Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, the CRISIS, And

Protest and Propaganda

W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American History

Edited by Amy Helene Kirschke

and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

University of Missouri Press Columbia Copyright © 2014 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65211 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved First paperback printing, 2016

Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8262-2005-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8262-2093-6 (paperback : alk. paper)

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.

Design and composition: Jennifer Cropp Typefaces: Minion, Blair, Copperplate and Franklin for Professor Mercedes Carrara, who changed my life

—Amy Helene Kirschke

Contents

Preface Gerald Horne ix Acknowledgments xi

The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races An Introduction Shawn Leigh Alexander 1

Chapter 1 W. E. B. Du Bois and Positive Propaganda A Philosophical Prelude to His Editorship of The Crisis Robert W. Williams 16

Chapter 2 W. E. B. Du Bois as Print Propagandist Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere 28

Chapter 3 Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years Amy Helene Kirschke 49

Chapter 4 “We Return Fighting” The Great War and African American Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 Barbara McCaskill 118

Chapter 5 W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage Garth E. Pauley 135

vii viii Contents

Chapter 6 The Crisis Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic Katharine Capshaw Smith 156

Chapter 7 God in Crisis Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance Edward J. Blum 173

Chapter 8 W. E. B. Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda Religion and The Crisis, 1910-1934 Phillip Luke Sinitiere 190

Chapter 9 The Crisis Cover Girl Lena Horne, Walter White, and the NAACP’s Representation of African American Femininity Megan E. Williams 208

Chapter 10 The Crisis Responds to Public School Desegregation Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn 226

Epilogue Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere 241

Notes on the Contributors 255 Index 259 Preface

Gerald Horne

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a towering figure, not only in the life of black America but in the United States as a whole. A graduate of Fisk Uni- versity in Nashville, Tennessee, with a doctorate from Harvard, he also matriculated in Germany before launching a spectacularly protean career. At the turn of the twentieth century he was a founder of the Pan-African Movement, which brought together Africans and people of African descent from the four corners of the planet under the banner of decolonization of Africa and the Ca- ribbean and equality in North America and other sites. He was a poet and dra- matist and novelist and a pioneer urban sociologist (his investigation of black Philadelphia remains a classic in the field). As a historian, his excavation of the unlamented African slave trade and his analysis of the Reconstruction era following the Civil War remain landmarks of scholarship, standing years after publication as models of meticulous research and riveting argumentation. As an academic, he taught at various universities over the decades; as a politician, he made a race for the U.S. Senate from New York in 1950 on a left-wing ticket in the midst of the Red Scare—and acquitted himself admirably. He summed up his life cogently in a series of memoirs and autobiographies that continue to repay attention. He was also a progenitor of the Niagara Movement, which by 1909 helped give birth to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest and still the largest civil rights organization in the United States. He served this organization from its inception until 1934, primarily as editor and principal muse of The Crisis, then departed to teach at Atlanta University for ten years before returning to the NAACP in 1944 as a kind of minister of foreign affairs, with a portfolio that included guiding not only black America but also the Pan-African world as a whole through the perilous straits that marked the conclusion and aftermath of World War II. By 1948 he was ousted uncer- emoniously in an ideological dispute with the organization’s leaders, as he was unwilling to go along with the ascending Cold War, not least since he felt that it would prove problematic for Africa and the Caribbean—though his opponents

ix x Preface felt that this same conflict would create a dynamic that would redound to the benefit of black America. It did create a dynamic whereby leaders in Washing- ton found it difficult to pose as paragons of human rights virtue as long as a kind of apartheid existed in their own backyard, making Jim Crow a prominent casualty of this decades’ long conflict. As these events were unfolding, Du Bois was indicted as part of the Mc- Carthy movement and stood trial in 1951, deemed an agent of an unnamed foreign power. This was presumed to be the Soviet Union, since Du Bois had helped lead the Stockholm Peace Appeal, which petitioned globally to ban nuclear weapons and may have received more signatures than any petition in world history. It was at this weighty moment that his first wife passed away and he remarried, this time to Shirley Graham, one of the leading creative artists and intellectuals of her era. They spent the decade of the 1950s resid- ing in Brooklyn, New York, before decamping to newly liberated Ghana—in West Africa—notably the first sub-Saharan country to break from colonial rule. It was here that his friend and comrade, Kwame Nkrumah, leader of this newly independent nation, invited him to take on his final assignment in 1961: editing and producing the Encyclopedia Africana, a task he was unable to complete wholly before passing away in August 1963 at the age of ninety- five. Du Bois’s death intersected with a new era of the freedom movement as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. provided his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington just hours after Du Bois passed away. Yet despite this string of contributions, the volume at hand exemplifies a point about Du Bois that is difficult to dispute: it was probably his time as editor of The Crisis that was the apex of his sterling career. A monthly that carried news, poetry, art, photographs, essays, and much, much more, this journal chronicled the black freedom movement and agitated through print. Like Du Bois himself, its reach was global. From the emergence of Freedom’s Journal, the first sustained press organ in black America, in 1827, the regularly published periodical had become an essential element of the struggle and education of black America and the anti- racist cause as a whole. Strikingly, Frederick Douglass, Du Bois’s predecessor as preeminent leader, was a journalist and editor of a number of publications that mirrored The Crisis, while Booker T. Washington—Du Bois’s occasional spar- ring partner—recognized the importance of journalism when he sponsored (at times surreptitiously) a number of black newspapers. Nonetheless, it was Du Bois who best brought into being the difficult marriage of publication and politics with The Crisis. Still in print a century after it first saw the light of day, The Crisis—and this companion volume at hand— continue to resonate as a living monument to the inspiration and perspiration of an intellectual and activist who contributed mightily to human liberation. Acknowledgments

Just as The Crisis was the result of the collaborative efforts of many individuals, so too is this essay collection. We gladly thank the individuals and the institutions who made this volume possible, in particular Dennis Dickerson and Shawn Leigh Alexander. Collectively we thank the contributors to this volume whose erudition, incisive analysis, and readable prose present fresh perspectives on the history of The Crisis. We especially thank Gerald Horne for composing the preface and Shawn Leigh Alexander for his vital contribution at the volume’s later stages. I (Amy Helene Kirschke) thank all of the contributing authors to this volume for their insight and commitment to our field. I especially want to thank my coeditor, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, who made this volume a reality with his panel at the American Historical Association annual meeting, his energy, integrity, and dedication. I am grateful to the colleagues and friends who support my work, including Nicholas Hudson, Linda Cook, Claudia Barker, Elena Pezzuto, Denise Di Puccio, Kathleen Berkeley, Mary Browning, Elizabeth McCleave Patterson, Catherine Kast, Ned Irvine, Janet Ansu Boahema, Kathleen Madigan, Thomas and Stephanie King, and Kindra Clyne. Professor Dennis Dickerson offered me support and guidance as well. Valena Minor Williams remains my greatest mentor. Her guidance and humor have given me strength and insight in my field, and in life! I am grateful for the support and love of my family, including Barbara and Dick Leland and Jane Bruce, and Helene Kirschke-Schwartz, who are deeply committed to social justice, Tom Schwartz who is a great dad to our girls, Eugenie Madden Watson, Harry Kirschke, Amy Metteer-Storer, Melissa Kirschke Stockdale, Nick Stockdale, my fiancé, James Benshoff, and my three daughters, Helene, Genevieve, and Marigny. I (Phillip Luke Sinitiere) thank Gerald Horne, Ed Blum, and Amy Kirschke for introducing him to the life and work of W. E. B. Du Bois. In addition, I thank Sam Houston State University NAACP Unit #6816 for the 2009–2010 Faculty Freedom Fighter Award. I was grateful for this recognition as a first- year faculty member, and it was an equally exciting honor to receive this award for the years that marked the centennials of both the NAACP and The Crisis.

xi xii Acknowledgments

But it is Jenni, Matthew, Alexander, Madeline, Nathaniel, and Elijah who always provide the ultimate inspiration. Collectively we thank the presenters and audience at the “100 Years of Crisis” panel at the 2010 American Historical Association annual meeting, where this volume began to take shape. We are grateful to our editor, Clair Willcox, who along with other staff members at the University of Missouri Press, including John Brenner and Sara Davis, saw this project through to completion. Finally, we dedicate this volume to Valena Minor Williams and Sondra Kathryn Wilson. Sondra, an original contributor to this volume, unfortunately passed away before completion of this project. Her tireless and winsome efforts to document African American history continue to inspire our own work. Protest and Propaganda

The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races An Introduction

Shawn Leigh Alexander

Then came The Crisis, like a clear, strong breeze cutting through the miasma of Negrophobism. Here for the first time with brilliance, militancy, facts, photographs and persuasiveness, a well-edited magazine challenged the whole concept of white supremacy then nationally accepted. . . . It is no exaggeration to say that the early Crisis created an intellectual revolution in the most out-of-way places. . . . It became the bible of the militant Negro of the day and “must” reading for the growing numbers of his white champions. —George S. Schuyler 19511

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is America’s oldest civil rights organization. Founded in 1909, it has fought to uphold the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and demanded equal rights for all Americans. In waging this struggle, the NAACP has employed an expansive range of strategies and tactics, including legal action, political lobbying, voter registration, boycotts, and mass demonstrations. Throughout its one hundred–plus years of continuous struggle, one particularly important aspect of its multipronged approach has too often received short shrift: its creation and usage of propaganda to help shape the movement. The main vehicle for the organization’s message was The Crisis magazine. As historian Elliott Rudwick explained, “The journal was the grand mentor of the race—it alone could teach Negroes not only how to protest but how to live. Af- ter colored Americans had received sufficient indoctrination from the Crisis ‘branch,’ they would be better able to fit into the NAACP branch.”2 The NAACP was launched in the aftermath of a race riot in Springfield, Il- linois, in August 1908. While neither the first nor the last racial pogrom in America’s history, this act of racial violence—which left two blacks lynched,

1 2 Shawn Leigh Alexander four whites killed, and more than seventy people injured—sparked indignation and shock among black and white reformers because it took place not only in the North, but in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln. William English Walling, a young journalist who investigated the riot along with social workers Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, and Oswald Garrison Villard, a newspaper editor and grandson of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, soon after called a meeting for a national conference to discuss “present evils, the voicing of protest, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” 3 This National Negro Conference held in New York City on May 31 and June 1, 1909, is where the NAACP was conceived. The majority of those attending the conference were white philanthropists and social reformers, but black participants included Ida B. Wells-Barnett, William Monroe Trotter, Alexander Walters, William Sinclair, and W. E. B. Du Bois, all of whom had spearhead- ed previous African American protests and were prominent members of the decades-old struggle in the African American community to create a national civil rights organization.4 The new organization adopted a program of vigorous opposition to racial hatred and prejudice, promising to fully expose the squalid truth of how African Americans were treated in the United States. Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, professor at Atlanta University and author of the popular The Souls of Black Folk (1903), was asked by William English Walling to work full-time for the new organization.5 Du Bois, wanting to continue his research and writing career, replied to Walling with a question regarding his potential duties and the resources available to carry them out. “In looking over your budget it occurs to me,” Du Bois stated, “that no provision is made for research work, unless something is included under postage.”6 After subsequent negotiations, Du Bois agreed to join the new group as the only African Ameri- can on the executive committee and the director of Publications and Research. Du Bois’s principal role in the developing NAACP was as editor of the group’s new organ, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, named after a James Russell Lowell poem, “The Present Crisis.” “My career as a scientist,” he later recalled, “was to be swallowed up in my role as master of propaganda.” His mastery was made clear in the debut issue of the magazine, which was published on November 1, 1910. As Du Bois explained, the magazine’s object was to “set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly manifested to-day toward colored people.” He further outlined that The Crisis would “first and foremost be a newspaper,” reporting on events and movements that “bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations.” However, it would also review literature dealing with racial questions, respond to opinions of race relations offered in other publications, and publish short articles, while “its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, Introduction 3 and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals.”7 The Crisis, from its inception, built upon an already rich tradition of African American activist journalism. Beginning with the first newspaper published by African Americans in North America in 1827, Freedom’s Journal, and cul- minating with the creation of The Crisis, the African American press was designed specifically to educate its readership about the issues important to the race and to spark coordinated action. Many of the newspapers and periodicals of the time pushed themes of education, unity, political activity, and ways for African Americans to seek equality and justice. The theme of civil rights became a particular issue for many journalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they pushed back against the post-Reconstruction assault on black citizenship and humanity. In fact, many of the prominent activists of the period were also journalists who used the printed page as a way to push their particular kind of reform.8 In The Afro-American Periodical Press, Penelope Bullock described the tradition Du Bois and The Crisis stood upon, remarking, “The overall development of the Afro-American periodical press was influenced by the status of Negroes in American society during the years between 1838 and 1909. The press began in the 1830s as a part of the organized activities of black people who were working for the emancipation of the slave and for the liberation of the free Negro from inequalities and restrictions.”9 The black press continued to be important to the community and its struggles in the years after emancipation. Journalists and the press increasingly became the “voice of the race,” expressing race pride and encouragement while attacking racism and discrimination. While African American elected officials increasingly lost their positions of power in the political arena during the post- Reconstruction era, the importance of the black press increased from the late 1880s into the first decade of the twentieth century, aided by industrializa- tion and urban migration. Individuals such as William Monroe Trotter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and John Mitchell Jr. gained widespread respect and garnered large followings due to the perspicacity and range of their analyses.10 Of particular importance was T. Thomas Fortune, the brilliant journalist and activist who had hired Du Bois at the age of fifteen to write the social column for his hometown, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in Fortune’s paper, the New York Globe. Fortune was the dean of the black press, one of the most outspoken critics of southern racism, a promoter of racial solidarity, and an uncompromising advocate for civil and political rights for African Americans. From the pages of his paper and various other periodicals, including the Colored American (which he edited for a brief period), he castigated disfranchisement, both political parties, mob violence, inequities in school funding, and the rise of segregation and white supremacy.11 Most important, he used the pages of his paper and 4 Shawn Leigh Alexander the black newspaper and periodical press as his pulpit to advocate for the creation and support of the Afro-American League and Afro-American Council, the nation’s first civil rights organizations and immediate precursors of the NAACP.12 It was upon this historic foundation that Du Bois stood. Already he had assisted his friends J. W. E. Bowen and J. Max Barber with the Voice of the Negro and started his own short-lived publications, The Moon and Horizon, in the immediate years before the creation of The Crisis. And it was within this propagandist tradition, from Freedom’s Journal to T. Thomas Fortune, that Du Bois built the NAACP’s “little magazine.” Headquartered in Manhattan, The Crisis became W. E. B. Du Bois’s voice as well as the voice of the NAACP. Through the pages of The Crisis, the author of now classic works such as The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and The Souls of Black Folk (1903) sharpened his pen to a fine edge and became the scholar-activist so revered today. He maintained complete control in his position as editor, despite attempts to place limitations on him. “With The Crisis,” he explained, “I essayed a new role of interpreting to the world the hindrances and aspirations of Amer- ican Negroes. My older program appeared only as I supported my contention with facts from current reports and observation or historic reference. My writing was reinforced by lecturing, and my knowledge increased by travel . . . ” The Crisis was launched at a critical “psychological moment,” less than fifty years after Emancipation and during a time when discrimination had become entrenched nationwide and was sanctioned by science, law, and public opinion. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the magazine became a remarkable success. Circulation rose from one thousand for the first issue to several thousand within a few months. By 1917 its readership had grown to fifty thousand, expanding to more than one hundred thousand two years later in 1919. As a result, the readership of The Crisis surpassed that of popular, well-known magazines such as the New Republic and The Nation.13 As conceived, the magazine was the voice of the NAACP. Readers were informed of the activities of the organization on both the national and local level, giving greater cohesion to the organization as a whole. Moreover, Du Bois pushed his readers to become members of the organization, as in 1914 when he screamed from the pages, “Join the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADAVANCEMENT OF COL- ORED PEOPLE or be strangled to a slow and awful death by growing prejudice.”14 But with his ever-sharpening pen, The Crisis also became a personal journal, an extension of Du Bois and his agenda as he sought to educate the world on race issues and to mold, join, and uplift the race politically, culturally, and spiritually. Through the pages of The Crisis Du Bois influenced the lives of so many both within and outside of the black community. As Horace Mann Bond, Afri- can American educator and activist and father of activist and former NAACP Introduction 5 chairman Julian Bond, explained, “Through The Crisis Du Bois helped shape my inner world to a degree impossible to imagine in the world of contemporary children, and the flood of various mass media to which they are exposed. . . . through Du Bois I had these vicarious experiences with the real and brutal world of race and color, as with the real world of black men and women clothed in beauty and dignity.”15 Langston Hughes echoed Bond’s sentiments, remarking, “So many thousands of my generation were uplifted and inspired by the written and spoken words of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois that for me to say I was so inspired would hardly be unusual. My earliest memories of written words are of those of Du Bois and the Bible.”16 Du Bois’s competitors in the black press also felt the growth, success, and influence of The Crisis. Many saw The Crisis and Du Bois as a threat because the success of his magazine perceivably meant fewer subscriptions for themselves and his editorial approach oftentimes had them seeming too moderate or out of touch. William Calvin Chase, the editor of the influential Washington Bee, complained that the NAACP was supplementing The Crisis with its membership dues, thereby creating an unfair advantage for Du Bois and his magazine. Du Bois responded to this concern by pointing out “The Crisis supports itself, and had from the beginning.” He went on to express regret and disdain for the black press by arguing that content from black newspapers worthy of reprinting in The Crisis was limited because the editors of the African American week- lies failed to give more “careful attention to some of the very things which this editor denounces would bring larger success” to their own papers. He also criticized the black press for its frequent lack of facts, failure to use proper English, and lack of principles.17 The Crisis and its editor were bold, uncompromising, and set a very high standard. As sociologist Irene Diggs noted, “Du Bois analyzed, interpreted, denounced, condemned what he believed was wrong whether perpetuated by president, royalty, or commoner.”18 From the opening issue, the range of topics that Du Bois and his staff introduced to their readers was broad and diverse. Distinguished authors including Franz Boas, H. L. Mencken, E. Frank- lin Frazier, Oswald Garrison Villard, Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur Schomburg, Charles Chesnutt, Walter White, Benjamin G. Brawley, William Pickens, James Weldon Johnson, Fenton Johnson, and Langston Hughes all published articles, critiques, and poetry in the pages of The Crisis. In addition to the diverse collection of material Du Bois selected for The Crisis, he gave particular attention to women, children, and education every year with special issues of the magazine dedicated to their causes. Lynching and mob violence, however, became the most common theme discussed in the pages of the magazine. From 1909 to 1918 there were a total of 687 lynchings in America, and 590 of these victims were African Americans.19 6 Shawn Leigh Alexander

Through writing, photographs, and artwork, Du Bois shed light on these gruesome acts of unprosecuted murder occurring throughout the nation. During this period some form of the word “lynching” appeared on nearly two thousand different pages of The Crisis. In 1916, Du Bois, building on the pioneering efforts of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, began publishing “The Lynching Industry,” a record of the individuals lynched and the reasons given for their murder. Ad- ditionally, in July of 1916 a supplementary issue of The Crisis was published on a brutal Waco, Texas, lynching that included images of the charred remains of Jesse Washington, the African American teenager who was murdered on May 15, 1916.20 Du Bois believed that Washington’s burning was so brutal and outrageous that a special issue was necessary and that the publication of the horrific images of the burned remains would shake the consciousness of the nation. In many ways the special issue on the Washington lynching was a precursor to the actions of the Johnson Publication Company when it printed the images of Emmett Till’s battered body in Jet Magazine in September 1955.21 In addition to these themes and issues, Du Bois supported copious other causes in the pages of The Crisis. He was an advocate for women’s suffrage, Af- rican independence, Pan-Africanism, and the rights of labor.22 From his columns titled “Opinions,” “Editorials,” “The Burden,” “Along the Colored Line,” “The Looking Glass,” “Postscripts,” “As the Crow Flies,” and “The Horizon,” he condemned presidents, governors, judges, and colleagues and friends when he thought they were in the wrong. The Republican and Democratic Parties, unions, the Public Health Service, the Census Bureau, the War Department, the Department of Justice, and the white and black church all felt the sting of his words. Du Bois and The Crisis were revolutionary. Together they sought to drastically change the way whites and blacks thought about themselves and each other. The Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial of January 12, 1914, demonstrates just how revolutionary and shocking The Crisis was for the nation:

Someone has sent us a special number of a Negro monthly magazine, which appears to us to be about the most incendiary document that has passed through the mails since the anarchists’ literature was barred. . . . This particular magazine is of limited circulation, and is probably the organ of ambitious Negroes in New York. Its remarks, therefore, are scarcely worthy of consideration and its opinions beneath notice. But were this spirit to spread among the Negroes, we can but think how disastrous would be its workings.23

During the 1920s The Crisis became a major voice and supporter for what has become known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Crisis had always been, in part, a literary magazine. Du Bois continuously gave space to prose, po- Introduction 7 etry, and artistic expression. During the magazine’s first decade William Stan- ley Braithwaite edited the poetry selections, but in 1919 Du Bois hired Jessie Redmond Fauset to edit the magazine’s literature. With Fauset and Du Bois as editors, many young writers were published, including Claude McKay, Langs- ton Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Arna Bontemps, and Zora Neale Hurston. Du Bois and Fauset pushed their writers and believed that their contributions of fully realized characters and themes would help dismantle the stereotyped negative images of African Americans and the African Diaspora created by white novelists and accepted by vast numbers within the national audience. Fauset also assisted Du Bois in publishing The Brownies’ Book in 1920–1921, a Crisis edition aimed at young readers. Later in the decade the editors would also criticize writers who fell into their own stereotypical trappings and only portrayed Harlem as a place of cabarets and sin.24 In the 1930s, Du Bois began to clash with the editorial board and the executive committee of the NAACP, in particular Walter White and Roy Wilkins.25 Given the economic circumstances throughout the nation during the De- pression, The Crisis and the NAACP were in financial trouble, and White and Wilkins saw the moment as opportune for wrestling control of the magazine from Du Bois. Du Bois did not help the situation when he published a series of editorials over the winter months of 1933–1934 that advocated, among other things, “fighting segregation with segregation.” As biographer David Levering Lewis explained, “separatist ideas from the pen of the country’s leading civil rights advocate risked political consequences” that the NAACP could not af- ford at the time.26 After a nearly six-month battle over the issue of segregation and the ability to continue to act as sole editor of The Crisis with control over its content, Du Bois resigned from the magazine that he had edited for a quarter of a century and the organ that allowed him to become the scholar-activist that he is revered for being today. When Du Bois resigned from the NAACP and the editorship of The Crisis, Roy O. Wilkins, NAACP assistant secretary and a former newspaperman who had served as the editor of the Kansas City Call, took over the helm of the magazine. With Wilkins as editor-in-chief, The Crisis took on a slightly different role. The magazine became less of a personal journal and news service and became even more closely aligned with the organization and its mission. It was during Wilkins’s years as editor (1934–1949) that the NAACP crafted its legal strategy which culminated in the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. As a result, the magazine’s focus became centered on the strategic victories the organization was achieving in its systematic legal assault on Jim Crow. Wilkins also paid keen attention to World War II and African American contributions at home and abroad in the war effort, and did not shy away from bringing attention to continued discrimination in the armed forces and on the domestic 8 Shawn Leigh Alexander front. Moreover, The Crisis became a leader in reporting and protesting the in- ternment of Japanese Americans.27 Finally, like his predecessor, Wilkins opened the pages of The Crisis both to well-known and lesser-known, up-and-coming authors who addressed the various conditions of the African American community in historical, social scientific, literary, and artistic fashion. These included, among others, Chester B. Himes, Margaret Walker, Robert C. Weaver, Loren Miller, Mercer Cook, William H. Hastie, Thurgood Marshall, Pauli Mur- ray, John P. Davis, E. Franklin Frazier, Allison Davis, and Gloster B. Current.28 In 1949 Roy Wilkins became the NAACP’s acting executive secretary and was then named chief executive in 1955 upon Walter White’s death. James W. Ivy replaced him as editor-in-chief of The Crisis. Under Ivy’s leadership the magazine became a leading voice in the burgeoning civil rights movement. The movement in many ways was led by the NAACP despite the development of other civil rights organizations and the ascendancy of other leading voices. The NAACP’s centralism and its legal strategy—while often criticized— nonetheless remained a key component of the marches, boycotts, mass mobili- zations, and speeches that the movement has become known for.29 At the same time, however, The Crisis was being challenged in the public by, among other periodicals, the strong cast of Chicago-based Johnson publications, including Negro Digest, Ebony, and Jet. Even though these periodicals competed with The Crisis, they all worked in tandem to speak to the community about the drastically changing world. The Crisis often tried to frame the discussion, while Ebony and Jet in particular publicized the events and issues– the aforementioned Emmett Till publication is one example. In framing the dramatic events of the period, Ivy sprang into action almost immediately. Beginning with Brown, the pivotal moment in the modern Civil Rights movement, The Crisis took the lead in explaining to the community what had happened and what it meant. The month after the decision Ivy ran the full text of the Supreme Court’s ruling, gave a history of the five school cases, and published reaction from around the nation.30 This trend of giving voice to what was happening in a radically changing world continued as the movement developed, gained shape and speed, and achieved other victories. For instance, Ivy brought clarity to the events in Montgomery and Little Rock and tried to explain what the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 meant to the community and the struggle.31 The Crisis became the manual for the community to track the activities, victories, and setbacks in the movement, from the struggle to desegregate schools after Brown to the national victories in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition to Ivy’s emphasis on and coverage of the domestic front, his editorship brought increased coverage of international affairs. During his tenure the world was experiencing monumental changes, particularly with the anti- Introduction 9 colonial movements of Africa and Asia, and Ivy enthusiastically covered these events in The Crisis. A multilingual scholar himself, he translated and republished articles written in French, Spanish, and Portuguese in various issues of The Crisis. He also attended and covered the First Congress of Negro Writers and Artists for the December 1956 issue.32 There was a vibrant black press covering these events, particularly in the growing Johnson publishing empire, and Ivy understood The Crisis must also cover these happenings to keep its readership and stay financially afloat. In 1966 Ivy retired from The Crisis and Henry Lee Moon, author of The Balance of Power (1948) and the NAACP’s director of Public Relations, took over as editor of the magazine. Since the landmark victories of the modern Civil Rights movement, the NAACP and The Crisis have continued to soldier on, fighting every manifestation of racial segregation and discrimination and demanding equal rights for all Americans. The magazine continues to be vital to the community and the association, albeit with less of an impact than in its earlier years. The Crisis has continued in the Du Boisian tradition, publishing pieces that “bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations,” reviewing literature dealing with the racial question, and responding to opinions on race relations. From the pages of The Crisis the editors and prominent scholars and authors have criticized U.S. foreign policy, particularly the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and presidential, congressional, and state policies of both Republicans and Democrats. The editors have continued to pay special attention to urban renewal, gang violence, education, environmental concerns, and discrimination against women and one’s sexual orientation. Over its hundred-plus years of publication, The Crisis has continued to be the voice among many in the African American community. It has continuously achieved what Du Bois’s friend and colleague J. Max Barber hoped for his Voice of the Negro and The Crisis when he joined the editorial board upon its creation: “We want it to be more than a mere magazine. We expect to make of it current and sociological history so accurately given and so vividly portrayed that it will become a kind of documentation for the coming generations.”33 The Crisis is just that; it is a living and breathing documentation of the continuous struggle for equal justice in America and the Diaspora. The pages–the history, the literature, the art–tell a story for both current and future generations. As W. E. B. Du Bois explained in 1912, “Many people object to the policy of the Crisis because, as they usually put it, the Crisis is bitter. . . . The Crisis does not try to be funny. . . . It tries to tell the Truth.” When truth comes into its own, he explained, through education and the articles in The Crisis, “the color line will be swept into oblivion of a dark and disgraceful past. Men will shudder at the deeds of their fathers, even as we shudder at the horrors of the Inquisition.”34 As a nation, the United States may not be at the moment Du Bois had hoped 10 Shawn Leigh Alexander for, but The Crisis continues to tell the story of the past and to help shed light on the continuing struggle to sweep away America’s color line. —————————————————— This book germinated as a conference panel on The Crisis at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Conceived as a commemorative gesture toward the NAACP and The Crisis for their respective centennials, this essay collection took shape following the conference with a lineup of scholars whose work represents many disciplines that intersect with African American history, American religion, American literature, women’s studies, communications, art history, and political science. Political scientist Robert Williams headlines the volume by showing how Du Bois’s training as a social scientist simultaneously challenged and informed his work as an activist. Skeptical that the tools of empirical science would fully address the entrenched problems that white supremacy created, Williams explains why and how Du Bois’s “phenomenological method” informed his decision to pursue justice on the printed page. Coupling his scholarly training with the needs of the historical moment that called for nimble approaches to combat racial injustice, Williams excavates from Du Bois’s writings the “philosophical rationale” Du Bois used to develop and publish “positive propaganda” on the pages of The Crisis. Complementing Williams’s chapter that unfurls Du Bois’s philosophical logic for editing The Crisis, in chapter 2 historians Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere fashion Du Bois as a print propagandist who boldly published a historical memory for African Americans on the pages of The Crisis. In light of Du Bois’s energetic efforts to document African American life in magazines and journals both before and after his tenure at The Crisis, Kirschke and Sinitiere explain how he used the NAACP’s magazine to archive a usable past that would encourage and embolden African Americans to uncompromisingly assert personhood and human rights. In chapter 3 Amy Helene Kirschke offers an expansive analysis of how Du Bois presented a visual vocabulary to document injustice and demand human rights. Kirschke suggests that under Du Bois’s editorship of The Crisis, the images were as important as the printed word. She shows how Du Bois, committed to an aesthetics of cultural legitimacy, staged the beauty of black bodies and black culture on the covers of The Crisis and within the magazine’s pages. Employing artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Du Bois enlisted the likes of Romare Bearden, Laura Wheeler, and Aaron Douglas to creatively illustrate topics such as lynching, education, Africa, the family, religion, and suffrage. Above all, Kirschke ably shows that Du Bois’s visual vocabulary in The Crisis attempted to forge a collective historical memory for African Americans in which they could find meaning, inspiration, strategies for protest, and a usable past. Introduction 11

In chapters 4 and 5, Barbara McCaskill and Garth Pauley address questions of gender in The Crisis during the era of World War I and the decade of the 1920s. Exploring The Crisis’s literary dimensions, literary scholar McCaskill uses the fiction of Anita Scott Coleman and Adeline F. Ries to explain how these women writers creatively interrogated pertinent questions of citizenship, identity, and nationhood as they explored both the nineteenth-century memory and twentieth-century reality of America’s vast multiracial landscape. Communications scholar Garth Pauley documents how Du Bois’s columns that addressed women’s suffrage mirrored the issues raised in Coleman’s and Ries’s creative, gender-conscious expressions. Pauley shows how the memory of nineteenth-century division between suffragists and abolitionists framed the manner in which Du Bois rhetorically and effectively engaged suffrage at the beginning of the twentieth century, revealing that through the pages of The Crisis Du Bois called out the suffragists’ racism while simultaneously persuad- ing readers that the quest for democratic justice across racial and gender lines demanded creative collaboration. At the intersection of the Great Migration, shifting sensibilities about black childhood, race pride, class, and the Harlem Renaissance, literary scholar Katharine Capshaw Smith’s chapter on The Brownies’ Book investigates how Du Bois’s civil rights initiatives in print also included an attempt to educate the next generation of freedom fighters. Conceived by Du Bois but largely carried out by Jessie Fauset, the two-year run of The Brownies’ Book in 1920– 1921 in some ways modeled that of The Crisis. In the hands of Fauset’s “capacious aesthetic” children read about black history, were whisked away to fantastic worlds of fairy tales, encountered religious worlds that engaged the occult, and found news snippets of world affairs. The work of young writers graced the pages of The Brownies’ Book and, in a move reminiscent of The Crisis, artwork and illustrations struck the imaginations of the magazine’s young readers. Ultimately, the superlative efforts behind The Brownies’ Book, not unlike The Crisis’s efforts for adults, inculcated young readers with a sense of dignity, place, imagination, and personhood often denied to them in the world of the early twentieth century. Further exploring the historical context of The Crisis’s first few decades, in chapters 7 and 8 historians Edward J. Blum and Phillip Luke Sinitiere flesh out the multiple ways the magazine addressed religion. Detailing Du Bois’s use of creative expression to demand civil rights, Sinitiere identifies Du Bois’s re- ligiously inflected “prophetic propaganda” to communicate social, political, and economic truths. In Du Bois’s prophetic parables of a black Jesus, editorials about religious news, and a series of punchy letters to The Crisis editor, Sinitiere identifies a creative politics of protest that zeroed in on how the nature of racialized religion in the United States—namely Protestant and Catho- lic Christianity—served to both justify racial division and provide a basis for 12 Shawn Leigh Alexander brotherhood and unity. Edward J. Blum also addresses religion to examine how Harlem’s “religious renaissance” used the figure of Jesus—in many cases through the pages of The Crisis—as a way to narrate and negotiate the sensitive connections between race, religion, and class in a deeply segregated society. Using the creative writing of Du Bois and Langston Hughes about the “color of Christ,” Blum documents how these authors worked to resurrect an iden- tifiable, justice-oriented Jesus from an unjust social, political, and economic order of a religion of white supremacy that demanded nothing but inequality and injustice. Focusing on the mid-twentieth century, historian Megan Williams explores how the images of entertainer Lena Horne in The Crisis and on its covers revealed NAACP political strategies to achieve liberation and equality for African Americans. She shows that under the auspices of Walter White, the NAACP used depictions of Horne to present specific images of black womanhood in an effort to achieve legitimacy in midcentury American society. Yet while Horne at times embraced how The Crisis depicted her, Williams documents how she nevertheless insisted on contesting this presentation in an effort to assert her own identity as a black woman. In the final chapter, historians Charles Ford and Jeffrey Littlejohn place The Crisis in a modern setting by astutely analyzing the NAACP magazine’s coverage of desegregation. Chronicling the complexities of nationwide school integration after the Brown decision in 1954, Ford and Littlejohn also document how the magazine addressed Massive Resistance by timely, targeted, and persuasive arguments to the contrary. Enlisting the assistance of scholars, activists, and journalists, The Crisis built on its long history of direct printed and visual political action to not only address more nationally known desegregation sites such as Little Rock but also account for changes in other locations such as Chi- cago and Norfolk. Collectively, the essays in Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American History document the multifaceted ways in which the magazine responded to critical issues in American history and culture. In the magazine’s earliest years the publication survived and thrived to publish essays, columns, and visuals that demanded a proper cultural, political, and social accounting of white supremacy’s destructive ways. But these chapters also show how essays, columns, and visuals published in The Crisis changed conversations, perceptions, and even laws in the United States, thereby calling a fractured nation to more fully live up to its democratic creed. Moreover, in a reflection of Du Bois’s own internationalist outlook, these essays also present ways that The Crisis attacked the color line that encircled the globe. The chapters in Protest and Pro- paganda represent a collective first step to archiving the history of The Crisis, but above all they explain how a magazine survived tremendous odds, document how the voices of justice rose above the clamor of injustice, and demon- Introduction 13 strate how relevant such literary, journalistic, and artistic postures remain in a twenty-first-century world still in crisis.

