As noted on Tor.com. And did you know that
“I’ve always been fascinated that the first president of that first US fan group—indeed, the world’s first fan group—was a black guy, Warren Fitzgerald, and that they held their early meetings at his home in Harlem. I’m amazed this doesn’t seem to be widely known.”
One of the subthemes running through the RaceFail debacle in the early months of this year was the “invisiblity” of people of colour within fandom. White fans were noting the lack of fans of colour, while they in turn were annoyed by the often well intended, widespread idea among white fans that science fiction just wasn’t attractive enough to people of colour. Quite a few heated threats revolved around this dichotomy, with fans of colour trying to convince their white counterparts that the appeal of science fiction wasn’t the issue, that there were actually quite a few of them around, but they just weren’t noticed… That the first president of the world’s first fan group was Black and nobody knew this fits perfectly.