Over twenty years ago a gentleman in Asbury Park, N. J. began
manufacturing and advertising a preparation for the immediate and
unfailing straightening of the most stubborn Negro hair. This
preparation was called Kink-No-More, a name not wholly accurate since
users of it were forced to renew the treatment every fortnight.
During the intervening years many chemists, professional and amateur,
have been seeking the means of making the downtrodden Aframerican
resemble as closely as possible his white fellow citizen. The
temporarily effective preparations placed on the market have so far
proved exceedingly profitable to manufacturers, advertising agencies,
Negro newspapers and beauty culturists, while millions of users have
registered great satisfaction at the opportunity to rid themselves of
kinky hair and grow several shades lighter in color, if only for a
brief time. With America's constant reiteration of the superiority of
whiteness, the avid search on the part of the black masses for some key
to chromatic perfection is easily understood. Now it would seem that
science is on the verge of satisfying them.
Dr. Yusaburo Noguchi, head of the Noguchi Hospital at Beppu, Japan,
told American newspaper reporters in October 1929, that as a result of
fifteen years of painstaking research and experiment he was able to
change a Negro into a white man. While he admitted that this racial
metamorphosis could not be effected overnight, he maintained that
"Given time, I could change the Japanese into a race of tall blue-eyed
blonds." The racial transformation, he asserted, could be brought about
by glandular control and electrical nutrition.
Even more positive is the statement of Mr. Bela Gati, an electrical
engineer residing in New York City, who, in a letter dated August 18,
1930 and addressed to the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People said, in part:
"Once I myself was very strongly tanned by the sun and a
European rural population thought that I was a Negro, too. I did
not suffer much but the situation was disagreeable. Since that
time I have studied the problem and I am convinced that the surplus
of the pigment could be removed. In case you are interested and
believe that with the aid of your physicians we could carry
out the necessary experiments, I am willing to send you the
patent specification ... and my general terms relating to this
invention.... The expenses are so to say negligible."
I wish to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to Mr. V. F.
Calverton for his keen interest and friendly encouragement and to my
wife, Josephine Schuyler, whose coöperation and criticism were of great
help in completing _Black No More_.