Shawn Leigh Alexander Lawrence, KS February 2013

——————————— Notes

1. George S. Schuyler, “Forty Years of ‘The Crisis,’” The Crisis, March 1951, 163–64. 2. Elliott Rudwick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Voice of the Black Protest Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 170. 3. See Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press, 2009) and Charles Flint Kellogg, NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Vol. 1: 1909– 1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967). 4. See Shawn Leigh Alexander, An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle before the NAACP (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 5. William English Walling to W. E. B. Du Bois, June 8, 1910, in The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, Volume 1: Selections, 1877–1934, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), 147–48. 6. W. E. B. Du Bois to William English Walling, June 10, 1910, in Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, 1:170–71. 7. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Crisis,” The Crisis, November 1910, 10. 8. See Alexander, An Army of Lions; Shawn Leigh Alexander, ed., T. Thomas Fortune the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880–1928 (Gainesville: Univer- sity Press of Florida, 2008); Ann Field Alexander, Race Man: The Rise and Fall of the “Fighting Editor,” John Mitchell, Jr. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002); Paula Giddings, Ida: A Sword among Lions (New York: Amistad, 2008); Stephen R. Fox, The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter (New York: Atheneum, 1970); and I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (1891; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1969). 9. Penelope L. Bullock, The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838–1909 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 11. 10. See Alexander, An Army of Lions, 6; V. P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of the Faith of the Fathers (Westport, CT: L. Hill, 1984). 11. See Alexander, T. Thomas Fortune the Afro-American Agitator. 12. See Alexander, An Army of Lions. 13. See, Henry Lee Moon, “History of the Crisis,” The Crisis, November 1970, 321– 74; David Levering Lewis, “Du Bois and the Challenge of the Black Press,” The Crisis, January 1997, 43–44. 14. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Join or Die!” The Crisis, January 1914, 133. 14 Shawn Leigh Alexander

15. Horace Mann Bond, “Tribute,” in Black Titan: W. E. B. Du Bois, an Anthology, ed. John Henrik Clarke, Esther Jackson, Ernest Kaiser, and J. H. O’Dell (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 11. 16. Langston Hughes, “Tribute,” in Black Titan: W. E. B. Du Bois, 8. 17. The Crisis, March 1912, 240. 18. Irene Diggs, “Du Bois—Revolutionary Journalist Then and Now: Part I,” A Cur- rent Bibliography of African Affairs 4, no. 2 (1971): 96. 19. Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States 1889–1919 (New York: National As- sociation for the Advancement of Colored People, 1919); Robert L. Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade against Lynching, 1909–1950 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980). 20. “The Waco Horror,” The Crisis, July 1916, 1–8. 21. Jet Magazine, September 15, 1955. 22. See for example “Suffering Suffragettes,” The Crisis, June 1912, 76–77; “Wom- an’s Suffrage,” The Crisis, May 1913, 29; “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, August 1914, 179–80; “Segregation in Washington,” The Crisis, February 1915, 169–71; “Woman Suf- frage,” The Crisis, November 1915, 29–30; “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, November 1917, 8; “The Black Man and the Unions,” The Crisis, March 1918, 216–17; “White Co-Workers,” The Crisis, May 1920, 6–8; “Pan-Africa,” The Crisis, January 1921, 101; “Pan-Africa,” The Crisis, March 1921, 198–99; “The Second Pan-African Congress,” The Crisis, April 1921, 248; “Africa for the Africans,” The Crisis, February 1922, 154–55; “The Third Pan-African Congress,” The Crisis, July 1923, 103; and “Pan-Africa in Por- tugal,” The Crisis, February 1924, 170. 23. Cited in Diggs, “Du Bois—Revolutionary Journalist Then and Now: Part I,” 96. She notes that The Crisis sold thirty-two thousand copies of its January 1914 issue, which was larger than the circulation of the Times-Dispatch. 24. See Sondra Kathryn Wilson, ed., The Opportunity Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from the Urban League’s Opportunity Magazine (New York: Modern Library, 1999); Sondra Kathryn Wilson, ed., The Crisis Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine (New York: Modern Library, 1999); Sondra Kathryn Wil- son, ed., The Messenger Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from The Messenger Mag- azine (New York: Modern Library, 2000); David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); David Levering Lewis, ed., The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 1994); Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Iden- tity and Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); Mark R. Schneider, “We Return Fighting”: The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002); Dianne Johnson-Feelings, ed., The Best of The Brownies’ Book (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); and W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from The Brownies’ Book, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1980). 25. See David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the Ameri- can Century, 1919–1963 (New York: H. Holt, 2000) and Kenneth Robert Janken, White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (New York: New Press, 2003). 26. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 335. The “Segregation” controversy is extremely complicated and much too detailed to go into in this introduction. In this author’s opinion, Introduction 15 the controversy to this day is not fully explained in historical context. To read Du Bois’s pieces see W. E. B. Du Bois, “Segregation,” The Crisis, January 1934, 20; “The N.A.A.C.P. And Race Segregation,” The Crisis, February 1934, 52–53; “Separation and Self-Respect,” The Crisis, March 1934, 85; “History of the Segregation Philosophy,” ibid., 85–86; “Seg- regation in the North,” The Crisis, April 1934, 115–16; “No Segregation,” ibid., 116; “Objects of Segregation,” ibid., 116; “Integration,” ibid., 117; “Segregation in the North,” ibid., 115–16; “Integration,” ibid., 117; “Segregation,” The Crisis, May 1934, 147; “The Board of Directors on Segregation,” ibid., 149; and “The Anti-Segregation Campaign,” The Crisis, June 1934, 182. See also Joel Spingarn, David E. Pierce, Walter White, Leslie Pinckney Hill, et al., “Segregation—A Symposium,” The Crisis, March 1934, 79–82; and Francis J. Grimké, “Segregation,” The Crisis, June 1934, 173–74. 27. Harry Paxton Howard, “Americans in Concentration Camps,” The Crisis, Sep- tember 1942, 281–84. 28. See Henry Lee Moon, “History of the Crisis,” The Crisis, November 1970, 321– 74. This sixtieth anniversary issue of The Crisis has a wonderful selection of editorials from W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, James W. Ivy, and Henry Lee Moon as well as a selection of articles, short stories, and poetry published in the magazine during its first sixty years. Collectively, the issue offers a crucial glimpse at the importance of the magazine and the issues it focused on during its first six decades. 29. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice and Manfred Berg, The Ticket to Freedom: The NAACP and the Struggle for Black Political Integration (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005). 30. The Crisis, June/July 1954. 31. Inez J. Baskin, “The Montgomery Bus Strike,” The Crisis, March 1956, 136–38; Gloster B. Current, “Crisis in Little Rock,” The Crisis, November 1957, 525–35; “Press Praises Courage of Negro Pupils,” ibid., 536–38; and “Nation’s Press on Governor Fau- bus & Little Rock,” ibid., 539–42. 32. James W. Ivy, “First Negro Congress of Writers and Artists,” The Crisis, Decem- ber 1956, 593–609. 33. J. Max Barber, “The Morning Cometh,” Voice of the Negro 1 (January 1904): 37–38. 34. The Crisis, February 1912, 153. Chapter 1

W. E. B. Du Bois and Positive Propaganda

A Philosophical Prelude to His Editorship of The Crisis

Robert W. Williams

W. E. B. Du Bois, after more than a decade at Atlanta University as a researcher, conference organizer, fund-raiser, and public intellectual, departed the city and school in order to become the director of Publications and Research at the newly organized NAACP. Some years later Du Bois characterized that change in the following words: “my career as a scientist was to be swallowed up in my role as master of propaganda.”1 Du Bois’s stated reasons for leaving Atlanta University are well known. In later years he indicated that distributing data and analyses to whites proved inadequate as a primary means of seeking social reforms. Historical events such as the Springfield race riot in 1908 indicated that whites generally were unconvinced by the research or else ignored it. Among the whites not per- suaded by the research were presumably some philanthropists in general and at least some Atlanta University board members in particular, especially those who considered Du Bois too radical. Their failure to appreciate Du Bois’s ideas made it difficult for him to garner sufficient funding for Atlanta University and its annual conferences, as Du Bois wrote in his posthumous 1968 Autobi- ography.2 Du Bois believed that more money would be forthcoming to Atlanta University if he were to leave the school. He also believed that he could better advance the cause of justice and democracy at home and abroad in his role as the editor of The Crisis. In this chapter I will argue that there was also a philosophically informed rationale for his decision to become an editor of a mass-circulation periodical. This philosophical justification can be reconstructed from his later critique of the practical limitations of social research vis-à-vis activism. Furthermore, the practical critique that Du Bois made in the 1940s and beyond implicated, I

16 Du Bois and Positive Propaganda 17 will argue, philosophical concerns that were made in a number of his circum- 1900 texts. The philosophical rationale for The Crisis editorship specified that another method was needed to supplement the empirically oriented methods that he already had been using to wide acclaim. The new method would need to address two concerns directly associated with activism for social justice: namely, the role of subjectivity and an inclusive conception of humanity. Those concerns were not fully actualized in the research of his day, yet Du Bois considered them of sufficient importance to mention them, often in an almost apologetic manner, in several early works. This chapter proceeds as follows. In section 2 I sketch Du Bois’s understanding and practice of research in relation to activism. In section 3 I specify Du Bois’s practical critique of social research as conveyed in texts of the 1940s and beyond, especially “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom,” Dusk of Dawn, and his 1968 Autobiography. In section 4 I contend that Du Bois’s critique of social research was also a critique of the epistemological limitations of empirically oriented social research methodologies. Moreover, Du Bois’s understanding of such limitations was contained within several circum-1900 texts in which he expressed at least two philosophical concerns: the significance of subjectivity and the importance of a more inclusive and egalitarian idea of humanity. Lastly, in section 4 I briefly outline the phenomenological method that he put forth in “The Individual and Social Conscience” as a way to theorize a role for those two philosophical concerns in the battles for social change. Du Bois’s editorship of The Crisis thus can be interpreted as both an outcome of intellectual critique and also of pressing historical events and personal decisions.

Du Bois on Research and Activism

Du Bois’s research projects were often noticed in his day and are lauded in ours. His notable works included The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, The Philadelphia Negro, and the many volumes of the Atlanta University Stud- ies.3 The early social-scientific research that Du Bois conducted and then lec- tured and wrote about could ascertain the progress, regress, or stasis of African Americans in many different areas of social and political life. His historical research discovered the developmental trends over time and discerned the actions of human agents as well as the context for their actions. Du Bois considered both research and activism to be vital for racial uplift, the former providing data and analyses for the latter. However, the relationship between the two was characterized in a manner consistent with many of the empirically oriented research practices of the era. Du Bois distinguished research from activism in terms of their differing goals. Research sought objective 18 Robert W. Williams knowledge about society, while activism promoted a normative vision of a just society, along with its attendant values and ideals.4 By the early 1900s Du Bois was more of an activist in the mold of what we would call today a public intellectual. He published his research results in newspapers and periodicals. He gave public speeches and lectures. He provided data and analyses to the U.S. government (e.g., via his studies published by the U.S. Department of Labor).5 During his Atlanta University years Du Bois generally adhered to the teachings of the German Historical School in which he was educated.6 Du Bois rig- orously collected data and analyzed it, especially with regard to trends over time and cross-national comparisons (e.g., in The Philadelphia Negro). Such analyses might then be used, following the tenets of the German Historical School, to inform and guide government policy makers.7 Via the Atlanta Uni- versity conferences, Du Bois convened scholars and opinion makers, all the while the Atlanta University Studies were published for scholars and policy makers.8 The hope was that such persons would be able to suggest and support more progressive public policies. Moreover, Du Bois wrote that the collected data guided the actions of many Atlanta University graduates “as a basis of concrete efforts in social betterment.”9 Du Bois wrote in his 1968 Autobiography that he “put no special emphasis on reform effort, but increasing . . . the collection of a basic body of facts . . . ”10 As he indicated in later writings, Du Bois believed that presenting those analyses to a receptive America (including whites) would have some positive effects.11 All of this was based on scholarly tenets that he specified in “The Study of the Negro Problems” (1898), among other works. In that programmatic statement, Du Bois indicated that research and activism had opposing, even contradic- tory, goals, with the latter potentially biasing the former. In Du Bois’s words, “the aim of science itself is simple truth. Any attempt to give it a double aim, to make social reform the immediate instead of the mediate object of a search for truth, will inevitably tend to defeat both objects.”12 He added, “Only by such rigid adherence to the true object of the scholar, can statesmen and philanthropists of all shades of belief be put into possession of a reliable body of truth which may guide their efforts to the best and largest success.”13 Accordingly, researchers would gather data first without regard to the goal of effecting social change, and then afterward they and/or policymakers might utilize the data to craft solutions. Otherwise, the scientific findings could be tainted if the values inspiring activism led scholars to compromise the research process or to mis- interpret the research findings. By such statements Du Bois characterized his early years of social research. Nevertheless, in the midst of his own positive words on the value of research, Du Bois apparently also thought about several problems with the research he was conducting and the effects of the research on the intended audiences when he conveyed the information as a public intellectual. In later works Du Bois Du Bois and Positive Propaganda 19 expressed his concerns over problems with the role of research in relation to activism. To that we now turn.

Du Bois’s Practical Critique of Social Research

In “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom” and in the “Postscript” to his novel The Ordeal of Mansart (1957), Du Bois wrote of the limitations of social research with regard to activism.14 In particular, he focused on research’s lack of timeliness in the face of oppression and the “social death” of lynching. He also wrote of the lack of complete and reliable data on which to base actions. In addition, he asked: for what social law was he searching? Such a pointed question tells us that, for Du Bois, something significant about humans might elude inquiries into the parsimonious determinants of human actions. Indeed, social research might not grasp, from the perspective of individual humans themselves, what was important and meaningful about being a human. As a consequence, social research and its empirically based methodologies, while necessary and never repudiated by Du Bois, were not fully sufficient as the sole or even primary tool to use in the struggles for social justice. Schol- ars have indicated that Du Bois, while at Atlanta University in the 1900s, came to criticize social research and have said, in the words of Ronald Judy, that Du Bois “began to question the validity of any procedure of rational justification that claimed to derive its legitimacy from determinate knowledge.”15 Conse- quently, Du Bois in 1910 chose to become editor of The Crisis and to embark on a mission of (positive) propaganda. In his own words, Du Bois’s departure from Atlanta University meant that he “changed from studying the Negro problem to propaganda—to letting people know just what the Negro problem meant in what the colored people were suffering and what they were kept from doing.”16 During his twenty-four years as editor of The Crisis, Du Bois placed no emphasis on conducting original research. Rather, he emphasized the interpretation of events.17 For white audiences, Du Bois conveyed African American thoughts about racial discrimination, as well as delineated the consequences of racism in everyday living. For black audiences, Du Bois suggested courses of political and social actions in a racist United States: e.g., presenting his choices for U.S. presidents during election cycles, promoting boycotts of the film Birth of a Nation, and advocating for anti-lynching legislation. Before 1910 Du Bois had already begun efforts at what he would later call positive propaganda, including attempts to publish two short-lived periodicals, The Horizon and The Moon Illustrated Weekly. Du Bois had regarded as propagandist his own organizational efforts to create the Niagara Movement in 1905, writing, “Now the fat was in fire and my career as a scientist was beginning to 20 Robert W. Williams be swallowed up in my role as propagandist.” In the next paragraph Du Bois described that propagandist role as “a new and different mode of expression.”18 Across his life Du Bois used the term “propaganda” in at least two senses. He regularly employed the negative sense of propaganda when he referred to distortions, lies, and the manipulation of truth. Examples wherein he admonished against negative propaganda included his “On the Objectivity of the Pro- posed Encyclopedia of the Negro . . .” an unpublished memorandum, as well as the last chapter in Black Reconstruction in America, entitled “The Propaganda of History.”19 There was, however, a positive dimension to propaganda. Propaganda was also that which focuses on the yet-to-be or perhaps the yet-could-be, as I will interpret this Du Boisian version of propaganda. In his “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926) Du Bois wrote, Science seeks the truth (lowercase t) of what is, while artists seek Truth (capital T) “as the highest handmaid of imagination.” Two paragraphs later he uttered, “Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be.” Du Bois argued that art qua propaganda was “always . . . for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy.” The “positive propaganda”—a term that Du Bois himself used in the essay—could portray African Americans as humans who were “lovable and inspired with new ideals for the world.”20 Accordingly, Du Bois’s conception of positive propaganda indirectly but strongly expressed the point that social research contained certain practical limitations when used to inform activism. Moreover, underpinning his practical critique of research vis-à-vis activism lay a deeper, philosophical dimension, which is the topic of the next section.

Du Bois’s Philosophical Critique of Empirical Methodologies

Du Bois’s critique of social research with regard to activism also contained certain implicit philosophical concerns. They arose from the research practices of his era as well as, to some extent, his own practices. They emerged from within his circum-1900 works, even as he was praising the importance of social research. Such a philosophical critique pointed to limitations at the core of social research, especially empirical methods, and the need to include other methods by which we could interpret human behaviors—or more pointedly, by which we could understand ourselves vis-à-vis others in the world. Here I will focus on two interrelated philosophical concerns of Du Bois’s early years: subjectivity and the idea of humanity. The significance of subjectivity can be read very clearly in Du Bois’s own self- appraisal of The Souls of Black Folk, which was published in The Independent in 1904.21 In the self-appraisal Du Bois wrote that it was important to convey to Du Bois and Positive Propaganda 21 the (white) readers of Souls what an African American experienced under the oppressive conditions of segregation. He acknowledged that the “vividness” in Souls was not in keeping with objective research standards, but it was nevertheless necessary to convey. In Du Bois’s words, “Through all the book runs a personal and intimate tone of self-revelation. In each essay I sought to speak from within—to depict a world as we see it who dwell therein.”22 As regards the idea of humanity, in “The Atlanta Conferences” paper of 1904, Du Bois wrote of the necessity to assume the common humanity of Afri- can Americans if scholarly inquiries were to be conducted.23 Du Bois indicated that he would assume African Americans were fundamentally similar to whites in terms of their potential to develop and achieve socially. If African Americans were assumed to be static and not capable of improving themselves, then research would hardly be needed or else not deemed of pressing concern. That Du Bois considered it necessary to make an assumption of fundamental humanity brought into question the conduct of much social research on blacks and cast suspicion on the negative, including white supremacist, conceptions of blacks held by numerous researchers. Two examples of white supremacist-related conceptions will suffice here: first, Nathaniel Shaler, in his essay “Science and the African Problem” (1890), held that African Americans required the tutelage of whites, or else they would regress.24 (Interestingly, Shaler was also one of Du Bois’s professors while he matriculated at Harvard.) Second, Frederick L. Hoffman’s book Race Traits and Tendencies of the Ameri- can Negro (1896) deemed that blacks were physiologically inferior and would become extinct.25 Apparently, then, in his early 1900s works Du Bois could not and would not wait until science or the scientists themselves confirmed the fundamental humanity of African Americans. Du Bois continued to make this point explicit in various ways over time: for example, in his prologue “To the Reader” of Black Reconstruction.26 This in turn points us toward Du Bois’s concerns over the conception of human agency that prevailed in conventional social science. In his unpublished manuscript “Sociology Hesitant” (ca. 1904–1905), Du Bois wrote that sociology as practiced seemed to study the abstraction of society rather than individual humans themselves.27 For Du Bois, human actions should be understood both as part of a realm of determined social regularities and also equally in terms of the free will of individuals to act in ways that might exceed, if not also transgress, sociological laws. In a related way, Du Bois conveyed in various circum-1900 works the significance of values and ideals as part of a fuller conception of humanity, including, importantly, the humanity of Africana peoples. Such works included “The Conservation of Races” (1897), “Strivings of the Negro People” (1897), “The Negro Ideals of Life” (1905), and the posthumously published “The Spirit of 22 Robert W. Williams

Modern Europe” (ca. 1900).28 Such ideals and values he believed could be used to counter the negative, deterministic, and reductionist conceptions of blacks that prevailed in white supremacist theories. Speaking generally, for Du Bois the philosophical problems with social research were to be found in that which made research distinctive and useful in so many ways: namely, its scope, in that what could be observed and measured could also be studied. And as scientists even today will hold, what can be observed and measured can contribute to knowledge. What cannot be operation- alized cannot be measured and thereby, for the purposes of scientific inquiry, will not be relevant. We cannot observe, or cannot infer from evidence, that which is not manifested in some observable action, behavior, or event. At best, we can look for trends in the data and calculate their probability of appearance if X, Y, and Z conditions hold in the future. Crucially, for Du Bois and others, the domain of that which escaped opera- tionalization and measurement included values and ideals—normative concerns of humans which can be rationally discussed and rationally grounded, but which may not be empirically confirmed themselves. Here David Hume is apropos: ideals and values may be observed insofar as they can be opera- tionalized as empirically manifested actions or behaviors, or as emotions experienced by humans.29 However, regardless of the empirical manifestation of values or ideals, research cannot discover the worth of the values or ideals (in) themselves. Such claims are “merely” subjective and speculative, as A. J. Ayer may write, and thus not part of knowledge qua science.30 A quandary arises now: even attempts to operationalize values and ideals will not be able to fully embrace all that the value or ideal may mean, or a fortiori can potentially mean, to the humans involved. Conventional social science and historical approaches implicate a knower/ known framework that separates the subject (researcher) from the object (what is studied), all as part of a process to discern sociohistorical patterns and to formulate objective knowledge shorn of the personal attributes and views of the researchers. Data pertaining to the objects of the research (e.g., human re- spondents) are aggregated, thereby removing any meaningfulness (and the associated call to action and sense of duty) that is held by the particular objects of study. More recent qualitative research approaches attempt to address such concerns.31 To this point, Du Bois held that some things eluded the application of the scientific method. As he was to write in “The Church and Religion” (1933), “science, [as] organized human knowledge, does not pretend to give a complete answer to the riddle of the universe. It frankly acknowledges that there are a great many things that we do not know and perhaps never can know[. . . .] There is, for instance, faith in the triumph of good deeds; hope that the world Du Bois and Positive Propaganda 23 will grow better; love of our relatives and our neighbors and of all humanity.” He continued, “It would be difficult to adduce scientific proof that these hopes and faiths are justified, and still there is good reason for our assuming that they are and guiding our conduct accordingly.”32 Thus, when Du Bois wrote of the limitations of science, it was more of a demarcation line specifying what science could and could not discover, rather than a denial of the worth of science per se or of its findings. Accordingly, another methodology was needed to complement the empirical techniques he so often employed, but it must be a method that incorporated a subjective perspective to inform the social struggles for justice. The pre-1910 text that provided Du Bois’s supplemental methodology is called “The Individual and Social Conscience.” Du Bois delivered this text in Boston in 1905 as a discussant at the third annual convention of the Religious Education Association.33 “The Individual and Social Conscience” set forth a dialectically structured path for the self-development of social responsibility. Du Bois used a method inspired by the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, especially his Phenomenology of Mind/Spirit, but moderated by Jamesian pragmatism to counter the determinism of Hegel and by the Africana thought of Freder- ick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, and Anna Julia Cooper to foreground the agency of African-diasporic peoples. In “The Individual and Social Conscience,” the starting point of the dialec- tical path to social awareness and responsibility is the individual—say, me— who encounters another. That direct and personal encounter “leads ever to the greatest of human discoveries,—the recognization [sic] of one’s self in the image of one’s neighbor; the sudden, startling revelation, ‘This is another Me, that thinks as I think, feels as I feel, suffers even as I suffer.’” My recognition of similarities with another is negated by my next cognition: the unknowability of this other individual. In Du Bois’s words, “Here in this my neighbor stand things I do not know, experiences I have never felt, depths whose darkness is beyond me, and heights hidden by the clouds; . . . ” To more fully comprehend the de- mographic differences of others, Du Bois used theological language in “The In- dividual and Social Conscience”: God is the universal grounding of all things. Accordingly, there will emerge in me after contemplation “the faint yet growing comprehension of human likenesses that both transcend and explain the differences, and that reveal, in the realization, the essential humanity of all men . . .” Ultimately, because I cannot know what this other individual is experiencing, I will intellectually pursue an egalitarian idea of humanity that incorporates all peoples within its conception. The optimistic result of this path, then, will be a self-realization that my embodied social relationships prompt me to engage in normative practices that foster the equality of all. As Du Bois asked pointedly, “If you have aspirations above the dirt, why may not your coachman?”34 24 Robert W. Williams

“The Individual and Social Conscience” was significant, I would contend, for our understanding of the philosophical rationale underpinning Du Bois’s decision to become editor of The Crisis. What persons of color were encountering under conditions of racial oppression—unknowable to whites via personal (subjective) experiences—must be solicited and expressed. For Du Bois, this was to occur through the vehicle of a mass-circulation publication. What such experiences meant to those oppressed by the color line would perhaps be taken to heart by the readers, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or nationality. Or at least that was what Du Bois had hoped. Over the years (and even today) the audiences of The Crisis have viewed positive images of success and read about signal achievements in its pages, all by persons deemed supposedly incapable of such accomplishments. The import of “The Individual and Social Conscience” as a precursor to The Crisis lay in a phenomenological method that justified not only the crucial role of subjectivity in the battles for racial and social justice but also the inclusion of Africana peoples within the idea of humanity.

Conclusion

Du Bois became a “master of propaganda” in the early years of the twentieth century. Such a self-description should be interpreted within the context of his philosophical insights into the strengths and weaknesses of extant research practices and tenets. In the midst of vigorous and ongoing scholarly studies during the early 1900s, the implicit philosophical concerns expressed by Du Bois in various contemporaneous works highlighted the practical limitations of research vis-à-vis activism. His circum-1900 texts accordingly provided a rationale for an activist role centered on positive propaganda. From Du Bois’s perspective, social research was crucial, but could only address part of what the struggles for social justice required. Conventional research tenets and practices did not adequately address the subjectivities of those who suffered through oppression and who, as a consequence of their humanity, would still rise. The Crisis thus became Du Bois’s means for providing a space for the oppressed to convey their thoughts, aspirations, and experiences. It also became Du Bois’s way to lift the veil so that whites around the United States and the world could learn about what it meant to endure the terror and indignities of racism. And as “A Record of the Darker Races,” The Crisis expressed in its pages what it meant to advance—socially, psychically, politically, militantly— in the face of injustice and to agitate for equality and democracy now and tomorrow. Du Bois and Positive Propaganda 25 ——————————— Notes

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Con- cept (1940; repr., NY: Schocken Books, 1968), 94. 2. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on View- ing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (NY: International Publishers, 1968), 228; W. E. B. Du Bois, “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom,” in What the Negro Wants, ed. Rayford W. Logan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1944). See also Gerald Horne, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010); David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (NY: Henry Holt and Co., Owl Books, 1993); Manning Marable, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne, 1986). 3. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 (1896; repr., NY: The Social Science Press, 1954); W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: Ginn & Co., 1899). For a list- ing of the many Atlanta University Studies visit my website at http://www.webdubois .org/wdb-AtlUniv.html. 4. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 11 (January 1898): 1–23. 5. Jonathan Grossman, “Black Studies in the Department of Labor, 1897–1907,” Monthly Labor Review 97, no. 6 (June 1974): 17–27. 6. Barrington S. Edwards, “W. E. B. Du Bois between Worlds: Berlin, Empirical So- cial Research, and the Race Question,” Du Bois Review 3, no. 2 (September 2006): 395– 424. 7. Anthony Oberschall, Empirical Social Research in Germany 1848–1914 (NY: Basic Books, 1965), 50n8. 8. Du Bois, Autobiography, 219. 9. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Atlanta University,” in American Unitarian Association, From Servitude to Service: Being the Old South Lectures on the History and Work of Southern Institutions for the Education of the Negro (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1905), 155–97. 10. Du Bois, Autobiography, 214. 11. Also see Du Bois, “My Evolving Program,” 70. 12. Du Bois, “Study of the Negro Problems,” 16. 13. Ibid. 14. Du Bois, “My Evolving Program,” 57–58; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Postscript,” in The Ordeal of Mansart (NY: Mainstream Publishers, 1957), 315–16. 15. Ronald A. T. Judy, “The New Black Aesthetic and W. E. B. Du Bois, or Haphaes- tus, Limping,” Massachusetts Review 35, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 249–82. 16. W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Recorded Autobiography,” Folkways Records Album FD 5511, interviewed by Moses Asch (NY: Folkways Records, 1961), Side 1, Band 5 (Liner Notes). 17. Ibid., Side 1, Band 4 (Liner Notes). 26 Robert W. Williams

18. W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Pageant in Seven Decades: 1868–1938,” in W. E. B. Du Bois, Pamphlets and Leaflets by W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker (White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization Limited, 1986), 259. 19. W. E. B. Du Bois, “On the Scientific Objectivity of the Proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro and on Safeguards against the Intrusion of Propaganda,” in W. E. B. Du Bois, Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887–1961, ed. Herbert Ap- theker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 164–68; W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (1935; repr., NY: Atheneum, 1992). 20. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” The Crisis 32 (October 1926): 290–97. 21. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk,” The Independent 57 (November 17, 1904): 1152. 22. Ibid. Indeed, as Ronald Judy holds, the book Souls of Black Folk itself addressed the importance of subjectivity (“New Black Aesthetic,” 256). See also Lewis R. Gordon, “Du Bois’s Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences,” Annals of the American Acad- emy of Political and Social Science 568 (March 2000): 265–80; Anthony Monteiro, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Study of Black Humanity: A Rediscovery,” Journal of Black Studies 38, no. 4 (March 2008): 600–621. 23. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Atlanta Conferences,” Voice of the Negro 1, no. 3 (March 1904): 85–90. 24. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, “Science and the African Problem,” Atlantic Month- ly 66 (July 1890): 36–45. 25. Frederick L. Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, Publi- cations of the American Economic Association 11, nos. 1–3 (1896): 1–329. 26. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, xix. 27. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Sociology Hesitant,” boundary 2 27, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 37–44. 28. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races,” The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2 (Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy, 1897); W. E. B. Du Bois, “Strivings of the Negro People,” Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 194–98; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Negro Ideals of Life,” Christian Register 84 (October 26, 1905): 1197–1199; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Spirit of Modern Europe” (ca. 1900), in Against Rac- ism, 50–64. 29. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1777), ed. Peter Millican (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), Section 12.34. 30. A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936; repr., London: Penguin Books, 1971). 31. For example, see Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, eds., Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2008); Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg, Reflexive Methodology: New Vis- tas for Qualitative Research, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2009). 32. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Church and Religion,” The Crisis 40, no. 10 (October 1933): 236–37. 33. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Individual and Social Conscience” [Originally Untitled], in Religious Education Association, The Aims of Religious Education. The Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the Religious Education Association, Boston, February Du Bois and Positive Propaganda 27

12–16, 1905 (Chicago: Executive Office of the Religious Education Association, 1905), 53–55. Also see Robert W. Williams and W. E. B. Du Bois, “‘The Sacred Unity in All the Diversity’: The Text and a Thematic Analysis of W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Individual and Social Conscience’ (1905),” Journal of African American Studies 16, no. 3 (September 2012): 456–97. 34. Du Bois, “The Individual and Social Conscience,” 53, 54. Chapter 2

W. E. B. Du Bois as Print Propagandist

Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

In the old days, under your editorship, the Crisis was a power in the land. —Edwin Embree to W. E. B. Du Bois, 1936

On several occasions toward the end of his life, W. E. B. Du Bois reflected on his role as editor of The Crisis magazine, a task which he undertook with energy from 1910 to 1934. In March 1951—in the midst of suffering political harassment at the hands of the McCarthy anticommunist dragnet— Du Bois’s thoughts turned naturally to an earlier season of his life that also centered on the politics of protest. In an editorial titled “Editing The Crisis,” Du Bois wrote that his journalistic efforts through the NAACP’s magazine attempted to counter publications associated with Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist perspective. He advocated a published, constructive response to the question of civil rights and political equality. “I had the idea that a small publication would be read which stressed facts,” he remembered. “We condensed more news about Negroes and their problems in a month than most colored papers before this had published in a year.” Du Bois un- furled details about the magazine’s budget. Employing the quantitative skills developed as a social scientist, he presented subscription numbers for The Crisis. Du Bois also noted that both bourgeois and proletariat readers enjoyed the magazine. Moreover, in reaching some of its goals, Du Bois claimed that The Crisis “antagonized many white powerful interests; it has been denounced in Congress and many respectable Negroes were afraid to be seen reading it. Mississippi passed laws against it and some of our agents were driven from home.” In short, by referencing The Crisis, Du Bois explained his work, his successes, and his struggles as a print propagandist.1

28 Du Bois as Print Propagandist 29

The Crisis also appeared in the second volume of Du Bois’s Black Flame trilogy, Mansart Builds a School, published in late 1959. In this book the main character, Manuel Mansart, a black college president, encounters The Crisis, eventually realizing the benefits of the perusal, study, and analysis of its contents. Du Bois wrote that Mansart “regarded [The Crisis] at first as rather sensational and complaining. But he was attracted by its news, notes and facts, its historical references, and at last it became a regular part of his reading.” Aware of its radical reputation in the South, Mansart “was careful, however, not to have it lying around too conspicuously when the trustees or white vis- itors came.” Another character, James Burghardt, doubles as Du Bois, what Brent Edwards calls his “fictional alter ego.” Du Bois situates Burghardt’s life in the swirl of actual historical events, in this case the founding of the NAACP. “This new organization included the radical Burghardt as its only Negro official, who for that very reason wielded disproportionate influence,” Du Bois wrote. “Without him, no interracial effort could succeed. With him, his radical ideas must be pushed.” Du Bois recollected his work on The Crisis by narrating the association’s resistance to a magazine. Officials “not only feared the editor’s ideas but they pointed out the cost.” Undaunted, Burghardt pressed forward, and “the magazine spread like wildfire, not simply because it was readable but because it was timely for a people emotionally starved in a crisis of their development.” Through Burghardt’s efforts the magazine became “self-supporting” as it “talked to white America as America had never been addressed before. It tore at hypocrisy and drove murder out into the open. It was fearless and fac- tual and clear. It minced no words and apologized to no power. It accused and dared; it sneered, caricatured, and pilloried; it revealed and investigated.” But as a print propagandist, Burghardt also ensured that The Crisis moved in constructive and no less political directions. The magazine “became more than a complaint; it was a vehicle of the human expression of a race. It printed pictures of prominent black folk; faces of cunning black babies and of almost all black college graduates who excelled. It printed poetry; it discovered poets; it published stories.”2 A decade after Du Bois’s commemorative reflection on editing The Crisis, and two years following Crisis’s appearance in the first volume of theBlack Flame trilogy, his thoughts turned to his early years as a print propagandist in an oral history interview recorded as part of The Smithsonian’s Folkways audio archives. In 1961—at age ninety-three—Du Bois described The Crisis as “a little monthly magazine which would discuss the Negro problem and which would tell white people and colored people just what the N.A.A.C.P was and what it proposed to do.” During his editorship Du Bois observed, “I think I made the people of the U. S. especially the colored people realize just what the Negro problem was and what they have got to do to solve it. I was pretty 30 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere radical in some things I said . . . I had very wide freedom in saying just what I wanted to say.” Of Du Bois’s achievements as editor—despite his sometimes rocky relationships with other NAACP executives—he remained proud of the magazine’s self-sustaining finances and circulation numbers. Never afraid to state his accomplishments, Du Bois’s bold claims in this case are confirmed by history. Throughout the twentieth century and beyond, The Crisis became a powerful publication that innovatively and artistically documented the color line. The efforts of Du Bois and Crisis staff put life behind the veil on display, thereby forcing America to more publicly contend with the fundamental evils of white supremacy.3 Du Bois’s regnant recollections of his tenure at the NAACP as editor of The Crisis invite critical reflection on the larger meaning and historical significance of the association’s magazine. Given the racial hostilities present at The Crisis’s birth, it is a superlative achievement that the magazine remains in print over a century after its genesis. Numerous black-owned, black-operated periodicals cannot boast of the same history—most especially Messenger and Opportu- nity, competitors with The Crisis and magazines that also helped to document black life during the early twentieth century. Yet The Crisis’s sustained presence was never inevitable, and its survival is not merely a fact to remember and to celebrate. It is a story rooted in history, a story subject to the contingencies of time and place. It is a story connected deeply to Du Bois himself: the magazines and journals he started and edited that preceded and followed The Crisis and the newspaper columns he penned up through his nineties. The story of The Crisis is an account of a publication and the people associated with it—editors, publishers, subscribers, and readers—and how they reacted to persistent challenges, recognized significant opportunities, and above all negotiated the deep dilemmas associated with the color line.4 This chapter aims to commemoratively chronicle the historical and cultural importance of Du Bois’s history and practice as a print propagandist. It focuses primarily on The Crisis, but to properly assess the context of the NAACP’s magazine during Du Bois’s editorship, it includes his other print ventures as well. To best frame the cultural significance of Du Bois’s print propaganda, this chapter considers the role of commemoration and the function of historical memory as displayed on the pages of The Crisis both during Du Bois’s tenure and beyond.5 Du Bois’s efforts in The Crisis are first placed in context with other journals and magazines with which he was associated either as editor or contributor. The historical context of Du Bois’s literary and creative career effectively frames his efforts with the NAACP’s magazine and critically nuances the dimensions of his prodigious propaganda. Second, this chapter highlights the ways that Du Bois concerned much of his work with the historical memory, in essence archiving a useful, heroic past for African Americans that proclaimed Du Bois as Print Propagandist 31 boldly the inherent humanity of black folks. Finally, this chapter identifies the ways that Du Bois continued his work as a print propagandist after his tenure at The Crisis.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Prehistory of The Crisis

