estate agent in New York who helps fund Crookman’s work and also helps him find new buildings to turn into sanitariums. Foster is more cautious than Dr. Crookman’s other business partner, Hank Johnson.

Walter Brybe

Brybe is the U.S. Attorney General at the beginning of the novel. Gorman Gay has heavy influence over him, and so when Brybe receives a letter asking him to investigate and stop the “Black-No-More” treatment, Gay convinces Brybe to ignore the letter.

Frazier

Frazier is a pilot whom Snobbcraft and Buggerie hire to take them out of the country when mobs set after them. However, the plane runs out of gas and Frazier is unable to land safely. The plane crashes into a ditch in Mississippi, and Frazier is killed.

Blickdoff

Blickdoff and Hortzenboff are the owners of a factory in Paradise, South Carolina, where many Knights of Nordica work. Matthew extorts them in exchange for quelling the unionization efforts there.

Hortzenboff

Hortzenboff and Blickdoff are the owners of a factory in Paradise, South Carolina, where many Knights of Nordica work. Matthew extorts them in exchange for quelling the unionization efforts there.

Rufus Kretin

Rufus Kretin is the Democratic Senator from Georgia. Buggerie’s research reveals that he has Black ancestry, and as a result, a mob lynches him on Election Day.

Harold Goosie

Harold Goosie is the president of the United States at the beginning of the novel. He is a Republican who ends up winning reelection after Givens and Snobbcraft flee the country.

Gorman Gay

Gorman Gay is the National Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hank Johnson bribes Gay to keep the Republicans sympathetic to “Black-No-More.”

Sybil Smith

Sybil Smith is a reporter from The Scimitar to whom Max sells his story after receiving the “Black-No-More” treatment.

Gump

Gump is the Vice President at the beginning of the novel who wins reelection along with President Harold Goosie.

Mrs. Givens

Mrs. Givens is Rev. Henry Givens’s wife and Helen’s mother.

Black No More

George S. Schuyler

Black No More Characters