Traces of the Black Swan: Lino Guedes, a black writer on the newspapers (1913-1969)

Abstract In this article, I discuss aspects of the intellectual and literary activism of a black writer called Lino Guedes, born in the state of São Paulo. Based on sources from newspapers and on the initial mapping of his literary production, I try to explain how this author has figured in the public debate about black people in São Paulo in the post-Abolition period. In view of the limited analytical production about Lino Guedes as well as the lack of information about the social and intellectual conditions that made his work possible, this research tries to reconstruct the social and intellectual contexts in which he was inserted. I hope to contribute to the debate on the role played by black intellectuals in the public life in the early twentieth century in São Paulo.