It was not surprising that W. E. B. Du Bois would create and edit The Cri- sis. Born to Albert and Mary Salvina Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachu- setts, in 1868, his first published piece appeared while he was a teenager. After graduating from Fisk University, Du Bois attended Harvard, where he obtained another B.A. (Harvard did not recognize his Fisk degree) and eventually com- pleted a graduate degree. He won a Slater Fund fellowship to attend the Uni- versity of Berlin for two years, where a residency requirement kept him from obtaining a Ph.D. in Economics. He then returned to Harvard to complete a Ph.D. This experience, and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard—he was the first black man at Harvard to receive a doctorate—prepared him for leadership. Du Bois would spend time as a professor at Wilberforce University, the University of Pennsylvania (where he was required to live in segregated quarters), and Atlanta University. During these years Du Bois did not restrict himself to academic pursuits. He wrote tirelessly and became a political activist. He spawned the Niagara Movement in 1905, a group of progressive African Amer- ican leaders and scholars committed to civil rights that incubated the nation’s most important civil rights organization, the NAACP. He also attended the first Pan-African Congress in 1900, and he would assist in the organization of subsequent conferences intermittently for the next forty-five years. Du Bois’s work on the Pan-African Congress underscored his conviction that the segregation reigning supreme in the United States was in fact a color line that divided the globe, a theme that appeared regularly in The Crisis. In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois stated that the Negro race (like all races) “is going to be saved by its exceptional men . . . Can the masses of the Negro people be in any way more quickly raised than by the effort and example of this aristoc- racy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters.”6 Du Bois believed that only the best and the brightest of the race, the “Talented Tenth,” could and should lead the race into the twentieth century. As a propagator of high culture, Du Bois believed that he was infinitely well suited to the task—a task he carried out through The Crisis. Du Bois established at the onset of his career a desire to tell accurately the most important aspects of black life in America, some of it communicated through scholarly research, some of it presented in more popular journalistic venues. Du Bois’s desire to chronicle the past in order to explain the present—at 32 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere all times with eyes fiercely fixed on seeing justice done—began with his work for a newspaper called the “High School Howler” during his teenage years along with articles published in T. Thomas Fortune’s New York Globe. He wrote newspaper columns for the New York Globe between 1883 and 1885, from his sixteenth to his eighteenth year. In these columns he reported about events associated with one of Great Barrington’s black congregations, Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, established in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Du Bois attended meetings at the church and knew many of its parishioners. In his Globe columns he wrote of the regular suppers female members of the A. M. E. Zion church held. He reported on the visits of guest ministers, singing societies, and the creation of Sunday school classes, and he detailed the church’s acquisition of land to build a permanent meetinghouse in 1884. In a December 1883 report Du Bois observed, “The [Christmas] exercises at the various churches have been very interesting, so far, a number of colored children participating. On Sunday night a very fine program was carried out at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Last night at the St. James and tonight there will be a Christmas tree at the Congregational.” As an emerging social scientist, Du Bois’s keen eye for detail, close observations, and penchant for narrative description uncovered common aspects of Great Barrington’s religious and political life. The “participant-observer” fieldwork Du Bois conducted to write his articles anticipated future sociological studies such as The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and The Negro Church (1903). This work also foreshadowed his journalistic efforts at the Fisk Herald while attending college in Nashville and prepared Du Bois to launch three magazines at the dawn of his professional career: The Moon, Horizon, and The Crisis.7 While writing literary classics such as The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and composing biographies like John Brown (1909), Du Bois taught classes at At- lanta University and edited two black periodicals, The Moon and Horizon. These short-lived newspapers extended Du Bois’s early journalism in the New York Globe and Fisk Herald. They also represented some of his initial efforts at propaganda—demanding full democracy through the written, published word as narrative, prose, poetry, or fiction, accompanied by quantitative data, photographs, and artwork—and anticipated his most successful editorial venture, The Crisis. Yet Du Bois found inspiration for literary journalism elsewhere in Atlanta. As one of the precursors to The Crisis, the Atlanta-based Voice of the Negro had an impact on Du Bois, and he in turn influenced this early journal. Its editor, John Bowen, was the second African American in the United States after Du Bois to receive a Ph.D. At the turn of the century, Atlanta was becoming a center of black protest, with Du Bois and his colleagues at Atlanta Uni- versity at the center of the movement. John Bowen and the more militant Jesse Max Barber were intimately involved in creating Voice of the Negro, which published writing about the lives of the “Talented Tenth” as its dominant “voice,” Du Bois as Print Propagandist 33 including articles on literature, European travel, higher education, business, women’s clubs, politics, and history. The journal also promoted social and cultural superiority.8 The Voice expressed the triumph over slavery as a source of pride and, like The Crisis after it, included both literature and visuals such as cover art and political illustrations to express its viewpoint. Bowen, Barber, and Du Bois had reason to embrace their roles as editors. Early in the twentieth century, Georgia experienced an increase in lynchings; the infamous lynching of Samuel Hose in 1899 had a radical effect on Du Bois. Jesse Barber was also interested in protest and was moved to comment on the Statesboro lynchings of 1904. Voice of the Negro proclaimed that little progress had been made since slavery and reminded its readers of the history of slavery as a means of protesting the current situation.9 Voice of the Negro provided, on a smaller scale than The Cri- sis, an example of the type of journal Du Bois would lead. Du Bois’s experience as a central leader in Atlanta (a city deeply entrenched in Jim Crow laws) during the Voice of the Negro years helped prepare him for his work as editor of The Crisis in the relative safety of New York City. Having come to New York from a city which allowed far fewer freedoms for black Americans, with lynchings in Georgia on the upsurge, and with Voice of the Negro providing commentary of these issues on a small scale, Du Bois found inspiration to create The Crisis. His background convinced him that he was uniquely qualified to develop a collective voice and identity for black Americans. Du Bois had contemplated starting a black periodical of national scope as early as 1901. He imagined a weekly or monthly that would report on multiple aspects of African American life. Du Bois appealed to several white benefac- tors to fund this journalistic effort, but to no avail. He also shared his ideas in correspondence with African American attorney and author Charles W. Chesnutt and Howard University sociologist Kelley Miller. By 1905 Du Bois’s first periodical appeared, The Moon Illustrated Weekly. Headquartered in Mem- phis, Du Bois received financial support for the endeavor from two Atlan- ta University alumni, and the inaugural issue appeared in December. Business partners Harry H. Pace and Edward L. Simon conducted operations in Tennes- see while Du Bois fulfilled his editorial role from Georgia while he continued to teach at Atlanta University. Advertisements appeared in The Moon from businesses in both Memphis and Atlanta, the two cities where the magazine circulated. Ultimately, The Moon folded after two years. According to scholar Paul Partington, Du Bois’s first journalistic effort could not compete with his other interests, including his work in the Niagara Movement, extensive travel, and of course his teaching responsibilities. Hostility from other black periodicals such as Alexander’s Magazine and the Independent, both well-funded magazines that unabashedly supported Booker T. Washington, did not help matters. Nevertheless, as Partington observed, The Moon represented the foundations of 34 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Du Bois’s “militant” journalism. Much like his subsequent journalistic projects, Du Bois maintained sole editorial power over The Moon. Despite its short history, The Moon featured essays and articles about black life in the United States, national politics, and black literature and arts.10 Du Bois’s second periodical, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line, commenced publication in January 1907. On The Horizon, Du Bois worked with Freeman H. M. Murray and L. N. Hernshaw. Printed in both Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, The Horizon represented most specifically the concerns of the emerging Niagara Movement. Similar to The Moon, The Horizon reported on black issues of national and international import. Unlike its precursor, however, The Horizon utilized artwork and illustrations to drive home its literary claims and arguments. Literary scholar Susanna Ashton argues that the title of the periodical itself, much like the veil image Du Bois used in The Souls of Black Folk, is also a metaphor for the possibilities black journalism held in negotiating the color line. The Horizon documented the history of African Americans as it “embodie[d] imaginative formulations of authentication.” Al- though Du Bois’s earliest journalistic efforts failed to produce a sustained periodical of national scope, his work nevertheless paved the way for when the timing was right.11

W. E. B. Du Bois, the NAACP, and The Crisis

In 1909 the newly created NAACP hired W. E. B. Du Bois as director of Pub- licity and Research. Du Bois had a specific venture in mind, the creation of a new monthly magazine. It was a difficult undertaking, creating a new magazine and successfully publishing it every month. While the NAACP did not have funds to commit to the venture, Oswald Garrison Villard provided offices and public support. Several NAACP board members strongly objected to an idea they considered impractical. The name Crisis came either from NAACP organizer William English Wall- ing or northern reformer, activist, and NAACP organizer Mary White Ov- ington. The idea came from the poem “The Present Crisis” by activist James Russell Lowell, which captured the idea that America’s racial problem was the crisis of the hour. Ovington recalled the discussion of the title in the August 1914 issue of The Crisis:

There is a poem of Lowell’s, I said, that means more to me today than any other poem in the world—“The Present Crisis.” Mr. Walling looked up. “The Crisis,” he said. “There is the name for your magazine, The Crisis . . . and if we had a creed to which our members, black and white, our branches, North and South and East and West, our college societies, our children’s circle, should all subscribe, it Du Bois as Print Propagandist 35

should be the lines of Lowell’s noble verse, lines that are true to-day as when they were written seventy years ago.”12

While Du Bois may not have given the magazine its name, his imprint and goals were present from the first day, and he certainly recognized that this was a time of crisis for black Americans. Oswald Villard, the nephew of William Lloyd Garrison, provided early support for the venture and intended to greatly influence its direction. He would not achieve this goal. For purposes of editorial control, the board of directors asked Du Bois to submit his work to a review board which consisted of two white men, one white woman, and three black men.13 Du Bois would maintain steady editorial purview over the magazine. The first issue of The Crisis appeared in November 1910. In the introduction to the first issue, Du Bois stated he would set forth “Those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice.”14 He established the format of The Crisis early on: “Along the Color Line” would discuss politics, education, social uplift, organizations and meetings, science and art, opinions, and editorials. “The Burden” would cover civil, economic, and political issues and even atrocities against African Americans, and “What to Read” would review the latest works in literature. In December 1910 and May 1911 Du Bois added “Talks about Women” and “Men of the Month,” respectively. Within one month, the length of The Crisis doubled. By April 1912 circulation grew to 22,500.15 Du Bois quickly realized the important position of The Crisis magazine. Understanding the need for power and organization, Du Bois felt that The Crisis could make the NAACP more effective. He believed that those who would fight in these ranks needed to be educated and that The Crisis could help train them, not simply with the written word but also in its manner, its pictures, its conception of life, its subsidiary enterprises. He believed with a circulation of a hundred thousand this important work could be done. The “work” Du Bois meant was the creation of an African American legacy, something he had campaigned for over much of his life.

W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and Historical Memory

As a storyteller through The Crisis magazine, Du Bois could form a part- nership with his readers—through historical memory—in establishing their legitimate past and their identity.16 The historian David Blight has argued that the study of historical memory is the study of cultural struggle, of “contested truths,” of moments, events, or even texts in history that depict rival versions of the past and which are in turn put to the service of the present. Memory studies aid in the construction of a collective identity, because it is how culture and groups use, construct, or try to “own” the past in order to win power or place 36 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere in the present. As a print propagandist Du Bois wanted to win place and power for black Americans and therefore repeatedly addressed issues of identity and memory in The Crisis. Du Bois contended that history must be explored and felt in order to know the responsibilities of the present.17 Past and present met in this history with frightful intensity and authentic tragedy. He dealt with the past in books, too, writing Black Reconstruction, for example, because it was a way to win equality in the present, to revisit historical issues with a different viewpoint. Du Bois made a gradual but persistent turn away from the scientific empiri- cism in which he was trained to the poetic sensibilities that characterized so much of his writing after he left Atlanta to edit The Crisis in 1910.18 Later, Du Bois wrote that he used history and the other social sciences as weapons, to be sharpened by research and applied by writing. So too Du Bois used art as a means of trying to establish a new memory of the black American experience, and in doing so, he hoped to define the black middle-class identity as both American and African. Du Bois understood that black and white society saw the same events differently and recalled them differently. One such event was the celebration held to mark the fiftieth anniversary since the end of the Civil War. Slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation were all part of America’s unaltered past, but in the half century since the war, the two races were increasingly divided. Race remained a powerful division in society. Where whites were reconciled by looking back to the past, there was no such reconciliation for blacks; there was no similar counterpart.19 Blight has argued that “White Supremacy” was a centerpiece of the Gettysburg reunion of 1913. At a time when lynching had developed into a social ritual of its own horrifying kind in the South, and when American apartheid had become fully entrenched, black opinion leaders found the “sec- tional love-feast” at Gettysburg to be more than they could bear. The Baltimore Afro-American observed, “Today the South is in the saddle, and with the single exception of slavery, everything it fought for during the days of the Civil War, it has gained by repression of the Negro within its borders. And the North has quietly allowed it to have its own way . . . ”20 The blood of black soldiers and lynched citizens was “crying from the ground” in the South, unheard and strangely unknown at the white-controlled Blue-Gray reunion. Du Bois recognized that the “problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line”21 and this Civil War semi-centennial was no exception. How could black Ameri- cans look back, and then forward, with pride and inspiration? How could they declare their history in the Jim Crow South, when black Americans were dealing with the harsh realities of segregation and poverty in their daily lives? Du Bois used the pages of The Crisis to fight against the white distortion of the Old South’s history. He reported on celebrations of the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with irony and disgust and followed the de- Du Bois as Print Propagandist 37 bates surrounding these with great interest. As a print propagandist, Du Bois informed blacks of how whites saw this anniversary. Within the black community, the perspectives on emancipation varied, depending on region, education, generation, experience, and political and social outlook.22 The Crisis sought to provide a unified accounting of such events and to inform its readership of any progress made in representing the black point of view, a viewpoint that had been almost entirely erased. “Jeremiadic” memories using commemorative movements as occasions for bitter appeals against injustice, past and present, were useful to Du Bois to relay his point of view on the state of race relations in the United States. Here he could counter the idea of the “happy darkie” as the way Southerners recalled the master-slave relationship. He wanted to dis- pel the enduring picture of the Old South and slavery as full of contented and loyal black folk.23 Du Bois understood that African Americans were an important part of the American nation, with a rich American and African heritage. The Crisis could aid in stating and establishing the role of African Americans in the collective American identity. Du Bois did not want their past, their history, to be lost. But as a print propagandist he wanted to choose those memories, through essays and visuals that expressed the most important issues in history and current events. African Americans could develop a shared identity by identifying, exploring, and agreeing on memories, a process that Du Bois could foster from the pages of The Crisis. These memories could serve a need for his readership. Du Bois, through The Crisis, could select and interpret identifying memories to serve the changing needs of African Americans.24 African Americans had to be empowered with their own history and political rights, which would ultimately lead to economic and educational advantage. In effect, Du Bois posed this question: if history is the reconstruction of what is no longer, who is to re- call the history of a people? History is always “problematic and incomplete.”25 Du Bois never gave up believing in an ethical basis for history, even after he embraced a more materialist, economic analysis in the 1930s. But he fully understood and eloquently warned against the problem of domination in historical memory, writing, “With sufficient general agreement among the dominant classes, the truth of history may be utterly distorted and contradicted and changed to any convenient fairy tale that the masters of men wish.”26 Freeing history from the control of whites would also free it from the spirit of domination.27 African Americans needed to search for common memory sources. En- slavement in an English-speaking environment was their common heritage. As a people from varied religious, tribal, and linguistic backgrounds, they had to forge a common memory of a shared English-speaking slave culture and construct an identity from that culture.28 In order to make the passage from memory to history, African Americans had to redefine their group identity through a revitalization of their own 38 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere history.29 Under Du Bois’s careful and watchful eye, The Crisis was just the forum to establish a collective memory and engage a rising black middle class in the issues of history, identity, and race building. A remembered past had to be preserved by African Americans because the white memory of African American life would be an identity of servitude and oppression. As part of the struggle for equality, Du Bois wanted to keep black memory, including that of the Civil War, alive within the black community and among progressive whites. This was a primary tool in the fight against racism and oppression. Ameri- can whites had the luxury to revise their past, to reinvent their Civil War history and memories of African American enslavement. Blacks did not have the same luxury to invent new traditions. Their history of oppression was part of who they were, and in order to change the future, the past could not be forgotten. But Du Bois did not want the pain of the past to come back in some new and terrible form. To build hope for a better future, lessons had to be learned from the past, and specific defining historical moments had to be recalled and applied to the harsh realities of the present. The Crisis was the primary tool for such a venture. African American intellectuals and community leaders attempted to refute the common white assumption that blacks had no past or traditions. Du Bois dedicated his life to this idea.30 Through The Crisis, Du Bois hoped his essays would interpret to the world the “hindrances and aspirations of American Negroes.” The Crisis was the right kind of propaganda, a tool to illuminate the truth of a race, and to address the history of a people altered by white domination. “With this organ of propaganda and defense we were able to organize one of the most effective assaults of liberalism upon reaction that the modern world has seen,” Du Bois noted, with typical “confidence” that The Crisis could not have possibly attained its popularity and effectiveness if it had not been in a sense a personal organ and the “expression of myself.”31 As a trained historian, Du Bois was concerned with social, and therefore collective, forms of memory. He understood that individuals depend on other members of their own groups for independent confirma- tion of the content of their memories. Du Bois, as a print propagandist, made narratives a mixture of the scholarly and literary dimensions of history and used images to enhance and illustrate the most fundamental issues.32 Frederick Douglass made the timeless definition of racism as “diseased imagination.” Du Bois understood how deeply embedded the problem of racism was in Ameri- can historical narratives, as well as how much those narratives continued to shape the future. He understood that much of the identity of African Americans had been altered by a history riddled with tragedy and racism, and that African Americans had been largely excluded from any part in the collective American identity. It would not be a matter of reproducing the past, but reconstructing it in the context of community, broader politics, and social dynamics.33 By studying the Du Bois as Print Propagandist 39 history of black people and their collective and often traumatic experiences, these collective experiences could be used as unifying events. Black Americans did not have the luxury of ignoring history; it was something that they had to struggle to accurately tell. History had been dominated by white culture, and was skewed in its perspective. White power was maintained by telling history through white historical memory.34 For Du Bois, The Crisis could retell history through essays and visuals, a black history that had often been oral in the black community. During his twenty- four years as editor and print propagandist, Du Bois attempted to shape a collective identity for African Americans and create a new collective memory based on the past and through current events. The Crisis offered its own realism through brutally honest statements about African American life and the “American dream” which was never extended to black Americans.35 Du Bois knew that his identity as a black man was inseparable from historical memory. How could he aid in defining the race by articulating the past, while a racist South and an at best apathetic country claimed a different history? Du Bois understood the struggle, which he articulated in Souls of Black Folk: “One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro: two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost . . . He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.”36 To right the wrong of a forgotten and revised history, Du Bois saw his duty as a historian to reclaim the historical past of African Americans. Some black Americans were more comfortable with a more positive “spin” on the events of the past to advocate social change, even if it seemed they were trying to avoid it.37 Du Bois’s commitments as a print propagandist did not see the merit of anything but an honest appraisal of both past and present. African Ameri- cans, even if they were not active in commemorative activities, had to define both an individual and collective memory that took into account their rights as American citizens and their unique experience as a race of people who shared a history of oppression. As one scholar put it, “More specific to the question of collective memory, blacks had to balance the need to preserve, interpret and disseminate the positive elements in their history with the desire to eradi- cate many of the more painful and degrading aspects of that history. These tensions—between American-ness and distinctiveness, between constructive memory and selective amnesia, lay at the crux of African Americans often am- bivalent relationship with historical memory.”38 Through the pages of The Crisis, Du Bois sought to forge a collective memory, a unique identity. He chose photographs, illustrations, and political cartoons 40 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere to help stress the issues he found most compelling, indicating how deeply rooted collective historical memories are in social structures, popular beliefs, and professional academic interests. He warned against using history merely for “our pleasure and amusement, for inflating our national ego.” In The Crisis he was trying to advance a new set of facts into the historical equation at the same time he insisted that history was inherently a moral discourse: “War and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds . . . It is the duty of humanity to heal them.”39 The Crisis was a magazine that was mailed to the masses, and visuals could address even the illiterate. Beauty parlors, libraries, schools, churches, stores, and barbershops received the magazine. Copies were passed through so many hands that they were tattered by the end of the month. Du Bois learned that confronting a racist historical memory in America could not be accomplished by a mere separation of fact and desire. It demanded con- textualization, the careful chronicler and the moral prophet. Du Bois chose the latter role.40 Much like he did in The Crisis, in the final pages of Black Reconstruc- tion Du Bois turned aggressively to art to convey the stakes contested by contend- ing historical memories. Memory was not a benign process; it thrived on great debate and a social need for consensus, “with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted.”41 White supremacy remained secure as long as “historical memories were controlled or suppressed.” Du Bois hoped that if the construction of social memories would “become as free and open as possible, while still firmly guided by the rules of scholarship, then the politics of remembering and forgetting might be, here and there, overcome.”42 Du Bois, with The Crisis, would try to overcome the politics of remembering and forgetting.

W. E. B. Du Bois Leaves The Crisis

Du Bois spent twenty-four years as editor of The Crisis, often walking a fine line between his goals for the journal and the intentions of its board of directors. This delicate balance could not withstand the changes Du Bois had under- gone by 1934: his perspective had evolved on the sensitive topic of segregation. In the May 1934 issue, Du Bois offered an essay on segregation. A young girl questioned Du Bois after a lecture, arguing that he was no longer fighting segregation and was too willing to compromise. Du Bois explained that he was always willing to compromise and he would take what he could get, but he would always want more. “Moreover, I fight Segregation with Segregation, and I do not consider this compromise, I consider it common sense.” He made reference to a terrible slum that provided substandard housing for five thousand “colored people,” but soon would be bull-dozed and replaced with new, clean housing for these people. While this “segregation by the U.S. government” was not ideal, Du Bois noted that it was far better to get a decent segregated devel- Du Bois as Print Propagandist 41 opment than none at all. “ . . . The advantage of decent homes for five thousand colored people outweighs any disadvantage which will come from this development.” Du Bois continued, “I say again, if this is compromise: if this is giving up what I have advocated for many years, the change, the reversal, bothers me not at all. But Negro poverty and idleness, and distress, they bother me, and always will.”43 Although he opposed racial segregation early in his career, as early as 1917 Du Bois speculated on the possibility that under specific conditions there might be a need for a “new and efficient industrial machine” within the black community, a machine that might require a type of separatism. During the years of the Great Depression, Du Bois came to believe that the only hope “lay in the use of self-segregation against the fact of imposed segregation.”44 The idea that an oppressed group needed to separate itself in order to develop and mature would be articulated later by the Black Power movement; Du Bois was ahead of his time. The May 1934 issue of The Crisis included a Du Bois proposal to the board of directors of the NAACP that it modify the proposal by the board’s Commit- tee of Administration and the final resolution the board itself had passed. Du Bois questioned the resolution, which read in part, “Thus both principle and practice necessitate unyielding opposition to any and every form of enforced segregation.” Among the challenges Du Bois posed was this one: “It would be interesting to know what the Board means by its resolution. Does it mean it does not approve of the Negro church or believe in its segregated activities in its 26,000 edifices where most branches of the NAACP meet and raise money to support it? . . . .Does it believe in 200 Negro newspapers which spread NAACP news and propaganda? . . . Does it believe in Negro business enterprise of any sort? Does it believe in Negro history, Negro literature and Negro art? . . . Does it believe in Negro spirituals? And if it does believe in these things is the Board of Directors of the NAACP, afraid to say so?”45 Du Bois’s strident challenge indicated where his mind now was. On May 31, 1934, Du Bois resigned as editor and submitted this letter to Joel Spingarn:

My dear Spingarn, I have considered very carefully and painfully the suggestions of you and your brothers. I cannot comply. I know in my soul that the time has come for complete severance. It is not easy. I am twice losing a first born child and I am cutting my self off from old and good friends, but Gott helfe mich, ich kann nicht anders. I appreciate your friendship and your many efforts in my behalf.46

Du Bois had changed. His interest in racial separatism clashed with the in- tegrationist philosophy of the NAACP and resulted in his resignation from The Crisis. Du Bois concluded that voluntary black self-segregation was the 42 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere only answer to several things: the segregation that was white-imposed, particularly in the South; the failure of the American capitalist system to provide the needs of black Americans (particularly poignant during the Depression); white racism; the technology which undermined the development of a classical education and the talents of skilled artisans, hurting employment chances for African Americans; and an education system that had failed blacks. Du Bois discussed these issues on the pages of The Crisis between 1930 and 1934.47 His assessment that the American Communist Party failed to aid the Scottsboro Boys and failed to acknowledge the power of white racism further supported his views that self-segregation was the answer for an improved life for African Americans. But as with a number of his opinions, Du Bois’s views about segregation would change with years and with experience. In the meantime, his work as a print propagandist would lead him to new outlets for expressing his opinions and distributing his wide learning.

W. E. B. Du Bois after The Crisis

In his mid-sixties when he left the NAACP, Du Bois continued a rigorous schedule at a stage in life when most people wind down their public activities. As historian Gerald Horne observes, “A familiar nostrum nowadays is that with age comes conservatism, a dismissal of past radicalism as so much youthful posturing. This did not hold true for W. E. B. Du Bois.”48 Du Bois’s departure from the NAACP in 1934 marked an important juncture in his professional career. He returned to college teaching in Atlanta from 1934 to 1944. Not willing to let his pen rest, in 1935 Du Bois enlisted the assistance of longtime friend and university president John Hope for help with funding a new project as a print propagandist. Unfortunately, Hope died the following year. Then in 1937 Du Bois and others sketched out plans for the new project in a meeting at Fisk University. But it was not until 1940—after working with other scholars including Fisk University’s Charles S. Johnson and securing funding from the Carnegie Corporation—that Du Bois rolled out the inaugural issue of Phylon, the title adopted from the Greek word “race.” He served as the journal’s editor- in-chief from 1940 to 1944, after which he left for a second stint at the NAACP. A number of leading African American scholars such as Ira De A. Reid, Wil- liam Stanley Braithwaite, Horace Mann Bond, and Rayford Logan joined Du Bois as editors.49 Du Bois imagined Phylon as a scholarly, social scientific companion to contemporary journals such as the Journal of Negro History and the Journal of Ne- gro Education. As he outlined in the first issue’s “Apology,” Phylon would create a scholarly forum where Du Bois and other contributors could critically, ana- lytically, and culturally grapple with the ever-changing and nimble tentacles Du Bois as Print Propagandist 43 of white supremacy, what Eric Porter terms Du Bois’s “race concept.” Du Bois further stated that through a combination of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and a host of other disciplines, the journal would study race “by means of original research . . . by a careful chronicle of events and an intelligent review of opinion; and at the same time by recognizing the scientific value of the creative impulse in prose, poetry and illustration.” Despite these lofty goals, similar to those during his time as editor of The Crisis, Du Bois found it necessary to respond to critics in a 1944 statement titled “Phylon: Science or Pro- paganda.” Du Bois clarified thatPhylon ’s primary investigative lens focused on African American issues but that the sweep of its application-based research attempted to see world problems of race, class, culture, literature, and economy with a wide-angle lens. In language reminiscent of his efforts as print propagandist through The Crisis, Du Bois pointedly wrote:

There are certain things PHYLON assumes without any attempt at proof; among these are the equal humanity of persons of Negro descent; and the capability of Negroes to progress and develop along essentially the same lines as other folk. If now this initial attitude is propaganda, we cheerfully plead guilty and will proceed as long as our efforts are supported, in seeking to publish a review of race and culture, which begins its investigation naturally with American Negroes, since we are a part of that group; which interprets the race problem in the United States, because it is one of the most interesting human developments of modern science; and which proceeds from this beginning of scientific investigation with this segregated group, to look out upon the whole world of social development and interpret it accordingly. We do not desire to be any more provincial in this program than the circumstances compel us to.

Du Bois had to defend not only the legitimacy of African American scholars but also their belief that social scientific study of African American culture and history had a seat at the table of academic scholarship.50 As with The Crisis, under Du Bois’s editorship Phylon’s articles, essays, occasional poems, and book reviews grappled with the gritty realities of Afri- can American life both in the United States and abroad. It adorned praise on those whose lives and activities pursued justice, and levied direct criticism on those individuals and institutions who allowed white supremacy to wreak hav- oc in the world. Although a scholarly journal and not popular organ, Phylon included in many issues a few images and photographs that sought to visually portray the legitimacy of black culture, art, and literature. Moreover, leading literary figures and prominent and emerging scholars of African American history—some whose work appeared years previous in The Crisis—published in Phylon with Du Bois at the editorial helm. For example, readers encountered articles by Frank Snowden Jr., Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Langston 44 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Hughes, and John Hope Franklin, along with poems by Leslie Pinckney Hill, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. In most of the issues for which he served as editor-in-chief, Du Bois published several scholarly articles, a handful of book reviews, and a regular column called “A Chronicle of Race Relations” that was a combination of columns he had featured in The Crisis including “As the Crow Flies,” “What to Read,” “Opinion,” and “Postscript.” “A Chronicle of Race Relations” displayed a decidedly global focus as it presented economic, political, and cultural subjects involving people of African descent across the world. “Race in Periodicals,” a much shorter column compiled first by Du Bois and later the provenance of Gaynelle W. Barksdale, presented a bibliography of the latest social scientific research about race. Similarly, bibliographic entries assembled by Irene Diggs under the heading “Mere Mention” listed more popular publications that addressed race and culture. As with The Crisis during Du Bois’s tenure, Phylon offered an up-to-date and nearly comprehensive compendium of popular and scholarly opinion about race.51 Following Du Bois’s Atlanta sojourn and tenure with Phylon, he returned to work at the NAACP from 1944 to 1948, although his four-year stint proved particularly combative as the NAACP’s conciliatory gestures to America’s neo- liberalism conflicted with Du Bois’s more vocal and solidifying commitments to pacifism, socialism, and communism. Assigning himself once again to activist organizations, Du Bois spent the late 1940s affiliated with the Council on African Affairs and the Peace Information Center, work that contributed to his indictment by the U.S. government for alleged Communist activities. During his last three decades Du Bois maintained a rigorous, activist agenda, writing and speaking on behalf of peace, antinuclear initiatives, decolonization, and civil rights—in speeches, commencement addresses, books, and of course popular magazines and newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier, Amsterdam News (where he continued “As The Crow Flies”), Chicago Defender, People’s Voice, National Guardian, Chicago Globe, and Freedom. Notably, as late as 1961, and no doubt due to his experience and skill as a print propagandist, Du Bois advised James and Esther Jackson on the radical magazine Freedomways. Esther Jackson approached Du Bois about launching Freedomways largely because of his work with The Crisis. Helping to mediate the political voice of her aging spouse, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Du Bois’s second wife, worked with Freedom- ways in an editorial capacity for the duration of the 1960s.52 Amidst the flurry of countless other activities and in light of the numerous other journals and magazines with which he was associated, Du Bois’s work on The Crisis documents that he spent a large part of the twentieth century energetically engaged in the activities of a print propagandist. Persistent to the end of his days in expressing opinion informed by social science and concerned with freedom and the color line, Du Bois’s published voice as a Du Bois as Print Propagandist 45 print propagandist—most particularly represented in The Crisis—continues to speak to and through the ages.

