Much of the discussion I am seeing around the dropping of HP Lovecraft as the face of the World Fantasy Awards has centered on him being “a man of his time”, and therefore inevitably racist. The generally unspoken assumption is that he was no more and no less racist than any of his white writer contemporaries. In furtherance of this discussion, dear readers, I give you James Ferdinand Morton.

Morton was 20 years older than Lovecraft and an established literary figure. Born in New England, he could trace his ancestry in the region back to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers. He was a former president of the National Amateur Press Association, the ‘zine producers’ club of which Lovecraft was also a member. He was a prominent member of the Blue Pencil Club of Brooklyn, a writers’ club which Lovecraft joined. Morton introduced Lovecraft to Sonia Greene, whom Howard later married. And in 1922, when the then president of the NAPA resigned, it was Morton who suggested that Lovecraft should take on the post.

Morton was also an anarchist. For a few years he lived in commune in Washington State. He was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and wrote a book titled The Curse of Race Prejudice. He lectured widely on a variety of subjects including workers’ rights and feminism, both of which he supported. He was an early supporter of Esperanto, the proposed world language, becoming vice-president of the Esperanto League for North America. In his later years he converted to the Bahá’í faith, an offshoot of Islam generally recognized as a separate religion.

Before they met, Lovecraft denounced Morton as someone who participated in the, “wanton destruction of the public faith and the publick morals”. However, once they did get to talk they became firm friends. They kept up a lengthy correspondence, Lovecraft’s end of which has been preserved and published. I don’t own the book myself, but it is reviewed over at Innsmouth Free Press.

It is clear from that review that Lovecraft and Morton debated issues of race, each trying to convert the other to his view with singular lack of success. Lovecraft, therefore, is not someone who merely absorbed the racist rhetoric of his times. He is someone who firmly and proudly held racist views, and who strongly defended those views when one of his closest friends tried to talk him down. Lovecraft is someone who could write in a letter to that friend:

I’d like to see Hitler wipe Greater New York clean with poison gas – giving masks to the few remaining people of Aryan culture (even if of Semitic ancestry). The place needs fumigation & a fresh start. (If Harlem didn’t get any masks, I’d shed no tears…. )

And that, dear reader, is why, despite his many achievements, Lovecraft is not a suitable person to be the public face of an international award.