Description
Book SynopsisGeorge Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would invigorate the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America''s race problems. Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring and inquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happene
Trade ReviewThis enthralling, heartbreaking book restores to attention Philippa Schuyler, child prodigy of the 1930s, pianist, composer, Harlem's Mozart, "the Shirley Templey of American Negroes" ... This tragic tale is a stimulating addition to the record of race relations in America, as well as a monument to an extraordinary woman.' The New York Times Book Review
an incisive and readable biography of an intriguing figure * Publishers Weekly *