——————————— Notes

1. The epigraph is from Edward R. Embree to W. E. B. Du Bois (April 8, 1936) in W. E. B. Du Bois, The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, Volume 2: Selections, 1934–1944, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), 132. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Editing The Crisis,” The Crisis, March 1951, 147–51, 213. 2. W. E. B. Du Bois, Mansart Builds a School, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1959]), xxvi, 110, 56, 44, 48–49. 3. W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Recorded Autobiography (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1961). Liner notes for Du Bois’s interview available at: http://folklife-media01.si.edu/liner_notes/folkways/FW05511.pdf. 4. Du Bois’s biographers who helpfully situate The Crisis in American history include David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 408–34; Manning Marable, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2005 [1986]), 75–98; Gerald Horne, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2010), 49–80. 5. Essays that analyze Du Bois’s propaganda include Herman Beavers, “Romanc- ing the Body Politic: Du Bois’s Propaganda of the Dark World,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568 (March 2000): 250–64 and Claudia Tate, “Race and Desire: Dark Princess: A Romance,” in Next to the Color Line: Gender, Sexu- ality, and W. E. B. Du Bois, eds. Susan Gillman and Alys Eve Weinbaum (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 150–208. 6. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, ed. David Blight (Boston: Bedford, 1997), 111. 7. See the New York Globe columns from April 14, 1883, to May 16, 1885, in The Seventh Son: The Thoughts and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, ed. Julius Lester (New York: Random House, 1971), 154–69; Brian L. Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism, 1868–1934 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 28–29; David Levinson, Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois: A History of the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church (Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Company, 2007), 41–44; Bernard Drew, Dr. Du Bois Builds His Dream House (Great Barrington, MA: Attic Revivals Press, 2006); Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 48–50. See also W. E. B. Du Bois, Du Bois on Reform: Periodical-Based Leadership for African Americans, ed. Brian L. Johnson (Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2005); T. Thomas Fortune, T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880–1928, ed. Shawn Leigh Alexander (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008); and Shawn Leigh Alexander, An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggles before the NAACP (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 8. Bethany Johnson, “Freedom and Slavery in the Voice of the Negro: Historical Memory and African-American Identity, 1904–07,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 84, no. 46 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

1 (2000): 58. Johnson explains that elite club women hoped for the material and moral improvement of their poorer, rural sisters, but invoked their own class privilege in the process. 9. Johnson, “Freedom and Slavery,” 49. 10. Paul G. Partington, “The Moon Illustrated Weekly: Precursor of the Crisis,” Jour- nal of Negro History 48, no. 3 (July 1963): 206–16; Abby Arthur Johnson and Ron- ald Maberry Johnson, Propaganda & Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), 24–29. W. E. B. Du Bois commented briefly about these efforts in Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, ed. Henry Louis Gates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 46–47, and The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, ed. Henry Louis Gates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 160, observing in both works that both The Moon and Horizon worked as “precursors” to The Crisis. 11. Susanna Ashton, “Du Bois’s Horizon: Documenting Movements of the Color Line,” MELUS 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 3–23. 12. The Crisis, August 1914, 187–88. 13. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 409–10. The board members included Villard, Russel, Kelly Miller, Max Barber, William Stanley Braithwaithe, and Mary Dunlop McClean. 14. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 411. 15. In 1916 the NAACP published a pamphlet Du Bois penned, restating the organization’s reason for being, printing recent lynching statistics (2,812 in the last thirty years), and discussing the total disfranchisement of three-fourths of the black voters. The Crisis, Du Bois proudly stated, had already become self-supporting in just five years, beginning on January 1, 1916. It had printed 1,490,300 copies. 16. David Thelen, “Memory and American History,” Journal of American History 75, no. 4 (March 1989): 1117–18. 17. David W. Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical Memory,” in History and Memory in African-American Culture, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’Meally (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 56. 18. Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 34, 37. 19. David W. Blight, “Fifty Years of Freedom: The Memory of Emancipation at the Civil War Semicentennial, 1911–1915,” Slavery and Abolition 21, no. 2 (2000): 120. 20. Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, July 5, 1913, quoted in David W. Blight, “What Will Peace among the Whites Bring?”: Reunion and Race in the Struggle over the Mem- ory of the Civil War in American Culture,” Massachusetts Review 34, no. 3 (1993): 404. 21. W. E. B. Du Bois, “To the Nations of the World” in Report of the Pan-African Conference, in Writings by W. E. B. Du Bois in Non-Periodical Literature Edited by Oth- ers, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982), 11–12. 22. Blight, “Fifty Years of Freedom,” 126. 23. Ibid., 127. 24. Thelen, “Memory and American History,” 1123. 25. Foucault states that history is the sheer passion and violence of cultural con- Du Bois as Print Propagandist 47 flict over memory, and this cultural struggle is a “hazardous play” of “endlessly repeated dominations,” fixed throughout its history in rituals, in meticulous proce- dures that impose rights and obligations. It establishes marks of its power and en- graves memories on things and even within bodies. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,” in History and Memory in African-American Culture, eds. Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’Meally (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 285. 26. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 726. 27. Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical Memory,” 51. 28. Thelen, “Memory and American History,” 1124. 29. Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,” 285. 30. Mitch Kachun, “Before the Eyes of All Nations: African-American Identity and Historical Memory at the Centennial Exposition of 1876,” Pennsylvania History 65 (1998): 301. 31. Du Bois, Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 256. 32. Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical Memory,” 52. 33. Thelen, “Memory and American History,” 1119. 34. Michael Frisch, “The Memory of History,” in Presenting the Past: Essay on His- tory and the Public, eds. Susan Porter Benson, Steven Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig (Phila- delphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 10–11. 35. David Levering Lewis, “Du Bois and the Challenge of the Black Press,” The Cri- sis, July 1997. 36. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 38–39. This concept of “twoness” can also be found in Du Bois’s address “The Conservation of Races” before the American Negro Academy (1897) and two subsequent essays in ANA Occasional Papers (1897) and in “Strivings of the Negro People” in Atlantic Monthly (1897). 37. Johnson, “Freedom and Slavery,” 62. As Johnson has noted, Katherine Tillman supported the black woman’s right to nurse her child by stating that she was uniquely suited to it, by turning to the heritage of the mammy as nurturer. This romanticizing of the past and the role of the black was seen as a useful tool of progress by some black Americans. 38. Kachun, “Before the Eyes of All Nations,” 303. 39. Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical Memory,” 60–61. 40. Ibid., 64. 41. Ibid., 65. 42. Ibid. 43. The Crisis, May 1934, 147. 44. Ibid. 45. The Crisis, May 1934, 149. 46. W. E. B. Du Bois to Joel Spingarn, May 31, 1934, James Weldon Johnson Papers, Box 11, Beinecke Library, Yale University. 47. Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois, 162–63. 48. Horne, Du Bois, 163. 48 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

49. On Phylon’s history see Marable, Du Bois, 150–51; David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 477–86; Horne, Du Bois, 134–35. See also W. E. B. Du Bois, “On the Roots of Phylon (1937),” in W. E. B. Du Bois, Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Ad- dresses, 1887–1961, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 168–73. 50. Eric Porter, The Problem of the Future World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Race Con- cept at Midcentury (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 46–52; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Apology,” Phylon 1, no 1 (1940): 3–5; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Phylon Science or Pro- paganda,” Phylon 5, no. 1 (1944): 5–9; Mozell C. Hill, “The Formative Years of ‘Phylon’ Magazine,” in Black Titan W. E. B. Du Bois: An Anthology by the Editors of Freedomways, eds. John Henrick Clarke, Esther Jackson, Ernest Kaiser, and J. H. O’Dell (Boston: Bea- con, 1970), 115–19. 51. Porter, The Problem of the Future World, 49–50; W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from Phylon, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1980); Frank M. Snowden Jr., “Race Propaganda in Italy,” Phylon 1, no. 2 (1940): 103–11; Leslie Pinck- ney Hill, “Of Preparedness,” Phylon 2, no. 1 (1941): 27; Langston Hughes, “Songs Called the Blues,” Phylon 2, no. 2 (1941): 143–45; Charles S. Johnson, “Negroes in the Railway Industry,” Phylon 3, no. 1 (1942): 5–14; Charles S. Johnson, “Negroes in the Railway In- dustry, Part II,” Phylon 3, no. 2 (1942): 196–205; James Weldon Johnson, “To America,” Phylon 3, no. 2 (1942): 116; E. Franklin Frazier, “Some Aspects of Race Relations in Brazil,” Phylon 3, no. 3 (1942): 249, 287–95; Countee Cullen, “Apostrophe to the Land,” Phylon 3, no. 4 (1942): 396–97; Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Interracial,” Phylon 5, no. 2 (1944): 188; John Hope Franklin, “History—Weapon of War and Peace,” Phylon 5, no. 3 (1944): 249–59. 52. Studies that chronicle Du Bois’s closing years include Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963 (Al- bany: State University of New York Press, 1986); Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 496–571; Horne, W. E. B. Du Bois, 115–91; Marable, Du Bois,166–217; Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 149–51; W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia: Crossing the World Color Line, ed. Bill V. Mullen and Cathryn Watson (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005); Edward J. Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (Philadelphia: University of Penn- sylvania Press, 2007), 181–210; Amy Bass, Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle over W. E. B. Du Bois (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Porter, The Problem of the Future World. On Du Bois’s engagement with Freedomways see Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York: New York Uni- versity Press, 2000), 217–42; Michael Nash and Daniel J. Leab, “Freedomways,” in Red Activists and Black Freedom: James and Esther Jackson and the Long Civil Rights Revolu- tion, ed. David Levering Lewis, Michael J. Nash, and Daniel J. Leab (New York: Rout- ledge, 2010), 57–67; and Esther Jackson, “A Visionary of the Cause of Black Peoples All Over the World,” in Pan Africanism and the Liberation of Southern Africa: International Tribute to William E. B. Du Bois (New York: United Nations Center Against Apartheid, 1982), 53–54. Chapter 3

Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years

Amy Helene Kirschke

W. E. B. Du Bois, as the founding editor of The Crisis magazine, used original art to elucidate what he considered the most important and salient issues the magazine would address. Although in his earliest communications Du Bois did not mention visuals or the importance of art for the magazine, it soon became clear that art was central to his agenda. Relatively little is known about the reasoning behind Du Bois’s selection of art, or the criteria he used to select the artists and pay them. But art became a powerful tool for political expression as Du Bois and his staff created a magazine that included both the written word and art to express the issues of the day. Art was integral to his political program, and The Crisis became a principal patron of the visual arts in a time of limited opportunity for black artists. Du Bois hoped to reach a broader audience, and visuals aided him in this effort. As editor of The Crisis, Du Bois addressed many concerns. He used the journal as a means of racial uplift—celebrating the joys and hopes of African American culture and life—and as a tool to address the injustices black Ameri- cans experienced—the sorrows of persistent discrimination and racial terror, especially the crime of lynching. The written word was not sufficient; visual imagery was central to bringing the message to the homes of readers and emphasizing the importance of the cause. Questions remain: Why and how could visuals do this? Could they be a political statement of their own? Were they usually accompanied by text, and if so, how did they express the views of the writer or enhance them? What constituted the “visual vocabulary” of African American life that Du Bois created? Du Bois placed political cartoons, drawings, photographs, and prints on the cover and throughout the pages of The Crisis. But they were different from images of African Americans in other magazines. Du Bois’s images originated from a black perspective, created almost entirely by black artists whose lives intersected with the causes addressed in the journal. The art was dignified,

49 50 Amy Helene Kirschke respectful, and exuded race pride. The more tragic images were direct and graphic in their ability to express the violence that African Americans faced in daily life. Du Bois was always interested in issues of African American identity, but how would visuals aid in its development? And how could visuals in The Crisis help define a collective memory for his black readership, a memory that Du Bois believed had been seized and largely shaped by a white-dominated culture? Visuals, with or without text, might aid in the establishment of a greater African American identity, a collective identity which had been denied them by the ravages of slavery and the dashed hopes of Reconstruction. This chapter examines the process whereby visual imagery became an important factor in shaping identity and defining a collective memory for African American readers of The Crisis. While the writers whose words graced the pages of The Crisis are well known and their work well documented, there remains no such study of the art of the magazine. Who were these artists? To what extent did their work represent their ideas and political leanings? Did Du Bois select art and artists whose work expressed his own view of black life? What were the iconographic prototypes utilized by these artists? How do they fit into the history of American political cartoons, and what place do they have in the history of African American art and of the Social Realism movement in the United States, a movement which emphasized the realities of struggles in Depression America? Du Bois believed that the Negro had made his greatest contribution to Amer- ican culture in art and in labor. He concluded in 1923 that the only real, or truly authentic, American art was “Negroid” and consequently was not highly regarded by most Americans. He wrote, “We are already beginning to see the beauty of Negro Art in American literature, in music and dancing, and such social ideals as good will and sacrifice . . . [W]e can, therefore, well think of the Negro element in America as an integral part of American life and as having made a permanent contribution to American civilization.”1 But the visual arts still needed time to develop. Du Bois spoke of the talent of a multitude of Ne- gro writers, but he referred to painter Henry O. Tanner as the best example of a black visual artist. In 1913 he wrote of Tanner, “Outside of literature the Amer- ican Negro has distinguished himself in other lines of art. One need only mention Henry O. Tanner whose pictures hang in the great galleries of the world, including the Luxembourg.”2 Through The Crisis magazine, Du Bois and his readers could form a collective memory about their legitimate past and their identity.3 Art could assist them in this task and express the contributions made by black Americans. It could remind readers of traditions and myths from the past, something even the radical left had been woefully inconsistent in reinforcing—journals such as Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 51 the New Masses vacillated between depicting African Americans as sources of humor and as dignified equals with whites. The image of blacks was too mal- leable in the early decades of the twentieth century, and too often it was used for exploitive purposes. There was a need for a new and more consistent art. For Du Bois, art provided an immediate reference point and could help underscore the importance of an issue. He believed that the power of singular poetic images, events, or moments could give substance to cultural memory.4 What was symbolized within a nation’s history and what was omitted from it were important, and much of the history and iconography of the contributions of black Americans had been left out or distorted.

The Black Aesthetic: African or American?

In his essay “The Seventh Son,” Du Bois traced African American art back to the African artisan. He wrote of the traditions of creating textiles, sculpture, and pottery in Africa, culturally expressive activities maintained and continued despite the enslavement of millions of talented African artists.5 Du Bois’s commitment to African art as an ancestral legacy was demonstrated in the pages of The Crisis, which featured African-inspired drawings, reproductions of original African art, and even political cartoons about Africa. Du Bois realized that knowledge of the rich cultural heritage of Africa had to be cultivated. In 1913 Du Bois wrote of the inspiration that the Negro could find in life and in art. In “The Negro in Literature and Art” he proclaimed that “the Negro is primarily an artist.” Others might speak “disdainfully of his sensuous nature,” but the Negro, who had held at bay the life-destroying forces of the tropics, had gained in some slight compensation a sense of beauty, particularly for “sound and color, which characterizes the race.” He noted the contribution of the Ne- gro to art in Egypt, where “Negro blood flowed in the veins of many of the mightiest of the pharaohs.”6 Du Bois hoped to build on the ideas of men like Martin R. Delany. Delany was a former slave, a Harvard-educated doctor who came to work with Frederick Douglass. Later as a soldier in the Civil War and an employee of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Delany worked diligently to change the fact that whites had granted Africans “only the most debased roles in world history.”7 Delany, who initially proposed a return to Africa, advocated a more extreme position in his solutions to the race problem than Du Bois. They both understood that to white Americans, African Americans did not seem to deserve citizenship because the “African” side of the hyphen would always un- dercut the perceived merits of the “American” half.8 In America, it was believed that the Negro could only bring his music, but in Du Bois’s view, much like James Weldon Johnson’s, the only authentic American music was that of the 52 Amy Helene Kirschke

Negro American. Here was the key to the success of the Negro in the arts: having experienced tragedy beyond the comprehension of white people, the Negro race’s expression of life’s experiences was unique. Art had the unique ability to show blacks something that whites tried to deny them, that they were “people like anyone else, that they are contributors to culture, that they are the same.” “The fact that there is, therefore, a real Negro art expressing the thoughts, experiences, and aspirations of the 12,000,000 colored people in the United States is not nearly as extraordinary as it would be if no such self-expression had arisen.”9 The suffering of the Negro was part of their unique contribution. Du Bois noted, “If the drama of the transportation of the millions of Africans to the United States and their emancipation could have been accomplished without a gift of emotion and beauty to the world, it would have been an eternal proof that the Negro was different from other human beings . . . Already this art expression is showing its peculiarities, its unique content.” In music the Negro “has given the world new music, new rhythm, new melody and poignant, even terrible expressions of joy, sorrow, and despair. The world dances and weeps at the beating of the black man’s baton.”10 For too long, Du Bois believed, blacks had laughed at themselves. Now a more straightforward style of art was emerging, one that he felt was imperative. Du Bois paid tribute to “a thoughtful, clear-eyed artist,” Frank Walts, who had done a number of “striking portraits” for The Crisis. Walts’s main subject matter was “black faces,” including his thoughtful portrait of a bright-eyed boy, Harry Elam. However, when Du Bois published Walts’s work, he received numerous protests from “colored” sources. Why did the audience laugh at this work? Because his black faces were too black? White people never complained that their work was too white . . . neither do “we complain if we are photographed a shade ‘light.’” Du Bois felt that black readers should not be ashamed of their color and blood, but they were instinctively and almost unconsciously ashamed of the depictions of their darker shades. The problem of color within the race was a problem unique to the black audience, an audience that Du Bois hoped to develop and educate through the pages of The Crisis. “Black is caricature in our half-conscious thought and we shun in print and paint that which we love in life. How good a dark face looks to us in a strange white city!”11

The Artists

Very little is known about the artists who illustrated The Crisis magazine. NAACP records contain almost no documentation of transactions between The Crisis’s staff and visual artists, and there are virtually no extant examples of original art. Usually the actual date an artist created a piece of art is unknown; Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 53 only the publication date is discernible. Many of the artists who appeared most frequently on the pages of The Crisis during the years Du Bois served as editor have left nothing behind. The best records about them can be found in the papers of the Harmon Foundation, a high-profile philanthropic organization which supported the creative work of African Americans. The foundation provided strong support for visual artists, including prizes accompanied by cash awards and traveling exhibitions which provided a venue for audience development, sales, and greater visibility for the artists. Several of The Crisis artists applied for Guggenheim Fellowships, and their applications provide more biographical information. These artists embodied Du Bois’s ideal of the Talented Tenth. Several of The Crisis artists trained at the same institutions, partly because they were the leading institutions in the country and partly because they were among the few places which offered opportunities to black artists. As African American illustrators in the first third of the twentieth century, the artists of The Crisis faced very similar struggles, although their individual stories differ. They struggled financially, and those financial concerns put limits on their abilities to train, exhibit, and travel. They strove to receive the best education and training possible, although they were limited by slim finances, racism, and lack of opportunity for African Americans at many educational institutions. They had little support from patrons and foundations and few opportunities to exhibit their work. They struggled to find patrons in both the black middle class and among wealthy whites to buy their work and support their art. The Crisis provided these artists with a national venue for their work and created a community, if only on paper, of artists striving to express the human condition. These artists attempted to strengthen their own sense of a black identity and visualize the need for political action.12

Lynching

Before Du Bois brought lynching to the forefront on the pages of The Crisis, it was largely a taboo subject within the black community. As Daisy Lampkin, the field secretary of the NAACP, once stated, “We were so ashamed that whites could do that to us, that we hardly wanted to talk about it publicly.”13 However, Du Bois believed that the only way to end lynching was to attack it directly. During his first decade as editor, Du Bois campaigned incessantly against lynching, using the magazine to document the violence in graphic detail, explain its origins and purposes, and compile an accurate number of the victims. Deploying qualitative and quantitative data, he published accounts of lynchings, eyewitness descriptions, and photographs of lynching victims. Political cartoons in the magazine depicted the horrors of lynching. Du Bois also used 54 Amy Helene Kirschke the outbreak of war in Europe and the subsequent American intervention to protect “democracy” as a tool to focus attention on the extraordinary contradiction between American ideals and practices. The impact of his experiences in Atlanta eventually radicalized him and called him to action. He experienced a “permanent transformation from organizational leader to race propagandist.”14 Du Bois believed that whites used lynchings to control the black population and to reaffirm the values of the southern traditional order. Even the threat of a lynching was a means to assert power and dominance over blacks and to exclude them from the community.15 The brutal act of lynching sought to assert that American identity was reserved for white males. Du Bois wanted to educate a new audience about the horrors of lynching. He was angry with the one-sided, racist coverage of lynchings in the mainstream press and turned to the pages of The Crisis to set the record straight and to demand involvement from his readers. Du Bois had read the southern press, where he saw blacks referred to in lynching accounts as “fiends,” “wretches,” and “desperadoes”; such coverage always assumed the victim’s guilt. Newspapers falsely emphasized “rape” as a reason for lynching. The white liberal press had failed him too. With the exception of Ray Stannard Baker, who exposed the realities of lynching in McClure’s in 1905 and in a 1908 book called Following the Color Line, Du Bois had little help from whites in his campaign to expose lynching. Tuskegee Institute began to tabulate lynching statistics beginning in 1882, recording at least 3,442 lynchings from 1882 to the 1950s. It has been calcu- lated that between 1890 and 1919, 1,748 black men, women, and children were lynched by whites, roughly one every six days.16 (No one is sure how many blacks were killed before 1881; the records are incomplete.) During the same time period, 1,294 whites were lynched, mostly in the West. (Prior to 1868, the majority of recorded lynching victims were white men accused of stealing livestock or committing murder.) Over 1,200 lynchings occurred in the Deep South alone between 1882 and 1930; one scholar places the number of victims at 2,500 in ten southern states during those decades.17 Lynchings were less frequent in Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina, states that were closer to the North, and were more common in the Black Belt states, where whites felt threatened by the black majority.18 Between 1889 and 1918, 85 percent of recorded lynchings targeted black victims; 88 percent of these crimes took place in the South.19 Some studies show that as much as 95 percent of lynchings took place in former slave states.20 Since many lynchings were secret affairs and lynching records are often missing, accurate statistics are difficult to determine. What was clear was that whites used terror and extraordinary savagery and sadism to exercise their absolute power over African Americans. The lynching imagery in The Crisis can be divided into three categories: religious, patriotic, and concepts of civilization. Religious imagery effectively showed Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 55 the paradox of lynching in a Christian context. Imagery in The Crisis was used to argue that lynching, justified and perpetrated by white Christians, was, in effect, anti-Christian. African Americans were often depicted as Christ-like in their suffering and martyrdom at the hands of the mob. This imagery countered the idea of blacks as “devils,” the viewpoint taken by whites who supported lynching, and also tied into the strong traditions of Christianity within the black community to produce an immediate sense of recognition and identification. Patriotic imagery, the second most prevalent category, was used to show the paradox and hypocrisy of lynching in America. Lynching was essentially anti- American—it put the rule of the mob over the rule of law. Furthermore, this art depicted blacks who opposed lynching as the true patriots. By using symbols of America, including the flag, the Statue of Liberty, and Uncle Sam, to underline lynching’s anti-patriotic character, blacks placed themselves in the position of being better Americans than southern whites. Finally, cartoons and photos often used the concept of “civilization” to attack lynching. This imagery turned the tables on southern whites. Whites justified lynching because they considered blacks to be “uncivilized,” yet the very practice of lynching showed the barbaric nature of white southern society. In contrast, African Americans are shown to be the “civilized” victims of this uncivilized practice. The very first issue of The Crisis in November 1910 addressed lynching. Du Bois wrote an editorial about the lynching of two Italians in Florida, expressing his indignation at the extralegal event. He looked beyond race at the barbaric character of lynching in a civilized society. The next month The Crisis published a cartoon from the Paris journal L’Assiette au Beurre with the caption, “Illustrating the life of Mr. Roosevelt, shows something of prevailing European opinion of America” (Figure 1). The drawing was of a young man strung up by a rope, arms and legs bound, wearing cutoff “country clothes.” He appears in blackface, his eyes bulge out in caricature, and his lips are white and heavily exaggerated. His tongue hangs out of his mouth. A white man, the lyncher, stands in the background; crowds appear behind him. The artist was showing that the audience did not see him as a living being but rather as a comedic buffoon. Seeing the victim this way allowed the “sport” to continue. Below the image, this quote was included in L’Assiette au Beurre: “I was born October 27, 1858 in the midst of indescribable enthusiasm. A great banquet was given. Each guest brought a present of ale, whisky, mutton chops, ginger ale, or corned beef. The poor people having nothing of this sort to offer decided to burn a Negro alive under our windows.”21 The clear implication was that this was the only “gift” the poor people could offer the new baby—a man burned alive, a gift of “entertainment.” Du Bois tried to bring the reader to the site of lynchings with photographs and with dramatization of the event: “Ah, the splendor of that Sunday night 56 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 1. November, 1910, “Illustrating the life of Mr. Roosevelt.” dance. The flames beat and curled against the moonlit sky. The church bells chimed. The scorched and crooked thing, self-wounded and chained to his cot, crawled to the edge of the ash with a stifled groan, but the brave and sturdy farmers pricked him back with the bloody pitchforks until the deed was done. Let the eagle scream! Civilization is again safe!”22 In December of that year, The Crisis featured a short fictional story of a lynching, “Jesus Christ in Georgia” (Figure 2), accompanied by a drawing of Christ’s image on a cross of flames, his face, crowned with thorns and full of sorrow, looking down at the right quadrant of the page, under the arm of the cross, where a photograph of a lynching victim was featured. By using Chris- tian imagery to attack the actions of “Christians,” Du Bois undermined whatever religious sanction might exist for lynching. The image served to introduce a story by Du Bois with the same title as the cartoon.23 In the tale, Du Bois equates Christ with all black men. Christ in the form of “the stranger” comes Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 57 into a Georgia town and meets a variety of people, including a convict. The convict finally gets a job from a farmer who wants to hold him in servitude. The convict eventually steals the farmer’s silver watch. He returns the watch because of his meeting with “the stranger” (Christ), who has encouraged him to do good. The farmer’s wife has spoken with the stranger; she is drawn to him, but she is repulsed when she realizes he is a black man or mulatto. The convict later seeks the stranger again to speak to him and literally runs into the wife of the farmer as he runs down a path, knocking the wind out of the woman. The farmer accuses him of attacking her, and as he is seized by the mob, the woman does nothing to save him. After he is lynched, the farmer’s wife looks into the sky. She sees a fiery cross and the image of the stranger crucified on the cross, looking with sorrowful eyes toward the lynched convict. She hears him say, “This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” She realizes that the stranger was Christ. The cartoon accompanying the story, with the sorrowful Christ looking

Fig. 2. December, 1911, “Jesus Christ in Georgia.” 58 Amy Helene Kirschke at the photograph of an actual lynching victim, refers to the biblical story of Christ’s words to the good thief on the cross. Du Bois at times used symbolic imagery to confront leaders in the United States, including President Woodrow Wilson. The president was not the only symbol of leadership Du Bois attacked. He mocked the dearest principles of nationhood when The Crisis ran a political cartoon with lyrics from the national anthem (Figure 3). The cartoon depicts the limb of a tree with a lynching rope hanging from it, the charred bones of a victim smoldering below while a mob runs off in the background to the next lynching. The moon is low on the horizon, and the first two lines of the national anthem are the only text: “O say, can you see by the Dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the Twi- light’s last gleaming!”24 The pride shown in this twilight is that of the mob, confident of their actions, sure, proud, and ready to find another victim. In response to what had proved to be a horrible year in lynching, The Crisis published one of its most moving images in December 1916 (Figure 4). Loren- zo Harris, one of Du Bois’s favorite cartoonists, created “Christmas in Geor- gia, A.D. 1916.” Harris showed a frenzied, rock-throwing mob with clubs and guns pulling the body of a victim up on a rope that was strung over the limb

Fig. 3. February, 1915, “O say, can you see...?” Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 59 of a tree. Logs below the victim were ready for the burning. Their stark white arms and large hands emphasize the mob’s power over the victim. The crowd, dressed in vests, hats, and shirts with sleeves pushed up for action, stands in front of a simple house, presumably the victim’s. One member of the mob, radically foreshortened, reaches toward the viewer to grab another rock; we only see the top of his hat. He serves to pull the viewer into the image, to make the viewer feel he is a part of the crowd, a witness to the event, even a participant. This was a technique often used in Christian imagery; by placing figures with their backs to the viewer, the artist encourages the viewer to experience the act firsthand. European and American artists had used this technique for more than six hundred years, since the time of Giotto.25 The victim’s head drops limply, but his body is surrounded by the haloed Christ, who wraps him in his arms and supports his limp body. Christ faces the crowd head–on, with sorrow. Christ is being lynched with the victim. The crowd continues, not thinking of their actions or the consequences. The image is horrifying and loving at the same time, reminding the reader with the passage from the biblical account of judgment day posted on the lynching tree, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, My brethren, ye did it unto Me.” This is the “celebration” of Christmas in Georgia, a reminder that southern lynchers who claimed to be Christians made sure their victims suffered slow and painful deaths.

Fig. 4. December, 1916, Lorenzo Harris, “Christmas in Georgia, A.D. 1916.” 60 Amy Helene Kirschke

In the same issue, Du Bois noted that many of his readers asked whether it was really possible to put a stop to lynching in the South and how it could be done. He responded that many people would be willing to help raise money if they clearly saw a method of stopping lynchings. While there was no “royal road to social reform,” Du Bois proposed the following five paths, neither “spectacular nor sudden,” to eliminate the savagery in the South: use of publicity, better administration of present laws, legal action in all possible instances, new legislation, and federal intervention. For Du Bois, the greatest hope lay in publicity:

We place frankly our greatest reliance in publicity. We propose to let the facts concerning lynching to be known. Today, they are not fully known; they are partially suppressed; they are lied about and twisted . . . We propose, then, first of all, to let the people of the United States, and of the world, know WHAT is taking place. Then we shall try to convict lynchers in the courts; we shall endeavor to get better sheriffs and pledged governors; we shall seek to push laws which will fix the responsibility for mob outbreaks, or for the failure to suppress them; and we shall ask the national government to take cognizance of this national crime.26

In the March 1918 issue, Harris contributed “The Funny Page,” which shows three barbarous brutes, two of them labeled “Lynch Law” and “Discrimination” (Figure 5). They are laughing as they read the Constitution of the United States, in particular the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which they obviously consider to be a joke. They have huge muscular bodies and wear caveman clothes, indicating their undeveloped state as unevolved men. Their primitive rough faces and bald heads show them to be crude and hard-hearted. Their hands drip with blood and mark the pages of the Constitution with their bloody fingerprints. A lynching rope is slung over the shoulder of one of the men. Cartoons continued to be an effective way of conveying Du Bois’s anti-lynching message. Along with a map of 1919 lynchings, the February 1920 Crisis featured a political cartoon by Albert Alex Smith. Smith’s cartoon, “The Reason,” which accompanied the essay “Northerners Don’t Understand the Negro,” sought to answer in one quick glance the question, “Why leave?” (Figure 6). Smith drew a concerned, well-dressed, middle-aged black man holding a suitcase with “South- ern Negro” on the side of it. He is looking over his shoulder, holding a white hat in his hand as the words “To the North” stream from the lapel of his bright white jacket. An elderly white man, clad in black suit and hat, shows us, without a hint of remorse, the lifeless body of a lynching victim dangling from a tree. His white hand contrasts with his black ensemble. The black man fleeing north realizes that it is just a matter of time before he could face the same fate. Migration is the answer, the only way to escape the reign of terror. Albert Alex Smith proved to be one of the most important artists working for The Crisis. Du Bois recognized the high quality of his work and saw his Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 61

Fig. 5. March, 1918, Lorenzo Harris, “The Funny Page.”

Fig. 6. February, 1920, Albert Alex Smith, “The Reason.” 62 Amy Helene Kirschke insightful cartoons as critical to the visual appeal of the magazine. Ironically enough, Smith’s perspective on the plight of African Americans came as he lived in Paris, enjoying the freedom of life in the French capital and receiving the best training available for an artist. In helping Du Bois define a new Afri- can American identity, Smith understood the lives of American blacks, but by choice he did not live their lives. The Crisis also provided extensive coverage of the NAACP’s thirteenth annual conference, including a photo of the anti-lynching parade in Washington, DC, and coverage of a parade in Newark held in conjunction with the NAACP’s annual meeting. Marchers carried signs which included an image of a group of boys with the text “We are Fifteen Years Old. A Boy of Our Age Was Roasted Alive Recently.” Other signs said “Liberty Holds Her Torch Aloft to Light Men’s Funeral Pyres” and “Savages Eat Human Beings Without Cooking—Americans Cook Human Beings Without Eating.” The conference focused on the need to pass the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Prominent lawyer Moorfield Storey, who spoke at the conference and had written extensively on lynching as president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, appealed to the conscience of the American people: “If they will not stand by their colored fellow citizens in this crisis; if they will not resolve that in this day of civilization the torture and murder of human beings by lawless mobs must cease, the future of the country is darkened and calamity is sure to follow.”27 This August 1922 issue of The Crisis included a special section entitled “The Shame of America.” It listed state-by-state lynching statistics for 1922 as well as statistics about violent deaths other than lynchings for African Americans (burnings, beatings, shootings, torture, drownings). These numbers were presented with graphic photographs of several lynchings and placed next to a cartoon with a moving image of the crucifixion (Figure 7).28 It features a black Christ figure with “American Negro” written inside the halo over his head. At his feet many skeletons are piled up, with the words “Crucified, Murdered, Lynched” next to them. A woman covers her face in sorrow and horror, like Mary, the mother of Jesus, but this time she is “A Black Mother,” as the words on the side of her apron inform us. The Christian iconography was familiar and recognizable, reinterpreted to connect lynching to the death of Christ and to the actions of “Christians.”29 This imagery worked on many levels. It connected the crime of lynching to a central truth of Christianity, merging African American identity and religiosity together. It also painfully underlined the horror of lynching to sympathetic white Christians, again affirming the power of imagery over simple text. The issue included a full-page statement in support of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. The terror and murdering of blacks was illustrated in “The Black Prometheus Bound” in July 1927 (Figure 8). Uncle Sam states, “Behold my eaglets!” Truth, staring accusingly from the skies with rays of sun emanating from its head, Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 63

Fig. 7. February, 1923, H. Johnson, Black Crucifixion. states, “Eaglets, forsooth!” The eaglets are actually vultures, gorging themselves on human hearts, which, as the caption informs us, dare to aspire “Up from Slavery to that fire of freedom, which the Souls of Black Folk brought down from heaven!”30 The caption alludes to the best-known works of rival black leaders Booker T. Washington and Du Bois, perhaps suggesting that whatever their differences, the vultures treated them with the same contempt. The vultures—labeled “Texas,” “Missouri,” “Mississippi,” “Georgia,” and “Arkan- sas”—pick at the body of a dead black man, who is strewn nude across a bed of thorns. Blood drips from their beaks. A cabin burns below, part of the reign of terror. The eagle, Uncle Sam, stands proudly by, ignoring the slaughter, again demonstrating the contradiction between professed American ideals and the terror practiced in the South. Du Bois believed that despite these powerful visual images and cartoons, apathy toward lynching remained widespread. In August 1927 he wrote, “The recent horrible lynchings in the United States, even the almost incredible burning of human beings alive, have raised not a ripple of interest, not a single 64 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 8. July, 1927, M. Crump, “Black Prometheus Bound.” protest from the United States Government, scarcely a word from the pulpit and not a syllable of horror or suggestion from the Defenders of the Republic, the 100% Americans, or the propagandists of the army and navy . . . [A]nd yet hiding and concealing this barbarism by every resource of American silence, we are sitting in council at Geneva and Peking and trying to make the world believe that we are a civilized nation.”31

The 1930s: Lynching and the Depression

The Great Depression brought an upsurge in lynching, strengthening Du Bois’s belief in the economic roots of the violence. He chronicled the increase Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 65 and joined with new allies in the campaign against lynching. The Crisis documented the founding of the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching under the direction of Dr. Arthur A. Raper. The Communist Party of the Unit- ed States of America and its legal arm, the International Labor Defense, joined the anti-lynching campaign, criticizing the tactics employed by the NAACP as not radical enough to end lynching. Du Bois continued to make uncom- fortable comparisons for Americans, connecting lynching with the advent of Nazi persecution of the Jews. The campaign finally brought results. There was a dramatic decline in lynching in the second half of the 1930s. The struggle was hardly over, but much was achieved. The importance of visual images of lynching is demonstrated well in a case in August of 1930 in Marion, Indiana. The October 1930 issue of The Crisis ran a graphic photo of the lynching, with Du Bois’s sarcastic caption, “Civilization in the United States, 1930.” In Marion, three young black men were accused of raping a white woman and shooting and killing the white man she was with. Two of the three accused men were taken by a mob from the jail and lynched, while the third suspect narrowly escaped. The men were not adequately protected by the local sheriff, allowing the mob easy access to the jail. It later turned out that there was much more to the case. Walter White, who investigated within a week of the event, discovered that Mary Ball, the woman who claimed to have been raped, was an associate of the black men and may have been working in collusion with them to help rob her white “dates” on lovers’ lane. Neverthe- less, the members of the lynch mob were eventually acquitted.32 White photographer Lawrence Beiter recorded the actual lynching and after the event sold copies of his photos for fifty cents. Postcards made from the photo were sold in other cities, too. The photo features the two victims hanging from the tree while a large crowd of well-dressed observers points to the victims and smiles for the camera; in effect, the lynching is an evening’s entertainment. The crowd includes a young man holding his date’s hand, a pregnant woman, and an older woman in a fur-collared coat. One man points to the victims, which has the effect of bringing the viewer into the scene. Several branches of the tree are sawed off to provide a better view. A young boy had turned the bodies of the victims toward the camera.33 Both victims have blood on their clothes, and one has a cloth wrapped around his lower half to hide his naked body. His pants have been removed. The white press coverage of the event shows why publications such as The Crisis were necessary to ensure that an accurate memory of this event was preserved. On August 8 the Marion Chronicle claimed that the “lynching was done not by men of violent and lawless dispositions”; rather, “these men are ordinary good citizens, but they were stung to the quick by an atrocious crime and spurred on to their violent act by a want of confidence in the processes of the courts.”34 The Crisis and other black journals, including the Chicago Defender, 66 Amy Helene Kirschke offered a different rationale for the lynchings. White’s report in The Crisis highlighted the questionable aspects of Mary Ball’s character and argued that “[f]or generations, we black folks have been the sexual scapegoats for white Ameri- can filth in literature and lynching.” The lies that make black men into “wild beasts” of “filthy lust” are “deliberately nailed to every possible Negro crime and broadcast.” Why was it, White asked, that there were two white rapists in the Grant County jail on August 7 who were not sought by the mob?35 In contrast to coverage of the event by black newspapers and journals, white newspapers soon purged from memory the names of the lynching victims, referring to them only as Negroes or as criminals. The white Marion Chronicle-Tribune did not print Beiter’s photograph, claiming that it was “too violent, too graphic, and too close to home.”36 Some black journals also cropped parts of the photo, showing only the victims or only the crowd. The photo of the Marion lynching reprinted in The Crisis may have provided the inspiration for Abel Meeropol’s famous poem “Strange Fruit,” written later in the decade.37 Meeropol was a Jewish teacher living in New York City in the 1930s and said that a lynching photo he saw in a journal haunted him and inspired his poem. The poem later became a hit song recorded by Billie Holi- day in 1939. Even though this lynching did not occur in the South, the Meero- pol poem captured the atmosphere of what was still an all-too-commonplace event in that region.

