Character guide

Max Disher

major

Also known as Disher, old Max Disher

Max Disher cuts a rakish figure outside the Honky Tonk Club in his raccoon coat, one of the Aframerican Fire Insurance Company's crack agents and a sworn devotee of yellow money, yellow women, and yellow taxis. When his high-yallah flapper Minnie quits him after he's paid her rent, his wounded vanity curdles into something larger: a restless dissatisfaction with everything his color costs him. His appetites and his insolent nonchalance make him the perfect first customer for a procedure that promises to erase the very thing standing between him and what he wants.

Matthew Fisher

major

Also known as Matthew, Fisher, Matt

Matthew Fisher arrives at Rev. Givens's door presenting himself as a scientific man, though his knowledge of anthropology begins and ends with an argument he read in a Sunday supplement. What he lacks in learning he makes up for in ready eloquence, blond eyebrows knitted with belligerent indignation as he warns of Black-No-More's menace to the white race. His real gift is seeing that the movement's terror can be organized, monetized, and aimed at a full treasury—a vision that makes him invaluable to Givens and dangerous to nearly everyone else.

Bunny Brown

supporting

Also known as Bunny

Bunny Brown claps Max on the shoulder outside the Honky Tonk Club, resplendent in spats and a narrow-brimmed fedora, ready to shrug off a lost woman and find a party instead. A man of action rather than reflection, he soldiers through the movement's schemes with a yawn and a wisecrack, puncturing Matthew's grand political plans with blunt questions like who exactly they intend to deport. His easy loyalty and sharper instincts make him the grounded counterweight to Max's restlessness and Matthew's bombast.

Arthur Snobbcraft

supporting

Also known as Mr. Snobbcraft, Snobbcraft

Arthur Snobbcraft presides over the Anglo-Saxon Association with the confidence of a man who has never questioned his own pedigree, and he moves through the novel's racial politics with his nose permanently wrinkled. Stranded in Mississippi with a dwindling gas tank and a lynch mob's reputation ahead of him, he discovers that his cherished racial categories are far more portable—and far more removable—than he ever imagined. His panic and his pragmatism expose the whole ideology as a costume that can be put on or wiped off with gasoline.

Dr. Junius Crookman

major

Also known as Crookman, Dr. Crookman, Junius

Dr. Junius Crookman, son of an Episcopal clergyman and product of careful Negro-aristocracy upbringing, has spent thirty-five peaceful years reading Negro weeklies and collecting African masks before his discovery thrusts him into notoriety he never wanted. He prides himself on being a Race Man, wedded to everything black except the black woman—his wife passes for white—and he naively assumes people will accept a good thing when offered it. His earnest faith that science can solve what agitation and legislation could not is precisely what makes his sanitariums both a sensation and a target.

Dr. Samuel Buggerie

supporting

Also known as Dr. Buggerie, Buggerie

Dr. Samuel Buggerie travels in Snobbcraft's orbit as the movement's resident man of numbers, his rheumy eyes popping with alarm whenever the plane's motor misses over Mississippi. It is Buggerie who discovers the tin of shoe polish in his borrowed trousers and proposes the blacking-up scheme, a statistician's brain applied to the problem of not being lynched. His willingness to wield racial disguise as a survival tool reveals how thoroughly the novel's race-men have already conceded that race is a surface anyone can paint on.

Rev. Henry Givens

supporting

Also known as Givens, Rev. Givens, Henry Givens

Givens runs the Knights of Nordica out of a barn-like hall on Peachtree Street, trading on his old Klan connections and a talent for whipping up racial panic. His real devotion is to the collection plate, and he warms instantly to any smooth-talking stranger who might widen the revenue stream. As the movement's public face, he gives the novel's racial hysteria a venal, almost comic embodiment.

Helen Givens

supporting

Also known as Helen

Helen has always wanted a scientist, a literary man, someone above the lowbrows her father's movement attracts. She holds off on Matthew's first proposal only because his pockets look thin, then softens as the Nordica treasury swells. Her marriage on the auditorium stage makes her a prize in the racial masquerade, and her genteel pretensions quietly expose the movement's shabbiness.

