Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon 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.