Strange Fruit Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, And the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.38

Beiter’s photo was reproduced repeatedly over the years, including twice in 1994 by Newsweek. James Cameron, the third accused man who narrowly escaped lynching, wrote a book on the subject and decades later was still being interviewed by news agencies across the world. At the execution of a black Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 67 death-row inmate in Indiana in 1994, protestors held up copies of the famous 1930 lynching photo, preserving the memory of the event and making it a sign of protest against government-sanctioned death. Documentaries were made about the Marion lynching, featuring Cameron’s accounts of that harrowing night, including one by independent filmmaker Joel Katz in 1999.39 The memory of the lynching, preserved in photos and printed in the national press for the world to see, became an iconic symbol of the crime of lynching. But some wanted such memories to be forgotten. As late as 1988, the executive editor of the Marion Chronicle-Tribune expressed the sentiments that “it is one chapter in the community’s history that everyone, black or white, would just as soon forget about.”40 In contrast, James Cameron would state in an interview in the 1990s, “To remember is salvation . . . to forget, is exile.”41 Du Bois also believed that even sorrowful memory could be used to good purpose. The Marion lynching story and photograph resulted in Crisis coverage that included two political cartoons originally published in the Chicago De- fender. One was another crucifixion scene (Figure 9). It featured three crucified bodies, the two in the back representing Marion lynching victims Shipp and Smith. The third, a woman called “Justice,” is blindfolded, her scales of justice nailed to the cross as well. She is in the center, in the position usually reserved for Christ. “Marion” is written on the ground below her. The lynching in Marion and the photo that documented it would provide inspiration for another piece of political art in The Crisis the following March. The idea of the “sport” of lynching was brought to Du Bois’s readers again in March 1931 in Lorenzo Harris’s “Civilization in America, 1931. One of Our Major Sports” (Figure 10). The title deliberately echoes the one Du Bois used for the Marion photo and acknowledges the importance of spectator sports in the United States during this period. In Harris’s scene, a dead man dangles from a tree while two men try to stab his lifeless body with a knife and a pitchfork; another man with a hatchet appears in silhouette. A woman cuts off his toes, a particularly shocking image, to get a “souvenir” of the event, a common practice. A blonde girl, the quintessential white child, collects the toes in a bowl. A wholesome-looking young man in a university-letter sweater, the ironic figure of the white sports hero, adds wood to the fire. He looks ready to “play” at a sport. Cans of gasoline and kindling are brought to the body for burning by a respectable older man who seems gentle and unthreatening, someone’s grand- father. Another gas can is cropped at the bottom of the composition and leads us into the scene—we are there, witnessing the event. A small child is held up by his mother for a better view of the event. Women, children, and older men participate—no one is excluded from this sport. In the background is evidence of modern society: a dirigible, a skyscraper, smokestacks, and a barge floating on the water. The huge lynching tree pierces the entire composition. Across 68 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 9. August 23, 1930, Chicago Defender, “The Crucifixion.” the expanse of water, the American flag, the steeple of a church topped by a cross, and the Statue of Liberty are silhouetted as symbols of peace, order, and harmony. The water shows the huge gulf between the ideals of American society and the realities of life for black Americans. These are ordinary Christian Americans participating in the unthinkable, part of “civilization in America.” During the 1930s the campaign against lynching gained new allies, which The Crisis reported with much satisfaction. Du Bois eagerly noted the conclusions of the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching: “Only one in every six of the persons lynched had been even accused of rape; and naturally, not all of those accused were guilty.”42 Du Bois had been making the same point for more than twenty years in the pages of The Crisis, echoing the earlier findings of Ida B. Wells. The report recognized “that white men have disguised them- Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 69

Fig. 10. March, 1931, Lorenzo Harris, “Civilization in America. One of our Major Sports.” selves to impersonate Negroes and fasten crime upon them. . . . [F]ew lynchers have been punished or even indicted. . . . [I]n numbers of cases the members of the mob were unmasked and perfectly well-known” [thereby contradicting the typical line “Lynched by parties unknown] . . . [W]omen and Children were often in the mobs.” The report, as summarized by The Crisis, concluded, “Lynch- ing can and will be eliminated in proportion as all elements of the population are provided opportunities for development and are accorded fundamental human rights . . . For, fundamentally, lynching is an expression of a basic lack of respect both for human beings and for organized society.”43 Romare Bearden, a painter and cartoonist who would come into promi- nence in the late 1930s and 1940s, shows the black man finally fighting back in 70 Amy Helene Kirschke his cartoon “For the Children!” (Figure 11).44 In this image we see the heads of Klansmen appearing over the horizon. They hold the flags of lynching, peonage, and segregation as they come forward. A large muscular black man marches toward them, shotgun in hand, while a young black boy, presumably his son, walks behind him, his hand on his father’s back. The gun, although it is prominent in the composition, is not poised to shoot, but it is clear that the man must face the terror and protect his own if necessary—”for the children.” We feel we are a part of the scene as the man’s back leads us into the composition. Bearden wants us to feel his simultaneous uncertainty and determination. The cartoon suggested a possible new motif in the imagery of African Americans on lynching—the possibility of violent resistance to this extralegal terrorism. It appeared as a part of the special annual issue devoted to children. In the South, the Depression years intensified lynching as a response to the economic crisis. However, the impact of the Depression on the rest of the nation stimulated political action against lynching.

Fig. 11. October, 1934, Romare Bearden, “For the Children.” Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 71

Lynching in Public Art Shows: The NAACP as a leader in Visual Arts

Liberal New York literary and cultural leaders eventually recognized Du Bois’s efforts to keep lynching at the forefront of public consciousness.45 In 1935, the show “An Art Commentary on Lynching,” sponsored by the NAACP, opened at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries in New York after the first venue, the Jacques Seligmann Galleries, canceled at the last minute, fearful that the content was too political and racial in nature. This brought more attention to the Newton show, which was very well attended in its two-week run in February and March.46 Although the show debuted a few months after Du Bois stepped down as editor of The Crisis, it is impossible to imagine its existence without the two decades of his work on the journal. His efforts to use visual imagery to combat lynching were vital to the success of such public art shows. This was the first exhibition devoted to issues focused on African American men, and it was the first time an exhibition tried to counter negative attitudes about black men.47 Organized by Walter White, the NAACP’s director, it was a part of the effort of the organization to bring attention to the issue of lynching and garner support for the Costigan-Wagner Bill, new anti-lynching legislation which had been introduced in Congress in 1934. Both White and James Weldon Johnson had worked closely with Du Bois and helped spearhead the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign. Walter White understood the propagandistic possibilities of such an exhibition. He solicited artists for the show and encouraged them to emphasize the “horror and pathos” of lynch violence. He sought elite support, writing to one prominent patron, “Even a morbid subject, can be made popular if a sufficiently distinguished list of patronesses will sponsor the exhibit and the right kind of publicity can be secured for it. . . . I fear that I have put this somewhat crudely and inadequately but I trust that you will be able to understand how I am trying delicately to effect a union of art and propaganda.”48 The thirty-eight participants in the exhibition included one woman and ten blacks. White’s exhibition catalogue contained the essays of two white writers, Sherwood Anderson and Erskine Caldwell, who emphasized the economic reasons behind lynching and the urgent need for anti-lynching legislation. Pearl Buck spoke at the preview of the exhibition, where she noted that every black man was a potential victim of the lynch mob, including the participating artists. Because of the involvement of such prominent white artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Isamu Noguchi, George Bellows, John Steuart Cur- ry, and Reginald Marsh, the show was covered by the white press, although it received mixed reviews.49 Marsh offered “This Is Her First Lynching” to the show, which was published in The Crisis in January of 1935, a month before a version of it appeared in the exhibition. Marsh emphasized the horrifying “spectator sport” of lynching. 72 Amy Helene Kirschke

The Crisis used images from the exhibition in its future efforts in the fight against lynching. Art historian Margaret Vendryes noted that the exhibition intended to show the urgency of the issue, to alarm the viewer, and to incite action to end lynching through legal channels.50 The goals of the exhibition were much the same as those of Du Bois on the pages of The Crisis—to relay a sense of urgency, inspire swift legal action, and end lynching in the United States. The NAACP exhibition also dealt with the fear of the sexual prowess of the black male and the perception that lynching was a way to control black men’s crimes against white women. One image in the show, “The Law Is Too Slow,” was from a 1923 lithograph by George Bellows and was also used as the cover of Walter White’s book Rope and Faggot. Richmond Barthé, whose work was reproduced many times in The Crisis, contributed “The Mother,” a 1934 work begun before the exhibition was put together. This piece shows a grieving mother holding her son, like the figure of the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ. The dead man’s body is depicted in the nude for impact and is shown intact, even though lynching victims were often castrated in the course of a lynching as a sign that their sexual prowess was destroyed, the ultimate emasculation.51 The white artists in the show “fearlessly addressed the absurdities of lynching with the same open-faced audacity that their Southern brothers used to commit the crimes.” White artists tended to show the victim as alive and perhaps therefore still possible to rescue, while black artists “more realistically depicted the deed as done.”52 There could be nothing more realistic than the actual “done deed” of the photographs of lynchings contained in the pages of The Crisis. But what of the images of The Crisis? Did its photos and cartoons and drawings also support Walter White’s statement that “even a morbid subject can be made popular”? Did the horrifying images unify blacks from all backgrounds against a terrible, hateful injustice? The lynching imagery in The Crisis had two purposes: It was meant to draw viewers in and engage them, and to depict an issue that would promote collective identity. On the pages of The Crisis, the imagery was a response to a real threat. If there was a sense of the macabre or the sensational in the show “An Art Commentary against Lynching,” which was intended for a white audience, this was not present on the pages of The Crisis. Du Bois used the images to heighten the impact of his essays, to empower his words. Fully sensitized to the racial humiliation of lynching, he did not stoop to sensationalism. The day after the NAACP exhibition closed, “Struggle for Negro Rights” opened, an anti-lynching exhibition by the Artists’ Union and several other leftist or Communist-affiliated organizations.53 The critics who reviewed the NAACP show understood what The Crisis had already understood, that a picture was worth a thousand words. The review in Newsweek’s “In the Arts” column seemed to echo Du Bois’s understanding of the power of visual imagery to fight the battle against lynching: “The artists have depicted brutality in its most sickening form. . . . [N]o spoken or writ- Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 73 ten argument against lynch law could be as hard hitting as this visual articu- lation.”54 It was clear from the exhibition’s visibility that the years of lynching imagery in The Crisis had had the very real effect of creating a climate which made future images possible. Du Bois used visual symbols of lynching on the pages of The Crisis as reminders of the atrocities and acts of violence that were still occurring against the black community. Opposition to lynching was a profoundly significant and mobilizing political force. Du Bois recognized this and used the imagery to convert a shameful secret into a catalyst for change. Yet he went beyond merely using it as a political tool; he also used it to craft a sense of collective identity for the African American community. Lynching was an act that could unite the black community through sorrow, but it needed to be owned by the black community and used as a symbol to motivate and inspire action.

Images of Africa and the Diaspora

From the first days of its publication, The Crisis included striking images, essays, and political commentary about Africa, reflecting Du Bois’s lifelong drive to reconnect American blacks to the continent and its widely dispersed people. Du Bois supported the Pan-Africanist movement and paid careful attention to the culture of Africa. Black diasporans had espoused Pan-African ideals and a deep desire to connect with Africans, but their activities often revealed their cultural alienation from Africa.55 Pan-Africanism emphasized a shared identity between blacks in the diaspora and Africans, an interest in mutual experience and collective action. However, Du Bois realized that it was impossible for black Americans to have emerged out of slavery with their African connection intact. He recognized their dual historical and cultural experience.56 By including essays and editorials on the major issues involving Africa and supporting them with visuals, Du Bois hoped to create for his readers a stronger sense of identity with contemporary Africa. He also wanted his readers to understand that black Americans had roots in historically rich African civilizations. Over the course of his time at The Crisis, Du Bois introduced images which were unfamiliar to his readership. By using the power of images to represent moral, intellectual, and emotional symbols of Africa, he hoped they would become a part of his readers’ visual vocabulary, increasing their personal connection with Africa and their interest in events and circumstances relevant to African life. The greater frequency and sophistication of these visuals over time becomes obvious: the visuals also reflect the growth of interest among readers and the slow cultivation of a group identity and even a sense of group memory of things “African.” Africa provided a positive counterpoint to the terror of lynching, one that was tied to Du Bois’s own internationalist vision of 74 Amy Helene Kirschke black Americans as not only black and American, but also African. Many black Americans—perhaps most—felt little connection to Africa. The long years of slavery had ended that ethnic connection. As a result, black Americans shared a racial rather than ethnic identity. Their connection was one of the color line. Du Bois asserted that American blacks could neither turn their backs on their American experiences nor on their African heritage. Both were intimately linked to a collective identity. In this effort to forge a connection to Africa, imagery and visual symbols were important for Du Bois. They were invested with significance, often accompanied by a narrative, to create a group view, a group identity and collective memory.57 The work of anthropologist Franz Boas intensified Du Bois’s interest in Af- rica. Du Bois had already been drawn to the Pan-African movement with his attendance at the first Pan-African Congress in London in 1900, at which Boas spoke. In 1906 he invited Boas to speak at Atlanta University. Boas discussed the greatness of African culture and urged his audience to reclaim their African heritage. He told the group, “Say that you have set out to recover for the colored people the strength that was their own before they set foot on the shores of this continent.”58Du Bois later recalled the significance of the Boas visit: “Franz Boas came to Atlanta University where I was teaching history in 1906 and said to a graduating class: You need not be ashamed of your African past; and then he recounted the history of black kingdoms south of the Sahara for a thousand years. I was too astonished to speak. All of this I had never heard and I came then and afterwards to realize how the silence and neglect of science can let truth utterly disappear or even be unconsciously distorted.”59 Du Bois would continue his association with Boas, who served as “virtually the house anthropologist for The Crisis magazine, and greatly influenced Du Bois’s ideas on race.” 60 Boas was an ally of Du Bois in trying to generate an anti-racist movement among social scientists.61 Under Boas’s influence, Du Bois began to see history differently, and his narrative of Western civilization incorporated an emphasis on connections to Africa. He hoped to reconstruct the past and create a different future.62 He recognized the one-sidedness of the “continuing practice of white supremacy” in the study of Western civilization. Du Bois began to see, more and more, the global aspects of black suffering, the international elements of slavery, and the fact that slavery was tied to the development of modernity in the United States. He began to see the intimate connections between African Americans and their fellow Africans in Europe and still in Africa—the Black Atlantic. His view of the diaspora became much more global and transnationalist. Blacks had been transported across the At- lantic, and African Americans were tied to the entire diaspora of their people in the New World.63 Concerns over identity dominated Du Bois’s thoughts. Much has been written about his famous line in Souls, where he discusses the unique elements of Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 75 black American identity: “One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”64 When The Souls of Black Folk was published in 1903, Du Bois was already recognizing the global aspects of a post-slave population. He wrote about this extensively in Dusk of Dawn, describing Africa as his fatherland and connecting it to all people of color:

As I face Africa, I ask myself: what is it between us that constitutes a tie which I can feel better than I can explain? Africa is, of course, my fatherland. Yet neither my father nor my father’s father ever saw Africa or knew its meaning or cared overmuch for it. My mother’s folk were closer and yet their direct connection, in culture and race, became tenuous; still, my tie to Africa is strong . . . The mark of their heritage is upon me in color and hair . . . one thing is sure and that is the fact that since the fifteenth century these ancestors of mine have had a common history, have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory . . . the badge of colour [is] relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kin- ship is its social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; and this heritage binds together not simply the children of Africa, but extends through yellow Asia and into the South Seas. It is this unity that draws me to Africa.”65

Undoubtedly, Du Bois drew the term “Fatherland” from his time in Ger- many, and he connected the suffering of black Americans with people of non-white descent everywhere, acknowledging the common enemy of “discrimination and insult.” On the pages of The Crisis Du Bois hoped to provide his readers with the visuals and words to connect them more intimately with the national community in the United States, to make them aware of the issues of the day, to make them full participating citizens. Visual symbols of Africa could provide insight into African culture and help create a collective identity. The accomplishments of peoples of African descent had long been ignored. Du Bois planned to fight the tide of the “certain suppressions in the historical record current in our day . . . the habit, long fostered, of forgetting and detracting from the thought and acts of the people of Africa.”66 He hoped that the promises made by white society to black readers, both political and legal, would be kept. When it became obvious that they would not, that political and educational opportunities would not improve, and after he had fully recognized the “essentially illusory character” of the national community in the United States, other types of connections became more important. These included local connections but also, more importantly, international connections, especially to Africa. The long-overdue chance to be fully American led to a desire for greater global connections.67 76 Amy Helene Kirschke

The cover of the January 1921 issue featured a statue entitled Africa from among the statuary on the New York Custom House, again emphasizing the strong connection of Egypt to Africa (Figure 12). It showed a somewhat de- feated figure, clad from the waist down, her breasts exposed in the Hellenistic tradition, with an arm resting on the head of a sphinx. The classical conno- tations are strong. The figure appears to be forlorn and exhausted, but still holds herself up, with the aid of the sphinx. Despite her fatigue she is strong, her musculature is emphasized, and her feet are planted firmly on the ground, holding her steady. Even though her head hangs down and her eyes are closed, the forceful, steady, firm profile of the sphinx remains undaunted. The con- notations are clear: “Africa” may be tired from the battle, but she has not lost. Her prototype is most likely from neoclassical sculpture of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century, following sculptors such as Frances Chantrey. Her face also resembles a Pieta, including Michelangelo’s Pieta of 1498, in Rome. There are earlier prototypes, such as the Villa Piazza Marina in Sicily, which features a fourth-century mosaic that includes a personification of Africa, who is also half-clad. The image of the sphinx symbolizes the long history of Africa in this context and its ability to overcome any adversity.

Fig. 12. January, 1921, “Africa” from New York Customs House. (unsigned) Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 77

Laura Wheeler, a frequent contributing artist to The Crisis, often created black-and-white drawings of African peoples for Du Bois. The April 1923 cover, “Egypt-Spring,” features a young woman clad from the waist down, her breasts hidden by her arms, playing a harp-like instrument (Figure 13). The instrument is also a piece of sculpture; the base forms the head of a figure and the signs of spring—trees, birds and flowers (art nouveau papyrus?)—line the composition. Harpists were common in Egyptian tomb painting of the New Kingdom, especially in banquet scenes for entertainment. The figure’s face, turned toward the viewer at an angle, is not Egyptian, not parallel to the picture plane. She appears to be a contemporary figure, and her attire is not Egyptian. The sparrows that scatter across the composition also are not Egyptian, nor is the art nouveau weeping willow which dangles above her head. The base of the harp shows a bust which wears the red crown, or deshret, of Lower Egypt, while a blue lotus forms the neck of the harp, characteristic of Egyptian iconography. The fragrant lotus was a typical accoutrement in the king’s palace. An Egyptian- inspired deco border circles the composition. Wheeler’s version of Spring in Africa is focused on Egypt, by now considered interchangeable with Africa.

The Influence of Egyptian Art on African Americans

With the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance in the mid-1920s, Du Bois’s interest in seeing more artistic renderings of African themes came to fruition. With the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb occurring a few years earlier, the movement’s artists frequently employed Egyptian iconography. The first Aaron Douglas illustration to be included in The Crisis was his “Invincible Music the Spirit of Africa”68 (Figure 14), a drawing specifically made for the magazine, but not accompanied by any text relating to the work or illustrating any articles. The drawing consists of one figure, in silhouette, his head raised in song to the sky, his right arm holding a mallet that he uses to beat a large drum. He is in a crouching position and is clad only with a simple wrap around his waist. His position, with his shoulders parallel to the picture plane rather than reced- ing into space in correct perspective, as well as his hair and the entire profile or silhouette of his body, resemble those of Egyptian art. His hair seems to be a cross between an Egyptian nemes headdress and patterned hair. Here Egypt once again represents Africa. Douglas was trying to simplify the human form. Two shield-like marquis shapes are implanted in the ground behind the figure, with a jagged design on them that resembles African-inspired patterning. The shapes represent plant life, as do three smaller versions which look like leaves and are placed in front of the figure. The top of the drawing includes two large, jagged shapes that represent forms of energy, perhaps the sun or stars, as well as a stylized stream of smoke on the right. The bottom of the drawing includes 78 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 13. April, 1923, Laura Wheeler, “Egypt-Spring.”

flat papyrus plants (that resemble tulips), which appear to be inspired by the art deco movement.69 The drawing is successful because it is very simple, with large expanses of solid black and a bright white background, highlighted by grayish outlines and details. The silhouette format makes it particularly forceful. The ancient Egyptians followed the most basic rule of stylizing the body. The figure was painted as if it were being observed from several different viewpoints. The face was seen in profile, but the one eye shown looked straight ahead. The shoulders were shown from the front and the breast in profile, while the hips were seen from a three-quarter view. The legs were again depicted in profile. Douglas acknowledged his debt to Egypt: “There is one thing that I can pin down. I used the Egyptian form . . . “70 Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 79

Fig. 14. February, 1926, Aaron Douglas, “Invincible Music, The Spirit of Africa.”

Douglas’s second illustration for The Crisis appeared in the May 1926 issue. Du Bois printed the “Poster of the Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre of Harlem” in the issue, not attached to any particular play, but rather as a type of advertisement for Du Bois’s pet theater project (Figure 15). This illustration is much more heavily influenced by Egyptian and African imagery than are many of Douglas’s early works. It is again in solid black and white, very boldly executed, almost resembling a woodblock print. The poster shows a single figure sitting in a cross-legged position, with his or her face turned to the side in profile. The figure is very angular, a primarily rectilinear form, with exaggerated thick lips, the appearance of tribal makeup in geometric form, an Afro hair style, and a large hoop earring dangling from the only 80 Amy Helene Kirschke visible ear. Stylized plants and flowers resembling both African motifs and art deco patterning surround the figure, as does a palm tree.71 The figure’s left hand holds an African mask or ancestral head. Above the figure the influence of Egypt is everywhere, with pyramids on the left, a sun form above, and a sphinx on the right. Wave patterns form the bottom third of the composition, perhaps representing the Nile. The obvious inspiration is one of Africa, and no matter how based on actual African imagery it is, the viewer can see the connections immediately. The style is bold and forceful with its hard- edged, woodblock-influenced style. Douglas provided the September 1927 Crisis cover, “The Burden of Black Womanhood” (Figure 16). This composition includes the figure of a woman

Fig. 15. May, 1926, Aaron Douglas, “Poster of the Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre of Harlem.” Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 81 in a long Egyptian-influenced garment, with a side view of hips and fron- tal body silhouette, holding up a round shape, “the world.” She looks up, with face in profile and the same slit eyes that resemble African masks of the Ivory Coast, a style frequently employed by Douglas. Her lined hair recalls the headdress of the nemes. A cityscape included below that resembles art deco drawings of skyscrapers, with the billowing smoke of industry behind it. One simple cabin, perhaps representing her humble beginnings, is on the far right. On the left we see three pyramids and a palm tree, perhaps indicating her origins. Papyrus blossoms in outline, with a deco handling, are scattered in the composition. The woman bears the burdens of the world, an image that appealed directly to the female audience of The Crisis.

Fig. 16. September, 1927, Aaron Douglas, “The Burden of Black Womanhood.” 82 Amy Helene Kirschke

Africa: The Connection to America

The desire to connect Africa to America can be seen in Laura Wheeler’s “Africa in America” in the June 1924 Crisis (Figure 17). The image shows Wheeler’s knowledge of Egyptian art. She uses an Egyptian Amarna torso of the Eighteenth Dynasty as the prototype for her shapely figure, a sculpture often identified as Nefertiti.72 In the Nefertiti Amarna sculpture, the sculpt- ed fabric clings to the queen’s body, revealing her pubic triangle. Here, the folds are not prominent, but the diaphanous garment reveals her body in the shape of the Amarna sculpture, and her pubic triangle is drawn in. The numerous bracelets are not typically Egyptian, nor is her necklace, which is not the usual broad collar piece. These several strands of beads around her neck are not Egyptian. In her characteristic black-and-white style, with only a few details of the human form, Wheeler creates a voluptuous woman, clad with a sheer garment that still reveals all the lines of her body as if she were nude, adorned with jewelry including wrist and armbands, earrings, necklaces, and a ceremonial headpiece. The woman carries a covered urn on her shoulder. Behind her the pattern of the swirling ocean is formed with a ship crossing in full sail, a symbol of the middle passage and the long and harrowing journey from Africa to slavery in the Americas. The figure is strong and erect . . . proud and lovely as she stands as a symbol of Africa, brought to America against her will, but still retaining her African heritage. She makes a tangi- ble connection to the culture of Africa, a symbolic, visual connection to the memory and heritage of Africa for her audience. Wheeler’s cover was linked to a long article in which Du Bois discussed the opportunities available to black Americans willing to migrate to Africa. He noted that The Crisis received requests periodically from readers, who were in need of advice concerning such migration. Here Du Bois recognized the hardships connected to emigration. He discouraged his readers from moving to Africa, particularly those who hoped for jobs in labor, since Africa had an abundance of skilled and unskilled laborers. “There is a magnificent chance for pioneers but the point is, pioneering is a far different thing from going to work in a fully developed land,” Du Bois wrote.73 Liberia needed physicians, dentists, and nurses. Du Bois claimed that the “spiritual harvest of practical missionary work would in the end be far greater than we can now dream.” He also noted how polite the “natives” were to each other, both young and old: “I have often thought, when I see the awkward and ignorant missionaries sometimes sent to teach the heathen, that it would be an excellent thing if a few natives could be sent here to teach manners to black and white.”74 Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 83

Fig. 17. June, 1924, Laura Wheeler, “Africa in America.”

Primitivism and the Romantic view of Africa

In April 1924 Du Bois published selections from his journal chronicling his first trip to Africa from December 1923 to January 1924. The entries were personal and emotional. Indeed, Du Bois considered his meeting with the king of Liberia as one of the most important events of his lifetime, and wrote about it extensively. 84 Amy Helene Kirschke

When shall I forget the night I first set foot on African soil—I, the sixth generation in descent from my stolen forefathers. The spell of Africa is upon me. The ancient witchery of her medicine is burning my drowsy, dreamy blood. This is not a country, it is a world—a universe of itself and for itself, a thing Different, Immense, Menacing, Alluring. It is a great black bosom where the Spirit longs to die. It is life so burning, so fire encircled that one bursts with terrible sound inflaming life. One longs to leap against the sun and then calls, like some great hand of fate, the slow, silent, crushing power of almighty sleep—of Silence, of immovable Power beyond, within, around Then comes the calm. The dreamless beat of midday stillness at dusk, at dawn, at noon, always. Things move— black shiny bodies perfect bodies, bodies of sleek unearthly poise and beauty. Eyes languish, black eyes—slow yes, lovely and tender eyes in great dark formless faces. Life is slow here. Impetuous Americans quiver in impetuous graves I saw where the ocean roars to the soul of Henry Highland Garnet. Life slows down and as it slows it deepens; it rises and descends to immense and secret places. Unknown evil appears and unknown good. Africa is the Spiritual Frontier of human kind—oh the wild and beautiful adventures of its taming! But oh! The cost thereof—the endless, endless cost! Then will come a day—an old and ever, every young day when will spring in Africa a civilization without coal, without noise, where machinery will sing and never rush and roar, and where men will sleep and think and dance and lie prone before the rising sons, and women will be happy.”75

The objects of life will be revolutionized. Our duty will not consist in getting up at seven, working furiously for six, ten and twelve hours, eating in sul- len ravenousness or extraordinary repletion. No—we shall dream the day away and in cool dawns, in little swift hours, do all our work.76 This long selection reveals that Du Bois looked at Africa with the eye of a primitivist, romanticizing the simple, sweet African customs, the slow eyes, the slow lifestyle, the ease of it all. Du Bois even sounds like the young Karl Marx with his description of an Africa which could avoid the disruptive changes brought by capitalist development. Indeed, in many ways his approach to Af- rica resembles the approach of whites to the work of the Harlem Renaissance, which also emphasized primitivism. Du Bois wrote that the African form in color and curve was the most beautiful thing on earth; “the face is not so lovely, though often comely with perfect teeth and shining eyes—but the form of the slim limbs, the muscled torso, the deep full breasts!”77 “A Jungle Nymph” by Allan Freelon (Figure 18), placed on the cover of the June 1928 Crisis, shows a nude young woman of African descent (indicated by her facial features and natural hair) leaning back on her arms, exposing her unclothed body, amidst palms, tropical trees, dense vegetation, and a pond. The pond creates a round Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 85 shape, the water is interrupted by small areas of earth and plants, and the pond could represent the world. She has an Afro hairstyle, but despite her nudity, she wears earrings. Even though we observe her, she is unaware of us; the viewer is in fact a voyeur. She looks down, giving her a sense of privacy or modesty, yet her positioning resembles famous nudes of the nineteenth century who bra- zenly display their nudity, such as Manet’s Olympia of 1863. No direct gaze is provided for the viewer. The entire image is contained by a patterned border. The image fits well with Du Bois’s long description of Africa previously quoted, especially the lines, “The dreamless beat of midday stillness at dusk, at dawn, at noon, always. Things move—black shiny bodies perfect bodies, bodies of sleek unearthly poise and beauty. Eyes languish, black eyes—slow yes, lovely and tender eyes in great dark formless faces. Life is slow here.”78

Fig. 18. June, 1928, Allan Freelon, “Jungle Nymph.” 86 Amy Helene Kirschke

The Crisis also evidenced a sensibility of primitivism in its more sensual covers. Because they were African, these covers were more acceptable sexual imagery than if they had been homegrown African American covers. Africa was supposed to be different, more sexually free. One of the more “sultry” covers graced the May 1925 issue. An unsigned photograph, “A Moorish Maid,” shows a woman wearing an interesting metal necklace. Her hair is pulled back in a head wrap, and the image conveniently reveals a small part of her nipple, indicating she is at least partially nude (Figure 19). This necklace was used on at least one other cover photograph the following year and must have been part of the photographer’s collection used to evoke a “primitive look.” She looks off to the side, with languid eyes, and does not make visual contact with the viewer. Her face appears to have some sort of markings or scarification on it, another indication of her exoticness. This cover served to both showcase a dark-skinned woman and to lure an audience—undoubtedly male—to open The Crisis and read on. Other African American magazines, such as the Urban League’s Op- portunity, which premiered in 1923, were using similar images to attract new readers. Modern sex appeal, under the guise of the primitive, was permissible.

Fig. 19. May, 1925, photo, “A Moorish maid.” (unsigned) Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 87

Over the years he served as editor of The Crisis, Du Bois continually used visuals to comment upon issues relevant to African American life, developing what could be called a visual vocabulary of protest and social commentary. While images on lynching and Africa were among the most prevalent, Du Bois had many interests that were integral to the development of black identity in the United States. Not surprisingly, the prevalence of racism and prejudice dominated the pages of The Crisis for the twenty-four years he served as editor. But he also considered education and fair opportunities for labor as essential to provide blacks with complete participation in American society. On a more controversial note (controversial within the left and progressive community), Du Bois believed in supporting American involvement in World War I, but he sought to attain the best conditions possible for black members of the military. He was also a passionate supporter of women’s rights and suffrage and saw the strength of the black family as paramount to the strength and security of the race. The visuals featured in The Crisis reflect these interests. Within these broad areas, certain themes reappeared within the context of various topics. These themes, which had been used by other political illustrators and cartoonists in American visual history, were developed in The Crisis as tools to show the contradictions and problems within the United States. They relied on symbols of patriotism, Christianity, bravery and heroism, and civilization. Du Bois was convinced that racism could be confronted intellectually, showing its illogical basis and providing encouragement for supporters of Af- rican Americans. Images served to do this in the most dramatic fashion. Many of the cartoonists had their own activist agenda, and felt that changes should and could be made through political involvement and protest.

Racism and Prejudice

Du Bois used the pages of The Crisis to combat racism and prejudice. As the first issue in 1910 declared, the object of The Crisis was “to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people . . . We strive for the broader vision of Peace and Good Will.”79 The magazine claimed first to be a newspaper, reporting on matters concerning race. Secondly, it would review articles, books, and other pieces published on the “race problem,” and third, it would publish a “few short articles.” Visuals would aid The Crisis in all of these goals. Du Bois affirmed that the magazine would represent no clique or party, and would “assume the hon- esty of purpose of all men everywhere.” The Crisis dealt with racism and prejudice when it dealt with any issue at all. Families, education, voting, war, labor—all these issues were affected by racism. Du Bois also included images that dealt solely with racism and prejudice 88 Amy Helene Kirschke not related to a specific issue, but just racism based on color. The early issues include a number of political cartoons and drawings which addressed racism and prejudice. Arnold Rampersad argues that the most forceful impact of The Crisis came from its editorial section, usually two to four pages, where Du Bois spoke directly to the reader. But to reach his audience, Du Bois needed them to read his essays. Visuals could help accomplish that goal. At times, several issues were raised in one editorial, and somewhere in the issue a photograph or drawing was offered as a support to the text. Sometimes these images were editorials unto themselves. Du Bois first became aware of discrimination, prejudice, and racism when he went south to Fisk University. Here, he “quickly understood that behind the segregation of any group was an attempt of a ruling class to put off on a defenseless or powerless group the work of their own social uplift.”80 It is important to note that Du Bois spoke up against discrimination in public schools in the very first issue of The Crisis, November 1910, where he said, “The argument, then, for color discrimination in schools and in public institutions is an argument against democracy and an attempt to shift public responsibility from the shoulders of the public to the shoulders of some class who are unable to defend themselves.”81 One of the more poignant cartoons concerning racism and the responsibilities assigned to the races, entitled “American Logic,” appeared in the June 1913 issue (Figure 20). It shows a very finely dressed white man standing next to a rough-looking white hoodlum. The caption below these two figures reads, “THIS MAN is not responsible for THIS MAN even if they do belong to the same race.” On the right, a very finely dressed black man stands near another black man who does not look as sinister as the poor white man, but is leaning against a post, clearly unemployed and perhaps with trouble on the horizon. Below these two figures, the text states, “THIS MAN is responsible for all that THIS MAN does because they belong to the same race.” The Crisis was underlying the fact that African Americans were not judged as individuals. Instead of being honored for their own hard work and successes, they were automati- cally grouped with the least successful of their racial brothers. This is also using a certain type of visual vocabulary, reflecting assumptions about class, the “good” as bourgeois, and the “bad” as lower or working class.