Charlie Foster

supporting

Also known as Chuck, Foster, Chuck Foster

Foster moves through Atlanta's white society with an organizer's ease and a restless, unrequited fixation on a girl who once refused him. His pursuit of her pulls him deeper into the Nordica machinery and into the orbit of its rising stars. He matters because his ambitions and his hungers keep the movement's internal politics churning through the middle of the book.

Alex McPhule

supporting

Also known as Rev. McPhule, Rev. Alex McPhule

McPhule preaches racial purity with the fervor of a man who has made it his livelihood, and he guards his turf jealously. He resents the upstarts and smooth operators who threaten to siphon off his followers and his income. His jealous feuding with Givens and company shows how the color line, in this satire, is mostly a contest over money and pulpit.

Hank Johnson

supporting

Also known as Henry Johnson, Johnson, Hank

Johnson crosses over into whiteness expecting an open sesame, and instead finds dull, grasping, ill-bred society waiting on the other side. He drifts between the cabarets of Harlem and the stiff amusements of white Atlanta, never quite belonging to either. His disillusionment gives the novel its sharpest running joke: that whiteness, once attained, is no prize at all.

Mr. Walter Williams

supporting

Also known as Mr. Williams, Walter Williams, Walt

Williams trades his old life for a desk job inside the very machinery that claims to defend racial purity. From that vantage he sees how newspapers and businessmen fan color prejudice for profit, and how little the change in his skin has changed the game. His quiet, cynical observations give the middle of the book its insider's view of the con.

Helen Fisher

minor

Also known as Helen

Matthew Fisher's wife, who appears in the later part of the book.

Mrs. Givens

minor

Also known as Old Mrs. Givens, Old lady Givens

Rev. Givens's wife and Helen's mother, who appears in family scenes.

Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard

supporting

Also known as Dr. Beard, Beard

Beard belongs to the genteel Negro aristocracy — the Episcopal son raised on African masks, race newspapers, and the careful cultivation of a civilized self. He is vain about his learning and his standing, a man who wants genteel popularity without notoriety, and he cannot fathom why anyone would refuse a good thing when offered. As Black-No-More empties the race he has devoted himself to chronicling, his bewilderment curdles into something sharper, making him the novel's most intimate portrait of a man undone by the very progress he cannot oppose.

Sisseretta Blandish

supporting

Also known as Madame Sisseretta Blandish, Madame Blandish

In the social world of Harlem's strivers, Madame Blandish is a small entrepreneur of racial aspiration, selling transformations to women who want to look less like themselves. Her trade depends on the very color line that Black-No-More threatens to dissolve, and she is shrewd enough to see that the whitening craze is less a liberation than a new market. Her parlor becomes a front-row seat to the scramble of the Black bourgeoisie, catching every rumor and every defection before it reaches the newspapers.

Gorman Gay

minor

Also known as Gay

A white man who becomes involved with the movement and later faces scandal.

Grand Exalted Giraw

supporting

Also known as Giraw, Grand Giraw

Giraw presides over a fraternal order built on ritual, uniforms, and the promise of racial purity, a racket as much as a movement. His power rests on the presence of a visible Black underclass, so the success of Black-No-More is an existential threat dressed up as a triumph. As whitened Americans flood into his ranks undetected, he must decide whether to defend the color line or exploit the panic it produces — and his opportunism becomes the engine of the novel's political satire.

Santop Licorice

minor

Also known as Santop

A Black man who becomes white and later appears in the South.

Doc Crookman

minor

Also known as Doc, Crookman

An informal name for Dr. Junius Crookman used by some characters.

Dr. Joseph Bonds

minor

Also known as Dr. Bonds, Bonds, Jo

A Black doctor who assists in the movement's operations.

Big Boy

minor

Also known as Boy

A minor character who appears in a scene with the main characters.

President Harold Goosie

supporting

Also known as President Goosie, Goosie

Goosie governs a country in which the old categories are dissolving faster than the law can name them, and he responds the way politicians do — by watching which way the crowd is moving. He is less a villain than a weather vane, surrounded by advisers who read the whitening of America as either a windfall or a catastrophe depending on their district. His administration's maneuvering over Black-No-More turns the novel's racial farce into an explicit comedy of American governance.

The Negroes

minor

Also known as Negroes

The collective Black population referenced throughout the book.

