By the mid-1920s, Schuyler had become disillusioned with socialism, believing that socialists were frauds who actually cared very little about Black people. Schuyler's writing caught the eye of journalist and
social critic H. L. Mencken, who wrote, "I am more and more convinced that [Schuyler] is the most competent editorial writer now in practice in this great free republic." Schuyler contributed ten articles to the
American Mercury during Mencken's tenure as
editor, all dealing with Black issues, and all notable for Schuyler's wit and incisive analysis. Because of his close association with Mencken, as well as their compatible
ideologies and sharp use of satire, Schuyler during this period was often referred to as "the Black Mencken." In 1926, the
Pittsburgh Courier sent Schuyler on an editorial assignment to the South, where he developed his journalistic protocol: ride with a cab driver, then chat with a local
barber,
bellboy,
landlord, and policeman. These encounters would precede interviews with local town officials. In 1926, Schuyler became the Chief Editorial Writer at the
Courier. That year, he published a controversial article entitled "The Negro-Art
Hokum" in
The Nation, in which he claimed that because blacks have been influenced by Euroamerican culture for 300 years, "the Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon" and that no distinctly "negro" style of art exists in the USA.
Langston Hughes's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain", a response to Schuyler's piece, appeared in the same magazine. Schuyler objected to the segregation of art by race, writing about a decade after his "Negro-Art Hokum" in an essay that appeared in
The Courier in 1936: "All of this hullabaloo about the Negro Renaissance in art and literature did stimulate the writing of some literature of importance which will live. The amount, however, is very small, but such as it is, it is meritorious because it is literature and not Negro literature. It is judged by literary and not by racial standards, which is as it should be." From 1928 to early 1929, Schuyler edited the
Illustrated Feature Section, a newspaper insert sponsored by
William Bernard Ziff Sr. with distribution of approximately 300,000 copies. In 1929, Schuyler's pamphlet
Racial Inter-Marriage in the United States called for solving the country's race problem through
miscegenation, which was then
illegal in most states. In 1931, Schuyler published
Black No More, which tells the story of a scientist who develops a process that turns black people to white, a book that has since been reprinted twice. Two of Schuyler's targets in the book were Christianity and
organized religion, reflecting his innate
skepticism of both. His mother had been religious but not a regular churchgoer. As Schuyler aged, he held both white and
black churches in contempt. Both, in his mind, contained ignorant, conniving preachers who exploited their listeners for personal gain. White Christianity was viewed by Schuyler as pro-slavery and pro-racism. In an article for the
American Mercury entitled
Black America Begins to Doubt, Schuyler wrote: "On the horizon loom a growing number of iconoclasts and Atheists, young black men and women who can read, think and ask questions; and who impertinently demand to know why Negroes should revere a god that permits them to be lynched, Jim-Crowed, and disenfranchised". He also positively reviewed
Georg Brandes' book
Jesus: A Myth in an article called "Disrobing Superstition." In his review, Schuyler states:"It is doubtful whether any intelligent person accepts the Jesus Christ of the Scriptures as a fact. His alleged exploits, career, death and resurrection can only be wholly swallowed by the same gullible folk who swarm into the sideshows at
Coney Island; who believe that George Washington never told a lie; that Congressmen are exceptionally honorable; that the YMCA is something other than a training school for young
babbits, or that the common people rule this country. The reviewer ditched this Jesus Myth about the same time that he threw Santa Claus overboard; i.e., at the age of eight. Now comes Mister Brandes, the noted Danish critic. He cleans up for this old myth in a very effective manner. His disposal of Jesus will satisfy most any rational being, that is to say, it will satisfy about one-twentieth of the people. The rest want to believe such myth because of the satisfaction and compensation they derive therefrom. If they didn't swallow the Jesus Myth, they would be worshiping Buddha, Osiris or Jupiter. Mentally inferior people must worship something or somebody. Thus, while this book will be read with interest by the intelligent minority, it will be shoved into the trash can with shocked silence by Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Holy Rollers, Christian Scientists, Rotarians and such folk. The author holds that Jesus is as much a myth as William Tell. . . . The author's criticism is always keen and searching. . . . This is probably the most Spirited and iron-clad attack that has ever been written on the authenticity of the so-called Savior of Mankind." In 1932, Schuyler joined
Roy Wilkins of the
NAACP on a trip to Mississippi to inspect the working conditions of black laborers employed in flood mitigation following the
Great Flood of 1927. Afterwards, he joined the organization's publicity department, compiling a history of the organization and eventually joining
The Crisis. Between 1936 and 1938 Schuyler published in the
Pittsburgh Courier a weekly serial, which was later collected and published as a novel entitled
Black Empire in 1991. He also published the highly controversial book
Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia, a novel about the slave trade created by former American slaves who settled
Liberia in the 1820s. In the 1930s, Schuyler published scores of short stories in the
Pittsburgh Courier under various pseudonyms. He was published in many prestigious black journals, including
Negro Digest,
The Messenger, and
W.E.B. Du Bois's
The Crisis, for which he served as business manager between 1937 and 1944. Schuyler's journalism also appeared in such mainstream magazines as
The Nation and
Common Ground, and in such newspapers as
The Washington Post and
The New York Evening Post (forerunner of
the New York Post). ==Shift in politics==