Education

Integral to the advancement of the race and the “Talented Tenth,” education was one of the strongest commitments Du Bois expressed on the pages of The Crisis. In contrast to Booker T. Washington’s support of vocational train- Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 89

Fig. 20. June, 1913, “American Logic.” (unsigned) ing, Du Bois wanted only the finest higher education for black Americans. The discussion of education was usually a joyful celebration of the successes of individuals, educators, and schools. Du Bois’s commitment to promote education was one that would last a lifetime, and The Crisis provided the ideal place for editorials, announcements, political cartoons, and other artwork connected with higher education. The early years of The Crisis included a number of visuals related to education, with photographs most commonly used. Sometimes these would include photographs of new or improved schools, providing comparisons to inferior schools as examples of segregation. Libraries with “colored reading rooms” were also depicted on the pages of The Crisis. While the images are not as numerous as those for lynching or Africa, they were uplifting and joyful in their content. Although Du Bois was known for printing the statistics on lynchings, he showed the same interest in the particulars surrounding education, publishing the names of college graduates and recipients of graduate degrees, their institutions, and often their photographs. From the first days of The Crisis, advertisements for colleges played a significant role in the magazine’s artwork. In an essay on “Colored High Schools” accompanied by photos, Du Bois urged a commitment to the finest education for black Americans: “There are people in the United States who say: ‘We have tried education as a solution for the race problem and failed, therefore,’ etc.” 90 Amy Helene Kirschke

“We cannot too often insist that it is not true. We have never tried the experi- ment . . . we have tried it here and there, but the United States is not today, and never has had, a complete rational system of elementary education for its myr- iad of black and white children, and this fact is perhaps the greatest achievement of American democracy.” “Let us try education and try it on a national scale. Let us have federal aid to common school training, even if it delays our battleships and puts the annual army maneuvers out of business.”82 Du Bois always noted how far behind the South was in spending per pupil. Du Bois saw education as one of the most important solutions to the strict “caste system” in America, which placed blacks at the bottom. In the June 1912 Crisis he wrote, “Consider this argument: Education is the training of men for life. The best training is experience, but if we depended entirely upon this each generation would begin where the last began and civilization could not advance . . . children must be trained in the technique of earning a living and doing their part of the world’s work. . . . Moreover, a training simply in technique will not do because general intelligence is needed for any trade, and the technique of trades changes.” Du Bois warned that “colored people in educating their children should be careful: First: To conserve and select ability, giving to their best minds higher college training.”83 Du Bois also encouraged parents to give their children the greatest amount possible of general training and intelligence, before teaching them the technique of a particular trade. Du Bois was concerned that “certain folk . . . use the American public-school system for the production of laborers who still do the work they want done.” These people used the public schools system to train servants, carpenters, and mechanics: “ . . . they want a caste: a place for everybody and everybody in his father’s place with themselves on top, and ‘Niggers’ at the bottom where they belong.”84 He urged, “See that your child gets, not the highest task, but the task best fitted to his ability, whether it be digging dirt or painting landscapes; remembering that our recognition as common folk by the world depends on the number of men of ability we produce—not the great geniuses, but efficient thinkers and doers in all lines. Never forget that if we ever compel the world’s respect, it will be by virtue of our heads and not our heels.”85 “Send the children to school. Do not be tempted to keep them at work because they are earning large wages. The race is to the intelligent and not merely to the busy. Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore, GET WISDOM! Hustle the children off the farms and out of the factories and into the schools. Do not wait—do not hesitate. Our life depends upon it. Our rise is founded on the rock of knowledge. Put the children in school. Keep the children in school.”86 Political cartoons served to encourage the readership to seek out higher education and escape menial positions. The September 1913 Crisis features a car- Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 91 toon by Lorenzo Harris that shows a young black woman working in a kitchen, her arm grabbed firmly and forcefully by a white “southern looking” employer, complete with suit, bow tie, and goatee (Figure 21). Here Harris employs the visual vocabulary of the “southern” figure often employed by black illustrators. He has Confederate attributes such as a goatee, a handlebar mustache, a long jacket, and a soft bow tie—the symbols of a southern “gentleman.” He holds the woman “prisoner” across a kitchen table, a fierce look on his face, the knuckle of his left hand grounding his power, pushing into the table. The text reads, “The New Education in the South: Domestic Science for Colored Girls Only.” The implications are obvious: keep black woman in roles of domestic servitude. This is their future, their only education worth pursuing in white society’s estimation. The reader was clearly supposed to find inspiration to escape such a fate by pursuing education. The Crisis was ever critical of segregated schools and criticized them relent- lessly for the second-rate education they offered African American children. Lorenzo Harris created “The argument for ‘Jim Crow’ Schools” for the Octo- ber 1926 issue (Figure 22). A black woman labeled “Nearsighted Race Leaders” pulls reluctant black children toward a “lamb,” saying, “Come now, play with

Fig. 21. September, 1913, Lorenzo Harris, “New Education in the South: ‘Domestic Science for Colored Girls Only.’” 92 Amy Helene Kirschke the nice pretty little lamb that someone has sent to you.” The lamb is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. His name is “Separate School,” and the words “Neglected Jim Crow School” and “A Few jobs for Colored Teachers” adorn his body. An ape- like figure, “Prejudice,” hides behind the door. The cartoon includes subtleties. There is a class difference between the teacher and her students. The teacher is wearing an out-of-date, country-style plaid dress, not the streamlined clothing favored by middle-class women of 1926. The children, by contrast, are dressed in middle-class contemporary clothing and are groomed and neat. The teacher’s face is a caricature, with heavily exaggerated features; the children are finer- featured, although their skin is dark. The children sense the danger of the wolf—the boy stands up to him, the girl recoils—while the teacher is unaware. This cartoon reminds parents to be mindful of the quality of their schools and encourages them to take action. And it criticizes black educators who accept segregated schools in the Jim Crow South.87

Fig. 22. April, 1926, Lorenzo Harris, “The Argument for ‘Jim Crow’ Schools.”

By March 1934 Du Bois supported segregation in subsistence homestead colonies, which were designed to develop racial solidarity and economic cooperation during the Depression. It was a measure introduced by the federal Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 93 government. The August 1934 Crisis cover was particularly striking: it shows a silhouette of a man shackled; his chains between his wrists span the composition as his long arms reach out. He resembles a muscular WPA sculpture (Fig- ure 23). Black figures create a band, or frieze, at the base of the composition, and their ranks include a sailor, a farmer with his pitchfork, a woman doing laundry with a washboard and tub, a fleeing figure who represents a slave trying to escape to freedom, and a carpenter with his tools. They all look toward or reach toward a figure in cap and gown. This figure of education has his chains attached to him, but he holds a diploma, and he surges forward. The message is undeniable: education was the only way out of the effects of slavery and discrimination. The most elevated figure in the composition is the graduate, who will escape the fate of his ancestors.

Fig. 23. August, 1934, Prentiss Taylor, untitled shackled man.

Du Bois was committed to education as the way out of the vicious cycle of racism and lost opportunities. It was one of the more significant, encouraging, and upbeat messages The Crisis would relay to its audience.

Labor While the United States was making strides in labor issues, violence kept the black laborer down. Du Bois acknowledged that white laborers were not sure they wanted black laborers as fellow workers. He believed that they had some common interests, but that racism divided them. White laborers were not ready to accept blacks into unions. Du Bois wrote, “And there lies the most stupendous labor problem of the twentieth century—transcending the problem 94 Amy Helene Kirschke of Labor and Capital, of Democracy, of the Equality of Women—for it is the problem of the Equality of Humanity in the world as against white domination of black and brown and yellow serfs.”88 Bernie Robynson’s July 1928 Crisis cover, “Progress,” is pierced by a classical- ly clad trumpeter, with a laurel-leaf wreath on her head, crossing the composition (Figure 24). A frieze of laborers forms a band across the base of the cover and includes wood workers, construction and agriculture workers, a soldier, a writer, and a musician. A figure in cap and gown is also included in the productive group. Behind the frieze stand the achievements of the black workers: a cathedral, a skyscraper, a factory, a school, and a small church. Robynson is employing heroic visual vocabulary to personify “progress” in the black community, achieved through education.

Fig. 24. July, 1928, Bernie Robynson, “Progress.” Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 95

In April 1933, Du Bois wrote one of his more forceful columns, “The Right to Work.” He noted that with rapidly changing techniques in industry, it was practically impossible for “Negro industrial schools to equip themselves so as to train youth for current work.” And with shops and apprentice systems closed to black Americans, the door of opportunity was closed. The white industrial system in the United States was changing, and black laborers had to prepare for “a new organization and a new status, new modes of making a living, and a new organization of industry.”89 Radical reorganization was inevitable, a by-product of the First World War and repeated industrial cataclysm, namely, the Depression. Along with Du Bois’s ideas about separation went an increasingly radical view about public ownership and state control of the economy. Blacks needed to have power and learn the secret of economic organization. Having survived slavery, poverty, lynching, and other atrocities, black Americans remained in “good health and strength. We have brains, energy, even taste and genius . . . Negro literature and art has been distilled from our sweat. There is no way of keeping us in continued industrial slavery, unless we continue to enslave ourselves, and remain content to work as servants for white folk and dumb driven laborers for nothing.” His answer? “We can work for ourselves. We can consume mainly what we ourselves produce, and produce as large a proportion as possible of that which we consume.” He encouraged black Americans to “establish a progressively self-supporting economy that will weld the majority of our people into an impregnable, economic phalanx.”90 The motive for black Americans was a strong one. “We are fleeing, not simply from poverty, but from insult and murder and social death. We have an instinct of race and a bond of color, in place of a protective tariff for our infant industry.”91 Du Bois related economics to every other problem that blacks suffered, and he covered all these issues in The Crisis. Therefore, art that referred to economic slavery was also related to almost every other issue, including education, women’s rights, poverty, lynching, and racism. Freedom could not be achieved without economic opportunity. The November 1933 issue of The Crisis featured a cover paying tribute to the “Black Miner” (Figure 25). Mining was one of the most physically demanding and dangerous jobs any man could do. The cover shows a simple wood block–styled cutout of a miner in silhouette; he leans on his mallet, deep in thought, exhausted and dejected. Bright light is used to emphasize the folds of his clothes, his arms, and his profile as he looks down and a large light shines from his cap. The outline of his body is echoed four times in the background, in alternating black and gray shadows, a technique often employed by former Crisis art director Aaron Douglas. The only details offered are the folds on his garment, his facial features, and his ear. 96 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 25. November, 1933, J. E. Dodd, “Black Miner.”

The Depression brought an increase in pages devoted to labor in The Crisis and an increase in political cartoons and photographs of successful laborers and business owners. The April 1934 cartoon, drawn by artist Romare Bearden, shows a long line of black workers with a simple sign posted on the wall, which a white man in a suit points to; the sign says “No Help Wanted” (Figure 26). The dejected workers with no hope of employment hold their faces in despair, and their eyes are downcast. The effects of the Depression were even more severe on black laborers than on their white counterparts. The final labor cartoon under Du Bois’s editorship was another Bearden cartoon in July 1934, “The Picket Line” (Figure 27). The cartoon shows a collage of headlines: “Owners Tell Minister They Will Not Employ Negroes As Clerks,” “Admit 75 per Cent of Trade is Derived from Colored Patronage,” “The Jobless Negro,” and more. Bearden draws a huge group of black protesters holding signs that say “Begin to trade Where You Can Also Find Work,” “Give us a Job!” and “Negro Con- sumers.” Du Bois had encouraged blacks to create products for each other and Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 97 to buy from each other, since black labor was continually shut out of the workforce and unions. The Crisis offered columns of statistics on wages, types of work offered, photographs of unemployed workers, and more success stories, including a growing interest by some companies in the “Negro market.” Du Bois became an increasingly militant supporter of the black laborer on the pages of The Crisis. He hoped his essays and the visuals could address the black laborer’s exclusion from work while his highlighting of successful black businesses served as a form of inspiration.92

War and the Military

One of the most controversial positions W. E. B. Du Bois ever took as editor of The Crisis was his full support for American involvement in World War

Fig. 26. April, 1934, Romare Bearden, “No Help Wanted.” 98 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 27. July, 1934, Romare Bearden, “The Picket Line.”

I. As did contemporary observers, historians still bitterly debate Du Bois’s “Close Ranks” editorial in July 1918, which urged that blacks “forget [their] special grievances and close ranks” with white Americans and the Allies for the duration of the war.93 David Levering Lewis, while not doubting that Du Bois believed in the importance of an Allied victory, thought Du Bois wrote the editorial to gain an army commission.94 Historian Mark Ellis strongly criticizes the Du Bois position, arguing it was a “serious misjudgment” that “harmed the struggle for equal rights.”95 William Jordan defends Du Bois, arguing that he took a “pragmatic” stance and that “Du Bois was not simply hopeful about what would happen if blacks supported the war unconditionally, he was also fearful of what would happen if they took any other course of action.”96 The imagery Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 99 in The Crisis supports Jordan’s perspective, reflecting both the support Du Bois gave to the war effort, but also his hope for change in America as a result of the war. With the magazine having reached its sought-after monthly circulation of fifty thousand, the threat of wartime censorship and restriction was certainly apparent.97 Theodore Kornweibel’s recent study highlights the degree to which the Bureau of Investigation began scrutinizing The Crisis in late 1917, with some agents believing that “every word is loaded with sedition.”98 In May 1918 Du Bois told the NAACP board that “the Department of Justice has warned us against the tone of some of the articles in Crisis.”99 In reality, governmental authorities would conclude by late summer of 1918 that The Crisis was “the most well-balanced and sane” of the black periodicals. Perhaps one factor in their thinking was the visual representation of both soldiers and the war in The Crisis. The images Du Bois chose to use emphasized his view that black patriotism and loyalty to the war effort would be rewarded with an end to segregation and discrimination.100 Even before the war, images of soldiers appeared frequently in The Crisis. The first soldier to appear on the magazine’s cover was U.S. Army Captain Charles Young, in a photograph on the cover of the February 1912 issue.101 Young was handsome, educated, articulate, and one of Du Bois’s first real male friendships. Young was the son of slaves and the third African American graduate of West point.102 Du Bois was his ardent supporter. In the early years of The Crisis, images of soldiers usually appeared in the form of photographs (including both soldiers in the United States and around the world), sometimes as a part of the “Man of the Month” column. Unlike some progressives who abhorred military service, Du Bois had no qualms about honoring black participation in the peacetime military, even though it remained strictly segregated. After America’s entry into the war in April 1917, Du Bois sought to ensure black participation. When it appeared that black men might not be included on the battlefront and for the first time since the founding of the Republic would not be allowed the “privilege of dying alongside” white soldiers, Du Bois became committed to ensuring a place for black officers in the war effort.103 The army leadership had “profound hostility” to the idea of a black officer group, and political pressure from the NAACP and their organizations was required to ensure that some blacks would serve as officers.104 (Du Bois’s own father had served in the Union army, although without distinction.)105 Du Bois also hoped to achieve better conditions for soldiers, and despite opposition to segregation, he ultimately supported the creation of such a segregated camp for black soldiers. Conditions in the segregated camps were particularly bad in the South, with poor clothing, housing, food, and working conditions for black troops.106 In Du Bois’s view, the poor conditions were surely preferable to being denied participation. David Levering Lewis, 100 Amy Helene Kirschke while criticizing Du Bois for seeking such a position, has noted that Du Bois was expected to cry “racism” and to fight against a separate camp, but instead “his very powers as propagandist appear to have pushed him in the other direction, as if to preclude the possibility that his renown might be exploited in order to stigmatize African Americans as whining, divisive and unpatriotic.” Du Bois planned to take up the cause again for complete inclusion of African American soldiers once the war was over.107 Although The Crisis had been sharply critical of the mistreatment of blacks within America, Du Bois now chose images that affirmed African American loyalty to the United States. As Mark Lewis’s recent study makes clear, the belief that “blacks were a weak link in the political, economic, and military cohesion required for total war” was widely shared within Woodrow Wilson’s administration.108 There were fears of pro-German or pacifist sentiments among blacks, and spying and surveillance of black leaders and organizations intensified. But The Crisis did not wholly lose its critical edge during the war. In June 1918 the silhouetted outline of a soldier holding his weapon, standing erect, and facing the viewer introduced a yearly magazine number dedicated to soldiers. Issues of war were often tied in with issues of freedoms denied at home, and with economic and labor issues. The June 1918 issue also featured the cartoon, “War, the Grim Emancipator” (Figure 28). A black man is on the left side of the composition, holding his hammer/mallet in his hand and standing on a rock labeled “Economic Slavery.” A broken shackle of slavery dangles from his wrist. Behind him a figure, “The War,” holds a knife which severs his shackles, with the words “war work” on the knife. The war had increased black income and economic power temporarily. The Crisis recognized that the transformation in African American lives brought by World War I had been bought at a huge cost paid by black servicemen. William Edward Scott’s “At Bay” of November 1918 shows a black soldier with pistol in hand, fallen, but still holding the American flag; even with pain crossing his face, he is proud and brave (Figure 29). The wrist that holds his pistol is bandaged. The barbed wire of the European trenches divides the composition behind him; soldiers in the background are still fighting. The barbed wire represents trench warfare and the realities of war, including the suffering of the wounded and sacrifice of lives. The wire isolates the soldier in the front of the composition, thereby emphasizing him. Though fallen and wounded, Scott’s soldier finds the strength to hold up the flag. Above all, Scott depicts the patriotic, heroic masculine black American soldier, willing to sacrifice his life to serve his country. It reflects an imagery central to American civic religion, later enshrined in the flag-raising statue of Iwo Jima and even the actions of firefighters at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack. Yet Du Bois would remain disappointed, as the war seemed to yield little in the way of improvement in the status of African Americans. Although there Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 101

Fig. 28. June, 1918, “War, the Grim Emancipator.” had been some economic gains, racism and discrimination thrived. A Janu- ary 1920 cartoon sums up these feelings, showing a fat Uncle Sam turning to a wounded black soldier with exaggerated features that include staring eyes and full lips. He is tired and dejected. Uncle Sam explains, “It’s very simple, Bill: in war-time you must rush ahead; now you stay in the rear” (Figure 30). The cartoon was reprinted from Berlin’s Lustige Blaetter paper and also appeared in Le Rire in Paris. The European artist used caricature for both figures, a fat Uncle Sam and a black soldier with full lips and very dark skin. The Germans were noting the hypocrisy of Paris, London, and Washington. Europeans had to deal with the fact that they had used African soldiers and promised colonial reforms. Du Bois reprinted the cartoon, recognizing that Europeans better understood the predicament of the African American soldier, recognizing the broken promises the soldiers faced.

Women’s Issues, Family, and Children

W. E. B. Du Bois was a lifetime supporter of women’s rights in the public arena. He wrote essays, books, editorials, and reviews supporting equal rights for women and gave numerous speeches that featured arguments supporting 102 Amy Helene Kirschke

Fig. 29. November, 1918, William Edward Scott, “At Bay.” equal rights and the right for women to vote. As historian Bettina Aptheker has pointed out, Du Bois was not unique among black men in his efforts to humanize women.109 Pride in womanhood was an important part of the black experience, and tributes to black women were common in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Du Bois and other black intellectuals understood that the abuse suffered by black women under slavery, including sexual abuse, formed a large part of the black experience in the United States and needed to be understood. In one of his most famous books, Darkwater, Du Bois wrote passion- ately that while he could “forgive” the South its “so-called ‘pride of race,’” the “one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world or the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 103

Fig. 30. January, 1920, untitled cartoon, reprinted from Lustige Blaetter and Le Rire.

it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust.”110 Du Bois knew the black minister Alexander Crummell well and greatly admired his lectures on the abuses that black women suffered under slavery. Crummell spoke of the black woman’s loss of innocence, the sexual abuse she suffered, and the fact that she was used as a breeder, for the field and for the auction block.

Suffrage

Du Bois knew that the suffrage movement for women was connected to racism and prejudice, which in the pages of The Crisis he forced his readers to address. Some black male leaders, as David Levering Lewis has pointed out, 104 Amy Helene Kirschke

“connected the issue of votes for women with the unhappy memories of their nineteenth-century collaboration.”111 Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NASA), was quoted in the October 1911 Crisis as stating, “Do not touch the Negro problem. It will offend the South.”112 In other words, work for white women’s votes, not black, since by including blacks in the equation, she felt the white woman’s position would be weakened. Du Bois feared that the battle cry was becoming, rapidly, “Votes for White Women Only.”113 He would not abandon the cause; it mattered deeply to him and he continued to include it in the pages of The Crisis, showing his sizable readership the duplicity of white suffragette officialdom.114 Five years later, Shaw reversed her opinion and supported all women’s right to vote, and her words were published in The Crisis. The August 1915 Crisis featured Lincoln as a symbol of freedom—freedom that could only be achieved through the vote (Figure 31). An elderly Sojourner Truth, with hair wrapped in a kerchief and shawl over her shoulders, a symbol of the strong black woman, is sitting in front of an open book, her hand reaching out as if to present the book to us. Behind her is the image of Abraham Lincoln, looking down, his hand on the pages of the book. This is related to Du Bois’s earlier effort to revive the alliance between “women and Negroes.”115 The image relied on a common symbol of emancipation in the visual arts, recalling Henry O. Tanner’s famous portrait of two elderly people looking at the portrait of Lincoln. Tanner’s painting shows Lincoln watching over black Americans even after death, an icon of freedom and emancipation. The cover was accompanied by Du Bois’s views on the issue, and inside the magazine, the text showed the commitment of black leaders to women’s rights.

The Family

The NAACP received numerous requests in the early years of The Crisis to establish a children’s department. Accordingly the organization established a committee to review the possibilities. In the interim, Du Bois established both the children’s annual number and the educational numbers, and later the Brownies’ Book. He recognized the unique problems faced by the parents of black children in a racist society and offered both warnings and solutions. Du Bois wanted to build an audience from the “ground up” and was always mindful of the youngest members of his readership. The Crisis included information important for growing families and for children. Du Bois featured, for example, in October 1911 a “Children’s Number” for the “true brownies.” This interest in children, Du Bois felt, “Makes the widest appeal to our readers.”116 He wanted to educate children, to encourage them to care for others and not to learn Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 105

Fig. 31. August, 1915, “Votes for Women.” (Sojourner Truth and Lincoln)

hatred for other races. Visuals were uplifting and positive reminders of the importance of children and the duties of parenthood. The idea of the mother as a protector is particularly poignant in John Henry Adams’s cartoon, “Woman to the Rescue!” in the May 1916 issue (Figure 32). A woman holds a large club while her two young children, a boy and girl, cling to her long skirts. The club, labeled “Federal Constitution,” is swinging at horrible birds swooping down to attack her and her children. She attempts to beat off the advances of “Jim Crow Law,” “Segregation,” “Grand-Father Clause” (on the ground), “seduction,” and “mob.” A black man in a traditional southern suit and top hat runs away. He states, “I don’t believe in agitation and fighting. My policy is to pursue the line of least resistance. Tuh——with Citizenship 106 Amy Helene Kirschke

Rights, I want money I think the white folk will let me stay on my land as long as I stay in my place . . . (Shades of Wilmington, N.C.)117 The good whites ain’t responsible for bad administration of the law and lynching and peonage, le me think awhile,: er—.” It is the black woman who battles the forces of evil alone, with no support from the black male in this venue. With the help of art, both drawings and photographs, W. E. B. Du Bois underlined the points he considered to be most important to women. The material in The Crisis that dealt with women and children was uplifting and supportive; it celebrated the role of women in society, the all-important need to educate women, and the great importance of the role of the mother in black society. On a personal level, Du Bois presents a paradox-he was controlling

Fig. 32. May, 1916, John Henry Adams, “Woman to the Rescue!” Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 107 and demanding both at home and at the office with the women with whom he spent most of his time, yet in public he presented to his readership at The Crisis a forceful, progressive stance on issues involving women’s suffrage, rearing children, prejudice toward women, and family issues. The May 1934 issue, the last month Du Bois would edit The Crisis, offered an essay on segregation. A young girl questioned Du Bois after a lecture, arguing that he was no longer fighting segregation and was too willing to compromise. Du Bois explained that he was always willing to compromise and he would take what he could get, but he would always want more. “Moreover, I fight Segre- gation with Segregation, and I do not consider this compromise, I consider it common sense.” He made reference to a terrible slum which provided substandard housing for five thousand “colored people,” but soon would be bull-dozed and replace with new, clean housing for these people. While it wasn’t ideal, and it was “segregation by the US government,” Du Bois noted that it was far better to get a decent segregated development than none at all: “ . . . The advantage of decent homes for five thousand colored people outweighs any disadvantage which will come from this development.” “I say again, if this is compromise: if this is giving up what I have advocated for many years, the change, the reversal, bothers me not at all. But Negro poverty and idleness, and distress, they bother me, and always will.”118 Al- though he opposed racial segregation early in his career, as early as 1917 Du Bois speculated on the possibility that under specific conditions there might be a need for a “new and efficient industrial machine” within the black community, a machine that might require a type of separatism.” During the years of the Great Depression, Du Bois came to believe that the only hope “lay in the use of self-segregation against the fact of imposed segregation.”119 The idea that an oppressed group needed to separate itself in order to develop and mature would be articulated later by the Black Power movement; Du Bois was ahead of his time. On May 31, 1934, Du Bois resigned as editor and submitted a letter to Joel Spingarn in which he wrote, “I have considered very carefully and painfully the suggestions of you and your brothers. I cannot comply. I know in my soul that the time has come for complete severance. It is not easy. I am twice losing a first born child and I am cutting myself off from old and good friends, but Gott helfe mich, ich kann nicht anders. I appreciate your friendship and your many efforts in my behalf.”120 Du Bois had changed. His interest in racial separatism clashed with the inte- grationist philosophy of the NAACP and resulted in his resignation from The Crisis. Du Bois concluded that voluntary black self-segregation was the only answer to several things: the segregation that was white-imposed, particularly in the South; the failure of the American capitalist system to provide the needs of 108 Amy Helene Kirschke black Americans (particularly poignant during the Depression); white racism; the technology which undermined the development of a classical education and the talents of skilled artisans, hurting employment chances for African Americans; and an education system that had failed blacks. Du Bois discussed these issues on the pages of The Crisis, between 1930 and 1934.121 Du Bois’s assessment of the American Communist party as failing to aid the Scottsboro boys and failing to acknowledge the power of white racism further supported his views that self-segregation was the answer for an improved life for African Americans. Over his twenty-four years as editor of The Crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois used visual imagery to shape a collective identity for African Americans and create a new collective memory, based on the past and current events on the pages of The Crisis. Du Bois carefully placed illustrations and cartoons in Crisis to support the causes he publicly advocated. At a time when the social realist movement was developing in the United States, The Crisis offered its own realism through brutally honest statements about African American life and the “American dream” which was never extended to Black Americans. Often the artists turned to traditional iconography for their prototypes, using established symbols, such as the Statue of Liberty, and relying heavily on traditional Christian iconography. Du Bois wanted to reconstruct the past by asserting a history in The Cri- sis that refuted dominant white culture and created a visual vocabulary that would enhance a new black collective memory. He wanted to confront the race problem on the pages of The Crisis, not hide from it. The Crisis was a journal edited by an African American, and largely controlled by blacks, for a predominantly black audience where black achievement could be celebrated. Du Bois conceived of The Crisis as a journal that would disseminate information and serve as a tool to educate his readers. On the pages of The Crisis, he reclaimed a lost history with words and art that told the story he wanted blacks to absorb. The Crisis told the story from the top down, from the pen and brush of the “Talented Tenth.” Du Bois created a place of power for blacks from which they could fight white distortions of history and preserve African American history. White publications of the time were not representing blacks with respect and dignity, or telling a consistent and accurate story about the reality of lynching, racism, and segregation. The Crisis rectified this on a national scale. Where black newspapers in limited markets featured minimal visuals, The Cri- sis reached a national audience and made visual imagery an integral part of the journal. From his early days at Harvard working on his dissertation on the slave trade, Du Bois saw visuals that advertised the sale of slaves and posted rewards for runaways. Visuals were powerful, and they were almost exclusively created by white artists. Du Bois was interested in visual arts even when he wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, but he knew very little about black American art- Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 109 ists. With his work on Moon and then Horizon, and through his interest in the publication Negro Voice, he developed a strategy of combining powerful visuals and the written word to bring home a message. Relatively little is known about all The Crisis artists. Faced with limited training, limited exhibition venues, and limited chances for patronage, they welcomed the opportunity to create a community, at least in the pages of the journal. Du Bois served as a patron by providing a place to exhibit in the magazine, a national venue. He paid for the work, and The Crisis offered prizes as well. He used art as an audience-building tool. Art could draw readers to an issue, could entice them to read on, could give a message when an issue was too painful to read. Art increased the number of subscribers and encouraged a reader to buy the journal at a newsstand. It was a tool that was used carefully and thoughtfully to make the journal more attractive and poignant. These artists were able to create art as a social protest that would cut quickly to the essence of an issue. The best and brightest of the race would serve to enlighten readers and encourage involvement in the pressing issues of the day. Images were powerful tools in the task of identity formation, and even sorrowful ones like those which expressed the horrors of lynching could inspire. Visuals provided proof of unspeakable acts and showed immediate reference to the horrors of lynching, helping to encourage political action and to mobi- lize black Americans by uniting them in the sorrow. Du Bois understood that lynching was still thriving, and that other unspeakable horrors from the past could also reappear. Only by illuminating the situation to his readers could the issues be confronted. Journalism had been one-sided in the coverage of lynchings. Even the most respected white journals, including the New York Times, covered the crimes with a bias and an assumed guilt of the black victims. Some lynchings would never have been recorded if it were not for the actions of The Crisis and the NAACP. Sex crimes, fear of miscegenation, and the presumed primitive sexuality of black men were used as rationalizations for lynchings. Fear of economic advancement and the loss of black labor were also reasons to continue the terror. These excuses were exposed in editorials and particularly poignant art on the pages of The Crisis. Where white journals revealed only a narrow perspective on lynchings, the whole story, with photographs, was included in The Crisis, revealing acts that were almost too horrible to read. If a subscriber couldn’t bear a sixteen-page account of the Waco atrocities, the photos compelled an acknowledgment of racial terror and encouraged participation in the fight against lynching. The artists used Christian iconography, particularly images of the crucified Christ, to emphasize the un-Christian character and sheer evil of lynching. They also sought to shame Americans, who in the early twentieth century lived in a church-going society, with images that emphasized the depraved 110 Amy Helene Kirschke aspect of “entertainment” in lynchings, hoping that civilized Americans could be motivated to act against such barbarism in their communities. The artists addressed rival memories of acts of terror and asserted an image of lynchings opposed to that of the “postcards” of actual lynchings sold as souvenirs on site. Now these images were appropriated as evidence of the terror and inspired political cartoons that addressed the issues. The facts about lynchings had been suppressed, and the events were lied about and the details twisted to support a white viewpoint. Du Bois used the art and the editorials as publicity to encourage his readers, as well as legislators and the courts, to take action. The practice of lynching could unite his readers through sorrow, just as joyful and celebratory events in black culture could unite them. Symbols of lynchers were developed in the guise of the barbarian and the devil to attack the uncivilized and un-Christian behavior of the perpetrators. The artists and essayists showed the hypocrisy of a country that could send their men to war to fight atrocities abroad, but ignored murder and terror at home. To use the old cliché, one picture could be worth a thousand words, and Du Bois understood the power of the image. This was not a southern problem; it was a problem that all blacks, indeed all Americans, had to face. Du Bois believed that most Americans could be politically mobilized if they realized the urgency of the situation. Du Bois sought an authentic artistic voice, by expressing the reality of black life on the pages of The Crisis. He emphasized the truth, and considered truth an expression of beauty. Through the expression of beauty, in visual form too, his audience would become more sophisticated and enjoy the exposure to art. Serving as patron, The Crisis offered prizes and incentives to encourage the visual arts. Likewise, art was used to entice the youngest readers of The Crisis, developing an audience through children. Black artists wanted control over their own visual imagery, and The Crisis provided a venue for that control to be exercised. Du Bois, as arts patron of a social realist black art, anticipated the 1960s- era black arts movement and separatist black visual arts. By encouraging artists to express the truth of black life, Du Bois was encouraging them to express the best of art and the best of life. Deeply concerned with identity formation, Du Bois focused much of his energy on forging a relationship between his readers and Africa. A sorrowful connection had been forged through the imagery of lynching, but a joyful, race-pride relationship with the culture of Africa was equally important to the artists of The Crisis. Du Bois understood the global implications of slavery and wanted to forge a greater sense of the “black Atlantic” and a truly Pan- Africanist view of the Diaspora. Egypt was a familiar visual vocabulary to his readership, and Egyptian imagery was regularly utilized. By celebrating Afri- can culture in visual form, Du Bois hoped to connect the entire continent to his readers, in one manner or another. Modern artists including Picasso and Braque had appropriated African art for their own artistic and creative suc- Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 111 cesses; why shouldn’t African Americans do the same? Du Bois’s trip to Africa in 1924 solidified his relationship to the continent, one that would continue until his death in Ghana in 1963. Modern art, including social realist art, cubist-inspired art, art deco, and modernist art, appeared on the pages of the magazine. Du Bois openly dealt with the issues of racism, education, labor, war, and women’s issues, with rich visuals to elucidate the magazine’s political agenda. Art could increase readership and enhance the written word. Images could serve as a means to assist both protest and propaganda. Through the art and the written word in The Crisis, Du Bois would hammer home to his readers the need for a strong sense of identity and the need to record history accurately, to take the power of historical narrative away from the white majority. The mistakes of history would be repeated without an honest recounting of them. As Du Bois put it, “One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over . . . The difficulty of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”122 With the departure of Du Bois from The Crisis in August of 1934, the visual arts virtually came to an end on the journal’s pages. The years following Du Bois’s editorship were not kind to the artists who once graced the covers of the magazine. Documentary photographs and text took over; original art, both on the cover and in political cartoons, was rarely utilized in the coming decades. The artists of The Crisis undertook the telling of truth under the direction and inspiration of Du Bois, joining readers through common hope and common sorrow in a collective African American identity, and creating their own authentic historical memory. It was a singular and important achievement, a tribute to the man David Levering Lewis has called “avatar of the race.” As Du Bois himself put it 1921, “We Americans have settled the race problem and will not have our settlement tampered with. The truth of Art tampers. That is its mission.”123

——————————— Notes

1. Herbert Aptheker, ed., Writings by W. E. B. Du Bois in Non-Periodical Literature Edited by Others (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982), 170. Originally published in the New Republic, January 3, 1923. 2. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Negro in Literature and Art,” Annals of the American Acad- emy of Political and Social Science 49 (September 1913): 233–37. In 1941, four years after Tanner’s death, Du Bois was still referring to him as the best example of a black 112 Amy Helene Kirschke painter, even though he was mentoring living artists, including sculptor Elizabeth Prophet and Crisis illustrator Aaron Douglas. “The Negro in America, 1941,” Encyclo- pedia Americana (New York and Chicago: American Corl, 1943), 20:47–52. An almost identical essay appeared in the 1932 edition. 3. David Thelen, “Memory and American History,” Journal of American History 75, no. 4 (March 1989): 1119. Rebecca Kook, “The Shifting Status of African Americans in the American Collective Identity,” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (November 1998): 159. 4. David Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical Memo- ry,” in History and Memory in African-American Culture, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Rob- ert O’Meally (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 53. 5. Du Bois, “History of the Black Artisan from Africa to Emancipation,” in The Sev- enth Son: The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, ed. Julius Lester (New York: Random House, 1971), 335. 6. Du Bois, “The Negro in Literature and Art,” 233–37. 7. Bruce Harvey, American Geographics: U.S. National Narratives and the Represen- tation of the Non-European World, 1830–1865 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 207–8. See also the discussion of Delaney, whom Harvey calls the “most stalwart exemplar of minority separatist politics in the nineteenth century,” 194–241. 8. Ibid., 210–11. 9. Du Bois, “Social Origins of American Negro Art,” Modern Quarterly 3 (Autumn 1925): 11. 10. Ibid. 11. Henry Lee Moon, The Emerging Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 51. 12. For more on the artists in The Crisis see Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Memory and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), chap. 2. 13. Robert Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade against Lynching, 1909–1950 (Philadel- phia: Temple University Press, 1980), viii. 14. Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Jack C. Knight, “Reckoning with Violence: W. E. B. Du Bois and the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot,” Journal of Southern History 62, no. 4 (1996): 759. 15. Charlotte Wolf, “Constructions of a Lynching,” Sociological Inquiry 62, no. 1 (1992): 83. 16. Stewart E. Tolnay, Glenn Deane, and E. M. Beck, “Vicarious Violence: Spatial Effects on Southern Lynchings, 1890–1919,” American Journal of Sociology 102, no. 3 (1996): 789. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 791–92. 19. Wolf, “Constructions of a Lynching,” 87. 20. James W. Clark, “Without Fear or Shame: Lynching, Capital Punishment and the Subculture of Violence in the American South,” British Journal of Political Science 28, no. 2 (1998): 271. 21. The Crisis, December 1910, 15. 22. “Editorial: Triumph,” The Crisis, September 1911, 195. 23. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Jesus Christ in Georgia,” The Crisis December 1911, 70–74. Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 113

24. The Crisis, February 1915, 197. 25. Giotto used this technique to include the viewer in the crowd in his frescoing of Enrico Scrovegni’s Arena Chapel in Padua, by placing a figure with his back facing the viewer in a crowd scene, notably in the Lamentation, ca. 1306. The artist of this cartoon is clearly familiar with Christian iconography and symbolism. 26. Du Bois, “Editorial: The Lynching Fund,” The Crisis, December 1916, 61–62. 27. Speech of Moorhouse Storey, June 1922, quoted in The Crisis, August 1922, 165. 28. “The Shame of America,” The Crisis, February 1923, 168–69. 29. This iconography of the mourning mother can be found in such famous works as Giotto’s Crucifixion and Lamentation, where the intense pain and suffering of the Virgin Mary is emphasized. 30. This is clearly a reference to Du Bois’s book The Souls of Black Folk. 31. “Postscript: Lynchings,” The Crisis, August 1927, 203. 32. For more on White’s investigation, see James Madison, A Lynching in the Heart- land: Race and Memory in America (New York: Palgrave for St. Martin’s Press, 2001). 33. Ibid., 11. 34. Ibid., 71, quoting the Marion Chronicle, August 8, 1930. 35. “Postscript: Marion,” The Crisis, October 1930, 353. 36. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland,” ll3. 37. Ibid. 38. First published under the title “Bitter Fruit” in The New York Teacher (Janu- ary 1937). See Peter Daniels, “Strange Fruit”: The Story of a Song,” available online at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/frut-f08.shtml. 39. “Strange Fruit” California Newsreel, 1999, Joel Katz, producer, director, filmmaker. 40. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland, 121. 41. Quoted in ibid., 124. 42. “Postscript: Lynchings,” The Crisis, February 1932, 58. 43. Ibid. 44. Josephine Schuyler, “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” The Crisis, October 1934, 295. 45. The NAACP remained involved in the battle to end lynching. Walter White tried to help get the Costigan-Wagner bill passed in both 1934 and 1935, and even enlisted the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. But as Robert Zangrando explained, “No less than in the days of the Dyer bill, the Costigan-Wagner measure and its later counterparts suffered from southern intransigence and from the higher priorities that national leaders accorded to other aspects of America’s domestic and foreign policies.” Zangrando, Cru- sade against Lynching, 129. 46. Margaret Rose Vendryes, “Hanging on Their Walls: A Commentary on Lynch- ing, the Forgotten 1935 Exhibition,” in Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century, ed. Judith Jackson Fossett and Jeffrey A. Tucker (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 154. 47. Ibid., 153. 48. Marlene Park, “Lynching and Antilynching: Art and Politics in the 1930s,” in Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 18 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 324. NAACP, Walter White to Mrs. George Bellows, NAACP Papers, December 13, 1934. 114 Amy Helene Kirschke