Knights of Nordica

supporting

Also known as Nordica

The order functions as a social club, a political machine, and a business, selling uniforms and membership to men who want to feel like defenders of a race they can no longer reliably identify. Its halls host labor meetings, its news service manufactures outrage, and its rank and file include the very people it claims to exclude. As the whitening process erases the visible Negro, the Knights must invent new enemies or admit that their entire purpose has evaporated — a dilemma that drives the novel's satire of American bigotry to its logical absurdity.

Miss Smith

minor

Also known as Smith

A minor female character mentioned in the narrative.

Senator Rufus Kretin

minor

Also known as Senator Kretin, Kretin

A politician who appears in the political satire.

Imperial Grand Wizard Givens

minor

Also known as Givens

A title for Rev. Henry Givens in his role in the Knights of Nordica.

Mr. Licorice

minor

Also known as Licorice

A Black man who undergoes the treatment and becomes a white man in the South.

Dr. Napoleon Wellington Jackson

minor

Also known as Dr. Jackson

A Black intellectual who debates the movement's implications.

Jesus Christ

minor

Also known as Jesus, Christ

Referenced in religious contexts by characters, not a physical presence.

The Republicans

minor

Also known as Republicans

The political party that becomes involved in the racial politics of the book.

Vanishing Mammy

minor

Also known as Mammy, Sweet Mammy

A stereotypical Black maternal figure referenced in the narrative.

Frazier

minor

A minor character who appears in the later part of the book.

Swanson

minor

A minor character mentioned in the narrative.

The Doctor

minor

Also known as doctor

A generic reference to a doctor, possibly Crookman or another physician.

Mrs. Sari Blandine

minor

Also known as Mrs. Blandine, Blandine

A white woman who becomes involved with the movement.

The Honorable Walter Brybe

minor

Also known as Walter, Walter Brybe

A politician who becomes involved in the racial politics.

The Democrats

minor

Also known as Democrats

The opposing political party in the novel's political satire.

Sandol

minor

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Colonel Mortimer Roberts

minor

Also known as Colonel Roberts

A military officer who appears in the later part of the book.

Brother Fisher

minor

Also known as Brother

A religious title used for Matthew Fisher in a church context.

Minnie

minor

A minor female character mentioned in the narrative.

Mrs. Blandish

minor

Another name for Madame Sisseretta Blandish.

Blickdoff

minor

Also known as Mr. Blickdoff

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Honey

minor

A term of endearment used by characters, possibly a minor character.

Mr. Hortzenboff

minor

Also known as Hortzenboff

A minor character mentioned in the narrative.

Sammy Snort

minor

Also known as Sammy

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Kipling

minor

A reference to the author Rudyard Kipling, not a character.

Mr. Foster

minor

Also known as Foster

Another name for Charlie Foster.

Rev. Herbert Gronne

minor

Also known as Rev. Gronne, Gronne

A minister who appears in the narrative.

Sybil Smith

minor

Also known as Sybil

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Dr. Gronne

minor

A doctor who appears in the narrative.

Mistah Gay

minor

Also known as Mister Gay, Mr. Gay, Gay

Another name for Gorman Gay.

Dr. Yusaburo Noguchi

minor

A Japanese scientist referenced in the narrative.

Violet

minor

A minor female character mentioned in the narrative.

Mr. Bonds

minor

Another name for Dr. Joseph Bonds.

Dr. Brocker

minor

A doctor who appears in the narrative.

Prof. Handen Moutthe

minor

A professor referenced in the narrative.

Mr. Claude Spelling

minor

Also known as Mr. Spelling, Spelling

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Doctor Beard

minor

Also known as Beard, Doctor Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard

Another name for Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard.

Mr. Jack Albert

minor

Also known as Mr. Albert

A minor character mentioned in the narrative.

Old Top

minor

A colloquial term used by characters, not a distinct person.

Surgeon-General Crookman

minor

A title for Dr. Junius Crookman in his official capacity.

Billy Fletcher

minor

Also known as Billy

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Boogie

minor

A minor character mentioned in the narrative.

Old Bob

minor

Also known as Bob

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Germans

minor

Also known as The Germans

Referenced as a group in the narrative, not individual characters.

Darling

minor

A term of endearment used by characters, not a distinct person.

Miss Hall

minor

A minor female character mentioned in the narrative.

Squaws

minor

A term used in the narrative, not a distinct character.

Doctor Brocker

minor

Another name for Dr. Brocker.