49. One of the more prominent participants, Isamu Noguchi, based his piece on a photograph that Walter White helped him secure, dating to 1930. Vendryes, “Hanging on Their Walls,” 157. 50. Ibid., 168. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 172. 53. See Helen Langa, “Two Antilynching Art Exhibitions: Politicized Viewpoints, Racial Perspectives, Gendered Constraints,” American Art (Spring 1999): 11–39. 54. “Art: Lynching Show Opens in Spite of Opposition ‘Outburst,’” Newsweek, Feb- ruary 23, 1935, 19. 55. Tunde Adeleke, “Black Americans and Africa: A Critique of the Pan-African and Identity Paradigms,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 31, no. 3 (1998): 517. 56. Ibid., 525. 57. Leo Marx, “American Studies—A Defense of an Unscientific Method,” New Lit- erary History l (1969): 86. 58. Melville Herskovits, Franz Boas: The Science of Man in the Making (New York: Scribner’s, 1953), 111. 59. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Folk Then and Now (1939; Millwood, N.Y: Kraus- Thomson Organization, 1975), vii; George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1995), 63. 60. Hutchinson, Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, 63. 61. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 472. 62. Michael Frisch, “The Memory of History,” in Presenting the Past: Essays on His- tory and the Public, ed. Susan Porter Benson, Steven Brier, and Roy Rozenzweig (Phila- delphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 6. 63. My argument owes a great deal to Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), esp. 113, 121–45. 64. Du Bois first expressed this duality in his 1897 address to the American Negro Congress; a modified version was published in Atlantic Monthly in 1897. 65. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, in Writings/Du Bois, ed. Nathan Huggins (New York: Library of America, 1986), 639–40. 66. W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: Viking Press, 1947), l–2 and Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical Memory,” 53. 67. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 123. 68. Aaron Douglas drawing, “Invincible Music: The Spirit of Africa,” The Crisis, February 1926, 169. This drawing gives the illusion of a cut-out silhouette, black and white, with wavy lines of gray tones. 69. This flower design, like others Douglas used in his illustrations, is similar to one found in Theodore Menten, Art Nouveau and Early Art Deco Type and Design (New York: Dover, 1972), 9. 70. Aaron Douglas Interview, by L. M. Collins, July 16, 1971. Black Oral Histories, Special Collections, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Fisk University, Nash- ville, Tennessee. Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 115

71. Again, these plants, which are repeated throughout Douglas’s illustrations, are clearly influenced by art nouveau and early art deco patterning, and can be found in Menten, Art Nouveau and Early Art Deco Type and Design, 9 and 15. 72. The woman’s body was emphasized in the Amarna period. Tightly wrapped sheer fabric outlined the shape of the body and revealed the stomach, the thighs, and the pubic area. 73. “Opinion: On Migrating to Africa,” The Crisis, June 1924, 58. 74. Ibid. 75. The Crisis, April 1924, 248. 76. Ibid., 274. This parallels nineteenth-century Marxist imagery of the world after the revolution. 77. The Crisis, April 1924, 273. 78. Ibid., 274. 79. Arnold Rampersad,. The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 138. 80. Daniel Walden, ed., W. E. B. Du Bois: The Crisis Writings (Greenwich, CT: Faw- cett, 1972), 85. 81. The Crisis, November 1910, 10–11. 82. “Editorial: Education,” The Crisis, May 1912, 25–26. 83. “Editorial: Education,” The Crisis, June 1912, 74. 84. Ibid., 75. 85. Ibid. 86. The Crisis, October 1918, 267. 87. The Crisis, April 1926, 116. 88. “Labor Omnia Vicit,” The Crisis, September 1919, 231–32. 89. Du Bois, “The Right to Work,” in Selections from The Crisis, vol. 2, 1926–34, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus-Thomson, 1983), 692. Originally published in The Crisis, April 1933, 83–94. 90. Du Bois asked, “What then, shall we do? What can we do? Parties of reform, of Socialism and Communism beckon us. None of these offers us anything concrete or dependable.” They too were set to lift the white producer and consumer, “leaving the black man and his peculiar problems severely alone.” Du Bois noted that Socialists and Communists assumed that state control of industry would in some way magically abolish race prejudice and wanted Negroes to assume on faith that this would be the result. But nothing in the history of American socialism gave them the slightest assur- ance on this point. Communism, Du Bois argued, “led by a group of pitiable mental equipment,” only wanted to use Negroes as shock troops. “To raise hell on any and all occasions, these offer in reality nothing to us except social equality in jail.” (Du Bois would change his mind later.) Quote from The Crisis, April 1933, 93–94. 91. Ibid., 694. 92. See Lewis, The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 305–6. 93. Mark Ellis, “‘Closing Ranks’ and ‘Seeking Honors’: W. E. B. Du Bois in World War I,” Journal of American History 79, no. l (June 1992): 96. 94. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 553–55. 95. Ellis, “Closing Ranks,” 120–24. 116 Amy Helene Kirschke

96. William Jordan, “The Damnable Dilemma: African-American Accommodation and Protest during World War I,” Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (March 1995): 1564. 97. These circulation figures come from Lewis, who noted that The Crisis increased its circulation from 22,500 in April 1912 to over 50,000 by January 1918. Lewis, Biog- raphy of a Race, 416 and 544. 98. Theodore Kornweibel Jr., Investigate Everything: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 132. 99. Ibid., 140. 100. Du Bois was acting in the same spirit as suffragists of the time, a movement he strongly supported. In both Europe and the United States there was a widespread belief among suffragists that if they were politically mature, capable, and showed self- sacrifice, their efforts would lead to greater equality and ultimately to suffrage in 1920. This seemed even more logical concerning military service and war, and the possible loss of life. 101. The May 1911 issue included a photograph of the officers of the Eighth Regi- ment, Illinois National Guard, and noted that Colonel Marshall was attending maneuvers in Texas. The October 1911 issue, included a photograph on page 228 in “Along the Color Line” of the “Knights of Pythias” in Indianapolis, dated August 191l. The cover of the September 1915 issue included a soldier in full dress uniform. Inside, in the column “Colored Chicago” for this special Chicago issue, photographs of major players in the arms, including Black captains, and three majors, were included. The November 1915 issue included a photograph of the Veterans of Foreign Service of Pittsburgh, Post 46, the only “colored post on parade” at the national convention at Detroit. The November 1916 issue included the photograph of the First Colored Regiment. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 176. 102. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 530. For more on the international aspects of the effects of service in the war on political rights, see Nicoletta F. Gullace, The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 103. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 530. For more on the international aspects of the effects of service in the war on political rights, see Gullace, The Blood of Our Sons. 104. Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 58. This is the best account of the role of African American soldiers in World War I. 105. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 530. 106. Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 50. 107. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 530. 108. Mark Ellis, Race, War and Surveillance: African Americans and the United States Government during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) xvi. 109. Bettina Aptheker, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for Women’s Rights: 1910–1920,” San Jose Studies 1, no. 2 (1975): 7. 110. W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1921), 172. In an essay in the book, “The Damnation of Women,” Du Bois com- posed his most elegant and direct argument for the equality of the sexes. Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years 117

111. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 417. 112. Ibid., 417. 113. Ibid., 418. 114. Ibid. 115. Jean Fagan Yellin, “Du Bois’ Crisis and Woman’s Suffrage,” Massachusetts Review 14, no. 2 (1973): 370. 116. The Crisis, March 1925, 285–86. 117. “Wilmington, NC” refers to the brutal attack on black business owners in Wilmington in 1898. Businesses were destroyed and many blacks were forced out of town, or chose to flee to avoid more terror. The African American writer Charles W. Chesnutt wrote an account of the Wilmington terror in his second novel, The Marrow of Tradition(1901). 118. “Postscript: The Board of Directors on Segregation,” The Crisis, May 1934, 149. 119. Ibid. 120. W. E. B. Du Bois to Joel Spingarn, May 31, 1934, James Weldon Johnson Pa- pers, Box 11, Beinecke Rare Book And Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. 121. Rampersad, Art and Imagination, 162–63. 122. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1935), 722. 123. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Shadow,” New Republic, February 23, 1921. Chapter 4

“We Return Fighting”

The Great War and African American Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917–1920

Barbara McCaskill

This is the country to which we Soldiers of Democracy return. This is the fatherland for which we fought! But it is our fatherland. It was right for us to fight. The faults of our country are our faults. Under similar circumstances, we would fight again. But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land. —W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers”1

“We return,” wrote W. E. B. Du Bois in the NAACP’s May 1920 issue of The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races. “We return from fighting,” he elaborated. Then, dropping the preposition, “We return fighting.” 2 Coming from Du Bois, the magazine’s visionary editor-in-chief, during the month of May, this statement of the resolve of African American soldiers politicized the commitment to loving and protecting their families that black communities, like their fellow Americans, associated with Mother’s Day. Seven months after the Armistice, the promises of democracy remained elusive among black people, yet African American men had served meritoriously in the bloodiest combat the world to that date had witnessed. Underscoring this irony, the cover of The Crisis depicted a black serviceman carving the “American Negro’s Record in the Great World War” into a crest draped reverently with the eagle and Stars and Stripes. Within its pages Du Bois defended that record from bigoted smears that an epidemic of black men ran amuck raping white women, even as, he wrote, “for

118 Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 119 fifty years [mobs] have lynched two Negroes a week, and . . . have kept this up right through the war.”3 Making such tensions visible, Adeline F. Ries (n.d.) and Anita Scott Coleman (1890–1960) contributed their short fiction to the early decades of The Crisis. Published in the magazine in 1917 and 1920, their works “Mammy: A Story” and “El Tisico” complement Du Bois’s critique of African Americans’ ongoing experiences of racism and injustice, and his challenge to the image of an open- armed, all-embracing United States of America. Like Du Bois’s editorials, their creative works raise questions about the realities of African Americans’ attainment of citizenship that World War I had elicited, and they call out the country for its ongoing exclusion of African Americans from its narrative of upward mobility, patriotism, discipline, and democracy. Ries’s and Coleman’s stories speak to the double battle waged in The Crisis to stake a rightful claim to Amer- ica and freedom, even as black troops swung bayonets abroad to protect a way of life back home that denied them full access.4 In a figurative sense, the triumphal pages of The Crisis at the Great War’s end were moth-eaten, foxed, and flecked by what its editor Du Bois would call “the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Cen- tur y.” 5 His magazine routinely displayed a buoyant appetite for proclaiming African Americans’ individual and collective accomplishments. Yet what The Crisis of January 1920 specified as the “crime and injustice” of “disfranchisement, lynching, ‘Jim Crow’ cars, and wide-spread and continuous injustice of southern whites towards blacks”6 undermined these upbeat developments. The North, too, was “no paradise,” as Du Bois reflected during the aftermath of race riots that had erupted like wildfire across “East Saint Louis, Washington, Chicago, and Omaha.”7 The deaths and injuries among African Americans in- curred during the anti-black riots and lynchings which marked the infamous “Red Summer” of 1919 were representative of many bitterness-inducing displays of this national turbulence. Outbreaks of urban violence often were rooted in competition between blacks and whites for decent housing and lucrative jobs, as well as in racial anxieties that escalated as disciplined, uniformed Afri- can American troops proudly returned from the European theater.8 Ries’s “Mammy: A Story”9 enters this conversation by exploring the conditions required for African Americans to earn acceptance and enfranchisement as fuller and fully American citizens. The title itself is a throwback to slavery days, a suggestion of ongoing, unfinished business surrounding that heinous blot on the national record. The appearance of the word “reconciliation” in the initial paragraph of Ries’s work recalls postbellum narratives by former slaves, what William L. Andrews has called “narratives of reunion.” These memoirs contained nearly obligatory scenes of slaves and slaveholders setting aside old differences in order to express national desires to get on with it after the end of 120 Barbara McCaskill the war, to entwine Uncle Sam and Johnny Reb together in a single harmoni- ous Union once again.10 For example, Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907), who served in the White House as modiste and friend to Mary Lincoln, includes a chapter on the postbellum South in her 1868 memoir Behind the Scenes. She spends “five of the most de- lightful weeks of my life” in 1866 revisiting her old Virginia mistress Ann Gar- land and her family.11 Annie Louise Burton (c. 1858–c.1910), who wakes to Emancipation Day as a young girl enslaved on an Alabama plantation, recalls in her Memoirs a role-reversing evening when her mother divides a meager meal “of only corn meal and pease [sic] and ham-bone and skins” for herself and her five children with an impoverished white mother and her three little ones who appear, “all dripping with the rain,” at the door of their cabin.12 In addition to starvation, malnutrition, disease, and shame, whites and blacks in Keckley’s and Burton’s post–Civil War memoirs struggle together to push back against perceptions of national and cultural irrelevancy. By the 1910s, sheet music or postcards revisiting the antebellum American South used only a single cotton tuft to imply the sweeping Cotton Kingdom of slaves, planters, belles, beaux, magnolia blossoms, colonnaded mansions, and other images associated with the era. Mammy, too, bundled within her robust frame attitudes toward topics ranging from white paternalism, to black female beauty and sexuality, to the Protestant work ethic. She begins Ries’s epony- mously titled story separated from the white child she has raised, her master’s or “Governor’s” now adult daughter named Shiela, and her own grown-up daughter Lucy. The “customary kindness” of their master notwithstanding, he has sold Mammy’s child Lucy, following in so many enslaved women’s foot- steps, “sold—sold like common household ware!” to nurse Shiela’s newborn baby (117). What sustains Mammy’s “hungering soul” in this separation are the “meagre scraps of news” of her Lucy that her owner shares from his study “[o]ne morning each week.” Yet the bittersweet report too soon is replaced by greater dep- redations: Lucy has died suddenly of “a case of heart-failure” in Shiela’s home, far away from her biological mother. “Placing one of his white hands over her knotted brown ones,” the Governor breaks the mournful news to Mammy that a letter from Shiela discloses—Lucy’s lifeless body “found lying on the nursery floor” (117). Yet Mammy seems able to manage her grief instead of massaging it to gall when she travels to retrieve her daughter’s body from Shiela’s household. In the style of the old postbellum reunion and reconciliation narratives,

Shiela herself came down the road to meet her, ready with words of comfort and love. But as in years gone by, it was Mammy who took the golden head on her breast, and patted it, and bade the girl to dry her tears. As of old, too, it was Mammy who first spoke of other things; she asked to be Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 121

shown the baby. And Shiela only too willingly led the way to the nursery where in his crib the child lay cooing to itself. (118)

When Shiela leaves her old nurse alone with her firstborn infant son, Mam- my takes the child and walks to the nearby beach, where she flings him out to sea. “A few hours later,” two slaves searching frantically for their missing young master discover Mammy, a “mad-woman” who sits “tossing handfuls of sand in the air and uttering loud and incoherent cries” (118). “Mammy: A Story” tells a historic narrative of the amputation and severance of African American families. Writing about the A.M.E. Christian Recorder, a religious and political publication that circulated nationally among African American readers during the Civil War, Jean Lee Cole explains how, amidst cas- cading news about “the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery, the surrender of Lee, and the assassination of Lincoln,” formerly enslaved African Americans “placed ads—with the customary headline, ‘Information Wanted’”13—in the hope of finding information about long lost relatives. In response to their “painful losses” of loved ones during slavery, as Heather An- drea Williams writes, “large numbers of African Americans continued to invest emotional capital in creating new families as well as finding those whom they had lost.”14 In the twentieth century, transatlantic letters from the European theater written by African American servicemen to their friends and families on the home front, which sometimes arrived to their recipients after their authors’ demise, thus were inflected by this earlier history of involuntary separa- tions and infrequent reunions among communities of slaves. Published in the January 1917 Crisis, “Mammy: A Story” rhymes with Du Bois’s editorial doubts about the service and sacrifices of a new generation of African Americans. Would they merit the richly deserved reward of acceptance by and respect from white Americans, or would they face another betrayal, especially coming from what his opening editorial called “the Solid South with its denial of Democratic government”?15 Although African Americans had assisted dutifully, and more than their fair share, in defending their country, would they make the team? Would their efforts meet with a reaction from the Ameri- can government as indifferent as Mammy’s Governor’s “kindly” smile to “dis- miss” her after his weekly reports? (117). Pointedly, The Crisis mused, “What would President Wilson do for the colored man? What would he do against him?”16 “Mammy: A Story” appeared in a special themed issue of The Crisis that scrutinized the progress of the African American residents of Richmond, Virginia. This city formerly had been the seat of the Confederate government, where Jefferson Davis conferred with his generals. In the context of the city where “the cradle of the white man’s independence became the market of Ne- gro bondage,”17 as one contributor opined, Ries’s tale sounds cynical about the realistic prospects of dismantling Jim Crow. 122 Barbara McCaskill

In the context of this Richmond, Virginia number, “Mammy: A Story” also stands as an allegory of how (not so) far race relations in the country had improved as America’s soldiers marched to war and their communities pined for their safe return. An essay on “Colored Richmond” in this issue with “Mammy: A Story” includes a description of “very amicable” relations between blacks and whites in the former capital of the Confederacy. “A friendship has grown up here between masters and servants such is found nowhere else in all the South,” observes the author, E. D. Caffee. “This love and friendliness is an in- definable subtle sentiment. The spirit of the old ‘Master’ is still marching on and the old Negro is still marching on, too.”18 Yet Ries’s fictional Mammy is of a decidedly different opinion about the matter. Her tight-lipped fury projects the righteous indignation of Crisis readers as yet another issue delivers news of lynchings, segregated housing and transportation, underfunded schools, and internal divisions among African Americans and casts a pall over correspon- dents’ optimistic monthly reports of the race’s achievements in art, culture, education, industry, politics, and society. When Ries’s Mammy loses her mind after murdering the white child that her daughter had been tethered to as nurse and nanny, the implication is that no good can come when anyone, no matter how wronged, serves up such cold-blooded revenge. At the same time, the story invites readers to consider Mammy’s wild efforts to balance the death of “her own ‘black baby’” (117) with another’s as the natural outgrowth of racism’s illogical and unpredictable conventions. What is one to make of an America where, as The Crisis witnessed, a Jim Crow section can be peremptorily “trans- ferred from the rear to the front” of streetcars in a southern metropolis like Savannah, Georgia, after a fire in one of them killed three white passengers up front but not the black riders forced to sit behind them?19 By presenting the African American woman as the catalyst for the white American family’s destruction, “Mammy: A Story” also writes back to a history of stereotyped African American femininity. The antithesis of white female fragility and pulchritude, Mammy identified the enslaved African American woman as, according to Frances Smith Foster, a “domesticated” figure who is “postmenopausal, unfeminine, asexual, and more loyal to her charges than to her own children.”20 While versions of Mammy in American popular culture have persisted into the twenty-first century, the debut of Nancy Green, otherwise known as Aunt Jemima, at the 1893 World’s Fair Columbian Exposition in Chicago may have functioned as a more immediate cultural narrative for Ries’s story. A marketing strategy for the R. T. Davis Milling Company, which then owned the rights to the fictional image, the pancake-flipping Green and her successors became a national face for the historical Mammy. According to Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, “‘Racial nostalgia’ and ‘national memory’ met and merged at the Exhibition where Nancy Green entertained a crowd with stories about Aunt Jemima’s slave ‘childhood’ in New Orleans.” The “comforting Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 123 memory” of slavery that Aunt Jemima advertised was one that obscured “any historical facts of succession hostilities and the destructive Civil War,” and as Wallace-Sanders explains, affirmed a “preferred version of African American womanhood—an exaltation of slaveocracy nostalgia,” that black clubwomen and their artistic and intellectual successors like Ries opposed.21 In Ries’s story, however, Mammy never appears in the kitchen, the domestic domain where American literature and iconography typically have affixed her. Instead, she is invited to enter the older master’s study and the younger master’s bedroom. African American women have associated such intimate white, male spaces with a dangerous vulnerability to the unsolicited sexual advances of masters and employers. They often have symbolized what the historian Danielle L. McGuire has described as the rape and sexual violence that “white slaveholders, former slaveholders and their sympathizers” deployed against African American women as forms of “coercion, control, and harassment.”22 In Ries’s story, instead of peace, solace, and comfort, the air crackles in each room with Mammy’s latent hostility and restiveness. In- stead of rocking the baby to sleep, Mammy tosses the “golden” white child of her deceased daughter’s mistress, all innocent in his “little white dress,” to his death in the “wild waters” (118). This scene demolishes Aunt Jemima’s happy narrative of blacks and whites benignly accepting racial hierarchies practiced since slavery. The Crisis had destabilized such hierarchies during World War I by arguing for better workplace conditions and higher wages for working-class African American women and men, as well as for the class of professional African Americans to find employment and authority commensurate with their university pedigrees. Its tone was urgent. For example, the January 1920 “Richmond Number” found an overwhelming majority of the city’s African American women employed as laundresses and maids, probably engaged to work within or for white households, and most of the city’s Af- rican American men occupied as laborers.23 In slavery, the notion of black bodies as capital lay behind the severance of family bonds among African Americans like Mammy and Lucy. Similarly, during World War I, in The Crisis’s analysis, an economic system rooted in Jim Crow that accumulat- ed wealth for one group while minimizing it among the other once again stalled the advancement of African American people, even as they made sacrifices of their lives and loved ones. For America’s brown and black sisters and brothers, the “golden door”24 of prosperity, peace, and other aspects of the American Dream that the Statue of Liberty, formally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World,” had promised to Ellis Island immigrants was firmly shut. A revolving door spinning generations of African Americans round and round and round in its spiral of oppression, slavery had ensnared many and released few. In 1858, as calls for southern 124 Barbara McCaskill secession gained currency, Senator James Henry Hammond (1807–1864; D–SC) had ventured his Mud-Sill Theory, which defined African Americans as the lowest caste or mudsill of American society. On either side of the color line, everyone had gathered his meaning. It was not for African Americans to cross joyously from bondage over liberation’s threshold to what the writer Elizabeth Hardwick called a “passionate, dream tossed Americanism.”25 They were to stay in a low place and conduct the menial work of civilized society, while other, whiter groups stepped in.26 World War I and its aftermath had underscored this story of inclusion in and exclusion from the nation. African Americans in the military were typically branded as second-class citizens and relegated to roles supporting white troops in combat, even as such soldiers as the 369th Infantry Regiment or “Harlem Hell Fighters” hunkered down in the trenches and stared down the enemy’s bayonets in wartime service to their country. In April 1918, the military brass refused to allow the men of the 369th to travel overseas under the Stars and Stripes to combat (they carried their regimental flag), required them to wear elements of the French military uniform, and assigned them to serve with the French army. After establishing a heroic military record,27 they returned to a ticker-tape parade on Fifth Avenue, and to the cheers of proud thousands lin- ing the way up to their Harlem home. These African American officers and enlisted men marched with the American flag beside their regimental banners, and they marched under windows and balconies adorned with bunting in patriotic red, white, and blue. The irony of their fighting under the French rouge, blanc, et bleu tricolors kindled a public outpouring of regret among many heretofore silent or indifferent white Americans.28 To deepen these insults, the threat of confident and capable men bearing rifles and of black men displacing white ones for factory jobs, along with slavery’s familiar old race prejudices and anxieties, sparked racial violence from Georgia to Ohio. The June 1919 “Double War History Number” of The Crisis articulated the challenges that African Americans faced during and after the great conflict. In his “Essay Towards a History of the Black Man in the Great War,” W. E. B. Du Bois filled four of its mostly celebratory pages with representative examples of “persistent insult and discrimination” on the field of combat, from white soldiers “refusing salutes” to their claims that African American officers and enlisted men were unfit for skilled work in engineering and artillery, even though there were no opportunities to determine whether they were fit because the military provided no training for them.29 With characteristic sharpness, Du Bois pronounced that African American men who had served in the Armed Forces were nonetheless “glad” for “the persistent and studied harrowing,” because it had revealed that France was “the only real white Democracy,” and it had clarified their understanding of “the real, inner spirit of American preju- Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 125 dice.”30 Articles in this issue that follow—on tests that disqualified educated black voters while sanctioning an illiterate white electorate, on the proceedings of an anti-lynching conference—documented the racial stigmatizing that had been ongoing. This Crisis double issue confirms what Du Bois called a “double disillusion.” As they confronted the battlefield’s ignoble realities of “dirt, disease, cold, wet and discomfort,” African Americans quickly divested themselves of romantic notions of combat. Along with this encounter dawned “the flat, frank realization that however high the ideals of America or however noble her tasks, her great duty as conceived by an astonishing number of men . . . is to hate ‘niggers.’”31 Just over one year after the Armistice Day of November 11, 1918, Anita Scott Coleman’s short story “El Tisico” (“The Consumptive”) appeared in The Cri- sis. The NAACP solicited donations from readers with an advertisement that stated:

DURING 1919 SEVENTY-EIGHT Negroes were lynched in America. ONE was a woman. ELEVEN were ex-soldiers. FOURTEEN were burned at the stake. WHILE TWENTY-EIGHT cities staged race riots. In these, MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED NEGROES were killed. THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE sought the facts, placed the truth before the American public, and defended those unable to help themselves.32

If even African American servicemen, who had so valiantly defended their country, had no defense from America’s racial violence, then no African American, as the advertisement warns, is protected from the mob. Later in the issue, the opening question of Coleman’s piece (“What is patriotism?”)33 suggests that her work would analyze the falsehoods behind so many white Americans’ indifference to the loyalty and civic commitment of her people. The wartime Crisis had pushed back against this travesty with recitations of the patriotic participation of African American troops:

When the world war broke upon us we began a fight that made Negro officers possible. We carried on the effort to secure for them fair treatment and promotion. We worked against discrimination in the draft . . . and against nurses and physicians. We led the march of Silent Protest which was made in a dozen cities against unpatriotic discrimination.34 126 Barbara McCaskill

Coleman would have been invested in seeing that the wartime service of African American men would lead to the greater equality and diminished dis- enfranchisement of her people. Her father, William Henry Scott, a “race man,” had been a Buffalo Soldier in the all-black Ninth Regiment of the U.S. Cavalry. Her brother William Ulysses Scott was a decorated veteran of World War I.35 Out west in Silver City, New Mexico, where her civic-minded father worked on the Santa Fe Railway, Coleman learned about publications back east in Harlem like The Crisis, submitted her fiction and poetry for publication, and became a protégé of Du Bois, who sharpened her style and critiqued her submissions. In The Crisis’s inaugural annual literary contest of 1925, Coleman won third prize for her story “Three Dogs and A Rabbit” and an honorable mention for her story “Remarks upon Three Things as They Are.”36 In 1926 she earned second prize from The Crisis for her essay “Unfinished Masterpieces” and an honorable mention for her unpublished story “Flaming Flame.” Her “Annie Hawkins” is another unpublished short story that received an honorable mention in a Crisis- sponsored literary contest.37 The Mexico-born Coleman was the daughter of a black father and a bira- cial mother of Native American and African American ancestry.38 It follows that she depicts a multiethnic America in “El Tisico,” a diverse nation reflective of the “cosmopolitan society” that, according to the late scholar Ronald Takaki, has defined Americans as “both Third World [from Africa, Asia, and Latin America] and First World [from Europe] for a long time.” As Takaki wrote:

The first Africans arrived in the English colonies before the Pilgrims came on the Mayflower. The Chinese were already in America by the time Italian and Polish immigrants set foot on Ellis Island. And Mexicans in the South- west found themselves incorporated into the United States after the war against Mexico in 1848.39

In “El Tisico,” the setting is the border town of Santa Fe, now in an Ameri- can state but once part of a region claimed by Spain’s massive North Amer- ican empire. A concession of Mexico’s defeat by the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the border also was a contemporary site of African American displays of patriotism, since black cavalry troops helped guard it during World War I.40 As “El Tisico” opens, an Irish railroad engineer and his white WASP companions, “sturdy sons of America—hard-muscled, blue chinned, steady-nerved railroad men” (252), lounge and trash talk during a rest break just over the Mexican border. In the background, African American musicians dubbed The Black Trio play “the best string music” (252). Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 127

Coleman’s Santa Fe, where the trains have stopped and the trainmen have assembled, boasts topography to match its ethnic hybridity. Conveying diversity and difference, the Tex-Mex borderland is a patchwork of “landscape, sun- baked sand, prairie holes, and cactus with mountains dumped indiscriminately everywhere.” Even the climate gets in the game, “the tropic weather of old Mex and the temperate weather of our U.S. trying to mix as it does along the border.” Yet “all” this variety is cohesively “covered by a sky that’s a dazzle of blue beauty.” Its dissimilar elements—“cactus, prairie-dog holes, and mountains”— seem rearranged “into something compact and smooth as a khaki-colored can- vass’” (252–53). One of the characters in “El Tisico,” a “grizzled old” white railroad man named Sam Dicks, tells a tale that is simple enough. A close-knit, nuclear African American family, a “father, mother, and baby,” must rush to make a train from Mexico back to “good old American turf” so that their mortally ill son at least might die on his native soil. When the parents’ resolution to prevent their boy from losing his life “out of sight of the Stars and Stripes” slowly dawns on the white trainmen, the workers hustle to stoke the coal-fired en- gines and fulfill their wish. A photograph of a tan-complexioned Madonna cradling her infant child (“—A little fluttery thing, all heart and eyes”)41 illustrates the first page of Coleman’s story and underscores the maternity and love that strike such deep chords of recognition and connection among the white railroad laborers. Similar to Charles Chesnutt’s Yankee narrators that frame his Uncle Julius trickster tales, “El Tisico’s” character is Sam Dicks, yet he demonstrates an affiliation and admiration for African Americans because of one such family’s national pride and loyalty. In Dicks’s story, the black child’s illness is grave. He is “so sick that every mother’s son on that train felt sorry and wanted to do something.” In his story, an understanding of shared connection emerges between the black family and the white trainmen and passengers—Americans both, but members of two groups that all too often have been disunited, adversarial, and opposed. When the African American mother disembarks “with her baby in her arms,” she “turn[s] in acknowledgement to the kindness she had received, to wave her hand at the engine and its engineer, at the coaches and all the passengers, at everything, because she was glad” (253). Coleman’s black couple demonstrates a sunny perspective on the acceptance of African Americans by white society, the antithesis of Du Bois’s own bitter position when his infant son Burghardt “died at eventide” one humid Atlanta summer. “For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows?” wrote The Crisis’s grief-stricken editor. “Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this 128 Barbara McCaskill nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.”42 Coleman, like her mentor Du Bois, does temper her seemingly neat vision of interracial cooperation and mutuality with hints of the difficulties of achieving such scenarios in the racially divided world The Crisis had chronicled. For example, the collaboration depicted in “El Tisico” is set in the Gay Nine- ties, perhaps to assert to her Crisis readers thirty years later that it would be less likely to happen, even after a war that has ostensibly united blacks and whites against a common foe. Writing in the March 1920 Crisis, a disgusted Du Bois identified two of African Americans’ postwar adversaries, “the White Worker and the Steel Baron.” The white worker barred African Americans from the ballot and the union, and punished them with mob violence if they challenged the peonage of southern tenant farming. The “Masters of Industry” fomented an- tagonisms between blacks and whites, “to make the petty, human jealousies, hatreds, rivalries, and starvations of workingmen, the foundation of their colossal fortunes.”43 Similarly, by observing tartly that an African American singer “had a baritone worth a million, headed under a different color” [emphasis mine] (252), “El Tisico’s” unnamed narrator makes visible his frustration about the slow pace of equality. A sense of ambiguity also exposes the rosy resolution of “El Tisico’s” framed story as perhaps a pretty fiction. The “coach with the sick kid landed fair and square upon American sod” (253), Dicks recounts, but the entire train stops into a depot on the Mexican side of the border. Technically, the trainmen do not altogether succeed in keeping their word to the black family to make it to American soil. Old Sam Dicks, the white laborer who frames “El Tisico’s” story-in-a-story of one African American family’s race against time and destiny, is a spinner of tall tales who has “more yarns in his cranium, than a yellow cur has fleas on a zig-zag trail between his left right ear and his hind right leg” (252). One of the members of The Black Trio similarly sings about the larger-than-life railroad man Casey Jones (1863–1900). Oral narratives and trickster tales about monumental men like Jones and “about John Henry’s supernatural strength and the ways in which Bre’er Rabbit signified on larger, stronger adversaries” thrived in multiracial spaces like the transcontinental railway and the ranges and cat- tle round-ups of the Old Southwest.44 John Henry even could shape shift as a white or black hero, depending on time, place, and audience. The punctuality, daredevil stunts, distinctive train whistle, and martyrdom of this white railroad engineer (he died in a train collision, yet managed to save all the passengers aboard) became the stuff of legend, inspiring numerous ballads and blues and popular ditties.45 As Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell suggest, a story like “El Tisico” demonstrates how “well versed” Coleman was in both the “popular culture of the West” and the “British and American literary canon.”46 I also find evidence of Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 129 her familiarity with classical Greek and Roman epics. Suggesting conventional epithets of the Homeric epics such as “grey-eyed Athena” and “swift-footed Achilles,” Coleman uses compound adjectives to describe “El Tisico’s” characters: the “glowing-eyed, coughing one,” the “strapping, ebony fellow,” the “little, fluttery thing,” “the greatest daredevil and the squarest” (252–53). By alluding to both the super-sized mythic heroes and heroines of antiquity and the exaggerated folk characters of America’s western and African American vernacular traditions, Coleman’s “El Tisico” seems to question the likelihood of a real and “genuine friendship” (252) and a functioning democracy generating easily between real African Americans and their white brothers and sisters. The banjo-playing musician in The Black Trio whose strains have prefaced Sam Dicks’s story is a “flat-chested fellow with a cough” that, as Dicks remarks, “he used some frequent” (253). Dicks reveals to his fellow laborers that the adult consumptive is none other than the “sick kid” on the train of so long ago, the “little banjo-picker . . . whose parents did not want him to die out of sight of” his country’s flag (253). His instrument very likely would have conjured among The Crisis’s readers associations with the painting The Banjo Lesson (1893). Its creator, Henry Ossawa Tanner, was an internationally trained African Ameri- can artist whose likeness would grace the cover of the August 1925 Crisis along with those of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the composer Samuel Taylor- Coleridge, the writers Alexander Dumas and Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Du Bois himself.47 Tanner’s Banjo Lesson conveyed aspirational themes of education, family stability, social mobility, and loving homes that were very important to readers of The Crisis. Its central image, the banjo, had originated in the stringed gourd instruments of West Africa.48 It referenced a culture “indel- ibly rooted in a tradition exclusive to black Americans” that enslaved men and women had preserved and passed down in spite of a system bent on exploiting them, and that in turn had enriched all of American society.49 Additionally, the consumptive’s banjo, in tandem with the mandolin and guitar of his fellow black musicians, rhymes with the drums, fife, and flag of white musicians in another iconic American painting that The Crisis’s cultured readers would have known: Archibald MacNeal Willard’s iconic Spirit of 1776. In celebration of American independence, it famously depicts three generations of bandaged, battle-tested white revolutionaries marching scrappily forward. “El Tisico” thus reserves some optimism for the prospects of African Americans’ full inclusion by whites as citizens and patriots in “our U.S.” (252). The hope that Americans can have such a change of heart is underscored when, in response to a colleagues’ disgruntled murmurings that the tubercular musician can do no good for his country in the war effort (“He sure can’t fight”), Dicks remarks with “pride modulating his voice” that “[e]very red cent” of the money The Black Trio earns goes to the American Red Cross (253). As the 130 Barbara McCaskill aftermath of World War I shifted the physical battle abroad to an ideological battle at home, Coleman’s story also offers an upbeat resolution to the racial inequalities that kept readers of The Crisis on alert. When the outcome of the race problem in America still seemed an unfath- omable one to so many Crisis writers and readers during and after World War I, Ries’s “Mammy: A Story” and Coleman’s “El Tisico” venture the possibilities. Their contributions to The Crisis underscore the publication’s ultimately optimistic theme that Americans could grasp alternatives to the prospect of a racially divided state, and that African American women as well as men “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day”50 would step out from the sidelines to see this unfolding conversation to a mutually satisfactory resolution. Addi- tionally, The Crisis would present these women’s themes of an ongoing fight for democracy to hasten the understanding that the success of the American civil rights struggle remained inseparable from and affected by geopolitical al- liances with people of color globally. A March 1918 column entitled “The Black Soldier,” for example, was dedicated to the event of “the nearly 10,000 men of Negro descent who are today called to arms for the United States.” It was “dedicated, also, to the million dark men of Africa and India, who have served in the armies of Great Britain, and to the equal, if larger, number who are fighting for France and the other allies.” “Out of this war will rise,” the column stated,

sooner or later an independent China; a self-governing India, and Egypt with representative institutions; an Africa for the Africans, and not merely for business exploitation. Out of this war will rise, too, an American Negro, with the right to vote and the right to work and the right to live without insult. These things may not and will not come at once; but they are written in the stars, and the first step toward them is victory for the armies of the Allies.51

As the concluding lines of “El Tisico” recognize, this transnational perspective is “patriotism, too” (573).

——————————— Notes

1. “Returning Soldiers,” in “Opinion of W. E. B. Du Bois,” The Crisis, May 1919, 13. 2. Ibid., 13. 3. The words he inscribes are “Loyalty, Valor, Achievement.” Ibid., 14. 4. It would not be until World War II that the African American press, led by the Pittsburgh Courier, would launch the Double V campaign to gain victory against fascism abroad and racism at home. Yet an awareness of how black Americans’ wartime involve- Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 131 ment enabled a two-pronged attack against inequality is also evident in the rhetoric of essays and editorials published in The Crisis during World War I. Two book-length studies of the Double V campaign are Rawn James Jr.’s The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013) and Cheryl Mullenbach’s Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gen- der Barriers to Help Win World War II (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013). 5. “Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader, for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” Opening paragraph of the “Forethought” from W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Terri Hume Oliver (1903; repr., New York: Norton, 1999), 5. 6. “The Macon Telegraph,” in “Opinion of W. E. B. Du Bois,” The Crisis, January 1920, 109. 7. “Brothers, Come North,” in ibid., 105. 8. See William M. Tuttle Jr.’s Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York: Atheneum, 1970); Robert Whitaker’s On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice that Remade a Nation (New York: Crown, 2008); and Patricia Sullivan’s Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Move- ment (New York: The New Press, 2009), 67–69, 70–72, 87–88. Other studies of race riots focused on specific cities in the aftermath of World War I include Lee E. Williams and Lee E. Williams III, Anatomy of Four Race Riots: Racial Conflict in Knoxville, Elaine (Arkansas), Tulsa, and Chicago, 1919–1921 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008) and Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (Ba- ton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982). 9. Adeline F. Ries, “Mammy: A Story,” The Crisis, January 1917 (“Richmond, Vir- ginia Number”), 117–18. All further references to this story are contained within the text. Reprinted in Elizabeth Ammons, comp., Short Fiction by Black Women, 1900–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 520–23; and as “Mammy” in Judith Muss- er, ed., “Girl, Colored” and Other Stories: A Complete Short Fiction Anthology of African American Women Writers in The Crisis Magazine, 1910–2010 (Jefferson, NC: McFar- land, 2011), 63–64. 10. William L. Andrews, “Reunion in the Postbellum Slave Narrative: Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Keckley,” Black American Literature Forum 23, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 5–16. 11. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, with an introduction by James Olney (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 258. 12. Annie L. Burton, Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days, in Six Women’s Slave Narratives, with an introduction by William L. Andrews (1909; repr., New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1988), 40, 41. For additional analysis, see my essay “Collabora- tive American Slave Narratives,” in The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative, ed. John Ernest (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 13. Jean Lee Cole, “Information Wanted: The Curse of Caste, Minnie’s Sacrifice, and the Christian Recorder,” in African American Review 40, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 731–42. 132 Barbara McCaskill

During the Reconstruction era, as Frances Smith Foster writes, romantic and loving correspondence written back and forth between African American men and women articulated moral and ethical dimensions of African American life that the instability of slavery had failed to eliminate, and revealed how “[f]amilies in early African Amer- ica were extended—including generations of biological and fictive kin.” “Introduction: By Way of an Open Letter to My Sister,” in Love and Marriage in Early African America, ed. Frances Smith Foster (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2008), xxv. 14. Heather Andrea Williams, “Introduction,” in Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 11. 15. Editorial, “The World Last Month,” The Crisis, January 1917 (“Richmond, Vir- ginia Number”), 111. 16. Ibid. 17. E. D. Caffee, “Colored Richmond,” The Crisis, January 1917 (“Richmond, Virginia Number”), 125. Caffee alludes here to Richmond as the city where the Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry made his famous vow to “Give me liberty or give me death.” 18. Ibid., 125. 19. “Ghetto,” The Crisis, January 1917 (“Richmond, Virginia Number”), 147. 20. Frances Smith Foster, “Mammy’s Daughters: Or, the DNA of a Feminist Sexual Ethics,” in Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies, ed. Bernadette J. Brooten with Jacqueline L. Hazelton (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 272. See also Barbara Christian’s discussion of the Mammy stereotype in the excellent documentary film Ethnic Notions, produced and directed by Marlon Riggs (Berkeley: Cali- fornia Newsreel, 1986). 21. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 61, 62. 22. Danielle L. McGuire, “Prologue,” in At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (New York: Vintage, 2011), xviii. 23. Caffee, “Colored Richmond,” 126. 24. Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” in vol. 1 of The Poems of Emma Lazarus (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), 2. 25. Elizabeth Hardwick, “On the Eve,” in The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, comp. and with an introduction by Darryl Pinckney (New York: New York Review of Books, 2010), 196. 26. A mudsill was a piece of metal fitted near the door of a nineteenth-century American home for entrants coming indoors to scrape their shoes. See the discussion of the term in Peter H. Wood’s Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 62–64. 27. The regiment earned one of France’s highest military medals, the Croix de Guerre with silver star. 28. See “1918: Denouement,” chap. 6 in John H. Morrow Jr., The Great War: An Im- perial History (New York: Routledge, 2005), 238–85; and Stephen L. Harris, Harlem’s Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War One (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2003). Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920 133

29. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Essay towards a History of the Black Man in the Great War,” The Crisis, June 1919 (“Double War History Number”), 69. 30. Ibid., 87. 31. Ibid., 63. 32. Advertisement, The Crisis, March 1920, 228. 33. Anita Scott Coleman, “El Tisico,” The Crisis, March 1920, 252. All further references to this story are contained within the text. Reprinted in Ammons, Short Fiction, 570–71; in Musser, “Girl, Colored,” 89–91; in Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell, eds., Western Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance: The Life and Writings of Anita Scott Coleman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 94–97; and in Laurie Cham- pion and Bruce A. Glasrud, eds., Unfinished Masterpiece: The Harlem Renaissance Fic- tion of Anita Scott Coleman (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2008), 59–62. 34. “The Battle of 1920 and Before—Eleventh Annual Report (Abridged) of the N.A.A.C.P.,” The Crisis, March 1921, 202. 35. Davis and Mitchell, “Chronology,” in Western Echoes, xx, xxii; Verner D. Mitch- ell, “A Family Answers the Call: Anita Scott Coleman, Literature and War,” in War, Lit- erature and the Arts 20, nos. 1–2 (2008): 303–4, 305–9. 36. Davis and Mitchell, “Chronology,” xxii; Davis and Mitchell, “Introduction: Anita Scott Coleman in the Southwest,” in Western Echoes, 26. 37. Champion and Glasrud, “Introduction,” in Unfinished Masterpiece, 8. 38. Mitchell, “A Family Answers,” 302, 303, 304. 39. Ronald Takaki, “Introduction: Different Shores,” in From Different Shores: Per- spectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Takaki (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 5. 40. See the photograph entitled “Negro Troops in Mexico,” The Crisis, June 1916, 62. 41. The caption refers to the mother in the photograph, and it is from “El Tisico” when Sam Dicks compares the frantic mother to “one of those little, pearly-grey doves we shoot in New Mexico, from August to November—a little fluttery thing, all heart and eyes.” “Every time I passed through the coach and saw her,” Dicks recalls, “I was minded of the way wounded birds beat their wings on the hard earth in an effort to fly.” Coleman, “El Tisico,” The Crisis, March 1920, 253. 42. “Of the Passing of the First-Born,” chap. 11 in Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 132, 133. 43. “Dives, Mob and Scab, Limited,” in “Opinion of W. E. B. Du Bois,” The Crisis, March 1920, 235. 44. Davis and Mitchell, “Introduction,” 30; Du Bois had noted the imprint of Afri- can stories and storytellers on the American folklore tradition. He observed, “We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are today no truer ex- ponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the Ameri- can Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African . . . .” Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 16. 45. See Milton Bagby, “Casey Jones Rides Again and Again and Again,” in American History 34, no. 5 (December 1999): 36–41; and T. Clark Shaw, “The Legend of Casey Jones,” in West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 36 (1982): 65–71. 134 Barbara McCaskill

46. Davis and Mitchell, “Introduction,” 26. 47. Tanner submitted drawings and illustrations for The Crisis, including the cover for the December 1922 issue. 48. Musicologists have long held that the banjo, which was developed by enslaved Africans, is a descendant of stringed instruments such as the ngomi and xalam played by the griots or praise singers of Mali and Senegal in West Africa. New scholarship also suggests the banjo’s relationship to the akonting, an instrument played by ordinary Gambian people. “The Banjo’s Roots, Reconsidered,” NPR Music, August 23, 2011 , originally accessed February 26, 2013. 49. Margaret Crumpton Winter and Rhonda Reymond, “Henry Ossawa Tanner and W. E. B. Du Bois: American Art and ‘High Culture’ at the Turn into the Twentieth Cen- tury,” in Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1817–1919, ed. Barbara McCaskill and Caroline Gebhard (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 231, 239, 248 (n. 12). Winter and Reymond identify in The Banjo Player “the trope of literacy in African American iconography that reaches back into generations,” an iconographic tradition featuring “images of figures with books or pen in hand, faces in profile, and looking not down but outwards,” which “served as visual representation of individual black accomplishment.” See also Judith Wilson’s essay titled “Lifting ‘The Veil’: Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo Player and The Thankful Poor,” which discusses how Tanner’s painting valorizes both Du Bois’s model of a “European-derived, institutional pedagogy” and “training processes that are domestic, informal, and, one guesses, more closely linked to intragroup—as opposed to externally imposed—traditions.” Wilson’s essay is in Contributions to Black Studies: A Journal of African and Afro-American Stud- ies 9, no. 1 (1992): 38. 50. 2 Peter 3: 12. 51. J. B. Watson, “The Black Soldier,” in The Crisis, June 1918 (“Soldier’s Num- ber”), 60.

Chapter 5

W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage

Garth E. Pauley

Though W. E. B. Du Bois is widely acknowledged as one the most influential advocates for civil and political rights of the twentieth century, his support for woman suffrage during the critical period of the 1910s is often overlooked. Yet Du Bois delivered an eloquent and stirring speech on suffrage at the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. He also corresponded with several influential suffragists, including Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and Jane Addams. In addition, and perhaps most significantly, Du Bois, as editor of The Crisis, used the journal to advocate for woman suffrage. He wrote more than twenty essays supporting equal voting rights for women, published a special “Woman Suffrage Number” of the periodical in September 1912, and sponsored a “Votes for Women” symposium in the August 1915 issue. He also included visuals in the journal to support his stance. In his advocacy for woman suffrage in The Crisis, Du Bois once again located himself at the center of one of the early twentieth century’s key political controversies. Du Bois’s commitment to woman suffrage stemmed from his womanist outlook and his critique of social and political hierarchies, including patriarchal ones.1 His expression of these commitments in his Crisis editorial displayed his rhetorical skill in engaging his readers with arguments about the philosophical and practical issues related to woman suffrage. This chapter provides a close analysis and interpretation of Du Bois’s rhetoric advocating woman suffrage in The Crisis. The study is divided into two sections. First, it situates Du Bois’s writings in a historical context, focusing the constraints on his rhetoric imposed by the relationship between African Americans and women suffragists. The passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments created antagonism between suffragists and blacks, as did the suffrage movement’s Southern Strategy. To persuade African Americans to support woman suffrage, Du Bois needed to overcome blacks’ bitterness toward white suffragists. Second, the

135 136 Garth E. Pauley essay analyzes the rhetorical appeals that Du Bois employed to urge African Americans to support woman suffrage. The overall claim is that: (a) by using a rhetorical technique literary and social critic Kenneth Burke has called the “comic corrective,” Du Bois created a space for persuasion by overcoming African American men’s resentment toward suffragists; (b) by engaging in an argument from principle, Du Bois attempted to reestablish the philosophical link between woman suffrage and black suffrage, which white suffragists had delinked; and (c) by pairing his appeals to principle with pragmatic rhetoric, Du Bois demonstrated that woman suffrage would have practical benefits for the black race—a claim that both countered southern suffragists’ arguments and elevated the status of African American women.

Race, Gender and the Vote

Biographer David Levering Lewis claimed that the readers of The Cri- sis “were often forced to face prejudices they would have finessed, but for Du Bois’s edifying wrath and vision of deliverance. Votes for women was a case in point.”2 Lewis rightly noted that for many African American men, unhappy memories of their historical relationship with suffragists complicated the issue of woman suffrage. The sources of these unhappy memories deserve detailed explication here. The historical relationship between African American men and white suffragists created bitter sentiments among many blacks that had not yet subsided; this antagonism functioned as a formidable constraint on Du Bois’s rhetoric aimed at garnering black support for woman suffrage. There were two principal causes of black alienation from the white suffragists’ cause. The first was the dispute surrounding the Negro’s Hour—the struggle for universal suffrage during Reconstruction that resulted only in black male suffrage. Secondly, there was the Southern Strategy—the decision by many white suffragists to ignore the race issue to win southern support for their cause, which led to racist arguments by many a suffragist.

The Negro’s Hour

Antagonistic feelings developed between blacks and white suffragists after the Civil War. Initially, both groups struggled together to win the vote, but when it became clear that the franchise would be granted only to African American men, many white suffragists spoke out against the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. White suffragists argued that the principle of equal suffrage pre- vented them from supporting the amendments, and many turned to racist and sexist arguments to demonstrate that black men should not be enfranchised. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 137

Both types of arguments alienated African American men. Racist arguments cut to the bone and implied that the principled collaboration between black men and white women had been a facade all along. Contemporary black feminist bell hooks suggested that the collaboration had always been about political advantage, not principle:

Prior to white male support of suffrage for black men, white women activists had believed it would further their cause to ally themselves with black political activists, but when it seemed that black men might get the vote while they remained disfranchised, political solidarity with black people was forgotten and they urged white men to allow racial solidarity to overshadow their plans to support black male suffrage.3

Appeals to equal suffrage were less hateful, but many African Americans still felt that white women suffragists might prevent black men from winning the vote during what could prove to be their only chance. The debate surrounding the Fourteenth Amendment—passed in 1868—was one of the first incidents that divided African American men and white suffragists. The amendment acknowledged blacks as citizens provided they were “born or naturalized in the United States.” This clause, however, was not the source of the controversy; suffragists objected to the amendment because it implied that the right to vote was limited to “the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States.” Historian Ai- leen Kraditor noted that the Stanton-Anthony wing of the suffrage movement argued that the cause of human freedom would be set back by an amendment that made it easier for the black man to vote while making it harder for women by inserting the word “male” in the Constitution for the first time.4 The Woman’s Rights Association had only recently changed its name to the American Equal Rights Association (AERA)—on May 10, 1868—and tension within the organization grew quickly over the Fourteenth Amendment. A few days after the organizational name change, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton met with fellow AERA members Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton. During their meeting, Phillips suggested that the organization turn away from woman suffrage for the moment and focus on black suffrage. If anything interfered, he claimed, the chance for black enfranchisement might be lost forever. Anthony objected vehemently. She raised her right arm and proclaimed, “Look at this, all of you. And hear me swear that I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the negro and not the woman.”5 Other woman suffrage advocates, however, supported the Fourteenth Amendment; they contended that whereas woman and black suffrage were both just, the nation would only accept one reform at a time. The question of 138 Garth E. Pauley suffrage, they claimed, should be divided and the first chance given to African American men. For example, New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley claimed that women should support black suffrage and be content to wait for their own enfranchisement:

This is a critical period for the Republican party and the Nation. It would be wise and magnanimous in you to hold your claims, though just and imperative I grant, in abeyance until the Negro is safe and beyond peradventure, and your turn will come next.6

Abby Kelley Foster also argued for working to enfranchise black men: “Have we any true sense of justice, are we not dead to the sentiment of humanity if we shall wish to postpone his security against present woes and future enslavement till woman shall obtain political rights.”7 The rallying cry of the period was, “This is the Negro’s hour”—a phrase that embittered Stanton and Anthony. Stanton and Anthony’s position on African American suffrage alienated many African Americans, including black leader Frederick Douglass. In a Sep- tember 27, 1868, letter to women’s rights activist Josephine Sophia Griffing, Douglass expressed his objections toward Stanton and Anthony’s position on black suffrage and woman suffrage:

I am now devoting myself to a cause not more sacred, certainly more urgent, because it is life and death to the long-enslaved people of this country; and this is: Negro suffrage . . . [Woman] is the victim of abuses, to be sure, but it cannot be pretended I think that her cause is as urgent as ours. I never suspected you of sympathizing with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in this course. Their principal is: that no Negro shall be enfranchised while woman is not. Now in considering that white men have been enfranchised always, and colored men have not, the conduct of these white women, whose husbands, fathers and brothers are voters, does not seem generous.8

Douglass was a staunch supporter of women’s rights,9 but he also believed in the priority of black suffrage. He worried that the woman suffrage issue could prevent African American men from winning the right to vote during this crucial time. Although the debate over the Fourteenth Amendment strained the relationship between white woman suffragists and blacks, the real split occurred during debate regarding the Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870. This debate divided suffragists into three parties: (a) those who thought it unwise to try to incorporate woman suffrage; (b) those who thought that every effort should be made to include women, but if this proved impossible the amendment Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 139 should still pass; and (c) those who thought that the amendment should not pass if it did not include women (Blackwell, 1930). Members of the first camp included Charles Sumner and the old-guard abolitionists. The second group included Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell; Stanton and Anthony headed the third faction. The controversy reached its climax during the May 1869 meeting of the AERA. Susan Anthony’s statements at the convention included racist appeals as she argued for the priority of woman suffrage:

The old anti-slavery school say [sic] women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people give it to the most intelligent first. If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the Government, let the question of woman be brought up first and that of the negro last.10

Stanton argued that not another man should be enfranchised until enough women were admitted to the polls to outweigh those already there. She too made racist statements, claiming that she did not believe “in allowing ignorant negroes and foreigners to make laws for her to obey.”11 Paulina Davis also made racist statements in her argument for the priority of woman suffrage. The record of the AERA meeting reads,

Mrs. Paulina Davis said she would not be altogether satisfied to have the XVth Amendment passed without the XVIth, for woman would have a race of tyrants raised above her in the South . . . She thought that sort of men [African Ameri- cans] should not have the making of the laws for the government of the women throughout the land.12

Frederick Douglass countered these claims, arguing that AERA members should support the Fifteenth Amendment.13 He claimed,

I must say that I do not see how anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to woman as to the negro. With us, the matter is a question of life and death, at least, in fifteen States of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp posts; when their children are torn from their arms . . . then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.14

Douglass also objected to racist appeals in Stanton and Anthony’s woman’s rights periodical, The Revolution: 140 Garth E. Pauley

There is no name greater than that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the matter of woman’s rights and equal rights, but my sentiments are tinged a little against The Revolution. There was in the address to which I allude the employment of certain names such as “Sambo.”15

The Lucy Stone wing of the AERA also supported the Fifteenth Amendment. They believed that if efforts to secure the vote for both blacks and women failed, then the women ought to acquiesce in the enfranchisement of Negroes, satisfied that one group at least had won the franchise. Stone claimed:

We are lost if we turn away from the middle principle and argue for one class . . . But I thank God for that XV Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit.16

Julia Ward Howe also supported the amendment, claiming, “I am willing that the Negro shall get the ballot before me.”17 At the close of the 1869 AERA meeting, the organization split into two groups over the issue of black suffrage: the National Woman Suffrage Asso- ciation (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The NWSA focused on woman suffrage and refused to support the Fifteenth Amendment if it did not extend the vote to women. The AWSA supported universal suffrage, and its members were willing to temporarily support black suffrage alone while the opportunity for success existed.

The Southern Strategy

Around 1890—the year that the two woman suffrage organizations reunit- ed as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)—many white suffragists began to definitively accept an ideology of white supremacy. Kraditor claimed that three developments near the turn of the century led the movement to support rationales for woman suffrage consistent with a repudiation of universal suffrage: (a) As the woman suffrage movement gained more popular favor, women with racist views joined the movement; (b) many of the old-guard abolitionists accepted the new ideology of the times and concluded that black suffrage and woman suffrage were really unrelated; and (c) southern white women began to build a suffrage movement on the principle that woman suffrage would ensure white supremacy in the South. The new suffrage organization focused on “strategies of expediency” to gain the vote for women, and many of its members were willing to acquiesce to the accompanying racist views espoused by southern women if it Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 141 would lead to enfranchisement.18 Even universal suffrage supporters such as Susan Anthony acquiesced to the movement’s Southern Strategy. Rufus Burrow noted, “Susan B. Anthony was known to become outraged whenever her individual Black friends were sub- jected to racist treatment. Yet she found it expedient to be publicly indifferent to racism in order that Southern white women might not be offended and discouraged from joining.”19 For example, in 1894, Anthony personally asked Frederick Douglass not to attend the NAWSA convention in Atlanta. In her autobiography, Ida B. Wells recounted a conversation in which Stanton explained her reasoning:

When the . . . Suffrage Association went to Atlanta, Georgia, knowing the feeling of the South with regard to Negro participation on equality with whites, I myself asked Douglass not to come. I did not want to subject him to humiliation, and I did not want anything to get in the way of bringing the southern white women into our suffrage association.20

Anthony also seemed willing to tolerate racist appeals if it meant gaining the vote. She presided over the 1903 NAWSA convention in New Orleans and sat silently as white Mississippi suffragist Belle Kearney urged members to “look to our Anglo-Saxon medium through which to retain its supremacy of the white race over the African.”21 Ironically, Lucy Stone’s husband, Henry Blackwell, had set the stage for such racist appeals in his 1867 pamphlet, What the South Can Do. Black- well’s essay argued for woman suffrage by using population statistics to show that there were more white women in the South than black men and women combined; woman suffrage, therefore, would maintain white supremacy. By the turn of the century, the white supremacy appeal had become the single most important argument used in the South.22 Two influential suffragists, Laura Clay of Kentucky and Kate M. Gordon of Louisiana, for example, propagated white supremacy arguments throughout the movement. Clay claimed that the South was the key to nationwide suffrage and emphasized that the NAWSA needed to learn how to take its message to the South. Early in her career, Clay argued that all women—both white and black— should be granted the vote, provided they passed an educational test. Once the black votes were so far outnumbered that they could not affect election outcomes, she claimed, “the Negro problem” would be solved. Later, Clay claimed that woman suffrage should, if possible, be accompanied by a “whites only” clause—a position championed by Kate Gordon. Gordon led a southern suffrage movement and viewed woman suffrage “as a means to the end of securing white supremacy.”23 142 Garth E. Pauley

In 1912, Gordon’s Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference (SSWSC) published The Southern Problem, a book that outlined why the SSWSC opposed a national suffrage amendment. The book argued, “It seems like crass political ignorance which can expect states with one political party supreme, and holding the balance of power, to ratify an amendment which may have the effect of complicating advantage brought by the South’s best blood.” The SSWSC objected to claims made by Lucy Burns, a Congressional Union activist, that “a little study will prove that the national enfranchisement of women will in no way complicate the race problem.” The SSWSC argued, “While in this group of fifteen [Southern] States there are 2,018,286 more white women, in FIVE of these States—Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina—there are 2,133,920 more negroes than white women.” The statistics used in the pamphlet reveal the underlying logic of the woman suffrage argument in the South: The white woman vote must outnumber the total black vote, not just the black women voters.24 In 1918, the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company published Mrs. Guilford Dudley’s The Negro Vote in the South: A Southern Woman’s Viewpoint. Dudley, a native of Tennessee, called the concern expressed by the SSWSC and southern men about the “negro problem” a “phantom” and an “old ghost.” She claimed, “In the fifteen states south of Mason and Dixon’s line the excess of white women alone over 21 years of age above all negro men and women combined of like age is 1,122,477.” Dudley acknowledged the SSWSC’s claim that blacks outnumbered white women in some southern states, but she provided reassurance that white supremacy would still be maintained: “It is true that there are some counties in the South where the negroes greatly predominate. But it is also true that in those counties there is a greater degree of illiteracy and the education qualification operates to exclude this vote. There is no need to fear that Southern men and women of today will not know how to uphold the integrity of their government.”25 By dispelling the myths about the balance of racial power, Dudley, like many of her suffragist counterparts in the South, hoped to garner southern support for the cause. Kraditor noted that by the 1910s, the time had passed when the suffrage movement had consisted of northern women who assumed that the interests of African Americans and women were linked. A second period had also passed, in which all suffragists had agreed that the two causes were unrelated. A third period had arrived in which southern suffragists proclaimed the intimate connection for their white supremacy campaign, whereas northerners continued to insist that the two issues were unrelated. Both arguments during this third epoch alienated many African Americans; the bitter sentiments these arguments created were an onerous constraint on any rhetorician seeking black support for woman suffrage. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 143

Making a Case for Woman Suffrage

Du Bois’s Crisis writings skillfully responded to the challenge of persuad- ing an audience resistant to woman suffrage. This section of the chapter charts three key rhetorical characteristics of Du Bois’s writings on woman suffrage. First, Du Bois attempted to overcome the constraints imposed by the historical relationship between white suffragists and black men by criticizing the suffragists’ racism and still supporting the cause; in doing so, he created a rhetorical space for further persuasion. Second, after opening that space, Du Bois argued from principle for the cause of woman suffrage. Third, Du Bois employed pragmatic arguments to urge blacks to support woman suffrage.

Racism within the Suffrage Movement

Within the context of a historical relationship that had alienated many black men from white suffragists, W. E. B. Du Bois argued that African Americans should support woman suffrage. To overcome the rhetorical constraints on the topic of woman suffrage, Du Bois took the offensive: Rather than sidestepping the suffragists’ racist arguments and Southern Strategy, he attacked both. If he could attack the suffragists’ racism himself while still expressing his support for their overall cause, Du Bois might be able to persuade other African Americans to back woman suffrage. Du Bois’s implicit message was that blacks should distinguish between the rightness of the suffragists’ cause and the racism within their movement; African Americans should fight against racism, but they should not discount woman suffrage as a response to white women’s racism. Du Bois confronted suffragists’ racism in his earliest Crisis writings on woman suffrage. In his 1911 Crisis editorial “Forward Backward,” Du Bois wrote, “The nemesis of every forward movement in the United States is the Negro question. Witness Woman Suffrage.” He quoted Anna Howard Shaw, president of the NAWSA, as stating that “all Negroes were opposed to woman suffrage.” Du Bois called Shaw’s statement a “barefaced falsehood,” but put a spin on the issue that went beyond mere denial or refutation. Instead of mustering arguments by example or principle to demonstrate black support for woman suffrage, Du Bois asked a rhetorical question: “But assuming Mrs. Shaw believes it true, what is Mrs. Shaw’s conclusion?”26 This rhetorical turn shifts the burden of proof away from African Americans. Blacks’ attitudes toward woman suffrage are no longer under scrutiny; instead this woman suffragist’s attitude toward blacks is under the lens. Du Bois at first offered a hypothetical sympathetic response, prefaced by irony, to his rhetorical question: “The traveler from Altruria might assume that 144 Garth E. Pauley she would say: ‘Therefore let us work to enlighten these colored men and show them that disfranchisement, whether by sex or race is wrong.’” This, of course, had not been Anna Shaw’s response. Du Bois wrote, “Not so does the astute Mrs. Shaw advise. On the contrary, she says: ‘Do not touch the Negro problem. It will offend the South.’” Du Bois criticized the suffragists and other movements—such as the temperance and Socialist movements—as racist because they only asked why blacks do not join their organizations. He claimed, “They do not ask such silly questions of white folks: They go and see why they do not join. They teach, agitate, and proselyte; while among Negro Americans they have scarcely a single worker and are afraid to encourage such workers. All of this goes to show that the Negro problem is the door which bars progress in the United States.” Using words that Martin Luther King Jr. would echo more than fifty years later, Du Bois argued that the suffrage movement must eliminate the racism within its ranks by treating blacks “according to their character and not according to their color.”27 Du Bois’s writing shifted the burden to the woman suffrage movement and invited its audience to interpret further conflicts between blacks and suffragists within this frame. For example, in the June 1912 Crisis, Du Bois reprinted excerpts from a letter sent to him by Anna Howard Shaw: “There is not in the National Association any discrimination against colored people. If they do not belong to us it is merely because they have not organized and have not made application for membership.” Given the critique offered by Du Bois in the Oc- tober 1911 issue of The Crisis, Shaw’s response seems wholly inadequate; in fact, within that context, it functions as evidence that Du Bois’s critique of the suffragists was accurate. Du Bois’s own preface to Shaw’s letter also suggested the validity of his critique of the suffragists: “The woman suffragists are winc- ing a bit under the plain speaking of Crisis.”28 Shaw’s letter locates in African Americans the fault for their failure to support woman suffrage, and she does not attempt to “educate and persuade” black voters to support woman suffrage. Given Du Bois’s earlier attack on this type of statement by suffragists, he encouraged the readership of The Crisis to read Shaw’s claim as a thinly veiled racist sentiment. A cursory reading of Du Bois’s early essays on woman suffrage might seem to indicate that Du Bois did not support it. However, despite his concern that the anthem of the suffrage movement might become “Votes for White Women Only,” Du Bois still supported the extension of the right to vote to all women. A close reading of his critique of the woman suffrage movement suggests that Du Bois’s particular brand of criticism was an exercise in what Kenneth Burke called the comic corrective. Applying the comic corrective involves uncovering an alternate perspective to highlight the limitations of a particular perspective. This method pictures people “not as vicious, but as mistaken.”29 Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 145

Du Bois did not reject the female suffragists or their cause; he instead depicted them as misguided. Even the titles of Du Bois’s early essays on woman suffrage—“Forward Backward,” “Heckling the Hecklers,” and “Suffering Suf- fragettes”—have the appropriate comic touch. None of these titles are vicious; Du Bois could have easily given these essays more confrontational titles. In- stead, he suggested that as the suffragists attempted to move forward for women’s rights, they moved backward with respect to “the Negro question.” The suffragists suffered because they had been denied the franchise, but Du Bois implied that they also suffered from racism. Du Bois’s word play on the term “movement” in “Forward Backward” is also part of his comic frame. His claim that “the nemesis of every forward movement in the United States is the Negro question” implies that the woman suffrage, temperance, and Socialist movements became divorced from actual movement.30 “Movement” can refer both to a mechanism that produces motion or the act of moving itself. This word play functions in a very Burkeian manner; it identifies a paradox in the suffragists’ linguistic behavior. Du Bois’s punning and verbal play provided a different perspective for heuristic purposes, the goal of the comic corrective. Du Bois’s use of the comic corrective challenged white women to correct their racism but it also invited his African American audience to reconsider woman suffrage. Rather than dismissing the suffragists’ cause entirely, he criticized only their racism. Before Du Bois could make other arguments in favor of woman suffrage, he needed first to address black men’s resentment toward the white suffragists’ racism. If Du Bois could not overcome this constraint, then all other persuasive attempts would prove futile.

Argument from Principle

After opening a space for further persuasion, Du Bois argued from principle to demonstrate that African Americans should support woman suffrage. Whereas many white, primarily northern, suffragists claimed that woman suffrage and black suffrage were unrelated, Du Bois attempted to repair the split to make his case for woman suffrage. Many white suffragists had employed the rhetorical technique of “breaking the connecting links,” to use the terminology of philosophers Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, between black suffrage and woman suffrage. This argumentative technique involves “affirming that elements which should remain separate and independent have been improperly associated.”31 Du Bois, in contrast, aimed at association, at restor- ing the philosophical interconnection between black suffrage and woman suffrage. In so doing, Du Bois suggested that blacks must support woman suffrage because it is in accordance with higher principles. 146 Garth E. Pauley

In a March 1912 opinion essay and a June 1912 editorial, Du Bois reprinted a resolution submitted by the NAACP to the NAWSA that associated the black cause with the woman suffrage cause. The resolution asked female suffragists to unite with African Americans because both groups were “fighting the same battle” by “trying to lift themselves out of the class of the disfranchised.” Du Bois again emphasized the connection between black suffrage and woman suffrage in his 1912 editorial, “Ohio”: “Is there a single argument for the right of men to vote, or for the right of black men to vote, that does not apply to the votes for women?” In his September 1912 editorial “Votes for Women,” Du Bois provided reasons why African American men should support woman suffrage: “First, it is a great human question . . . Secondly, any agitation, discussion, or reopening of the problem of voting must inevitably be a discussion of the right of black folk to vote in America . . . Essentially the arguments for and against are the same in the case of all groups of human beings.”32 Again, Du Bois argued that African Americans should support woman suffrage because blacks’ rights and women’s rights were really two dimensions of the same principle. Throughout these early essays, Du Bois associated the two causes yet did not identify the unifying concept. It was not until later essays that Du Bois identified the principle that united black suffrage and woman suffrage: democracy. In his Crisis writings, he interrelated black suffrage and woman suffrage since both were necessary to achieve a truly democratic government. Democracy had been a key principle in Du Bois’s landmark 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk. There, he urged the nation to live up to “the greater ideals of the American republic” and “the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.” Du Bois also expressed his desire to preserve “the soul of democracy.” In his second autobiography, Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois later recounted that his “attention from the first was focused on democracy and democratic development.” For Du Bois, the franchise was the key to democracy and democratic development. In The Souls of Black Folk, he argued that the vote was the key to preserving American democracy; in his third autobiography, he claimed that since adolescence he had viewed the ballot as “the essence of democracy.”33 In “Woman’s Suffrage,” a May 1913 editorial, Du Bois united the African Americans’ struggle and the woman suffrage cause under the banner of democracy: “Let every black man and woman fight for the new democracy which knows no race or sex.” In his 1914 editorial, “Votes for Women,” Du Bois again argued from principle that blacks ought to support woman suffrage: “Any extension of democracy involves a discussion of the fundamentals of democracy. If it is acknowledged to be unjust to disfranchise a sex it cannot be denied that it is absurd to disfranchise a color.” Du Bois argued in support of woman suffrage because he believed that the higher principle of democracy connected the two issues. He repeated this theme in “Woman Suffrage,” an April 1915 Crisis Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 147 editorial: “Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for woman’s suffrage; every argument for woman suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage; both are great movements in democracy.”34 By arguing from principle for woman suffrage, Du Bois attempted to con- vince his African American audience that the woman suffrage issue was in accordance with higher democratic ideals. Woman suffrage therefore became more than an end in itself; to deny woman suffrage was to deny democracy. To support woman suffrage was to support democracy, and it was the fulfillment of democratic ideals that blacks were counting on to achieve real freedom and equality in America. The editorial page of The Crisis had been designed as a forum for principled arguments. In the magazine’s prospectus, Du Bois claimed that his editorials would stand for “the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy.”35 In his writings on woman suffrage, he argued that “the highest ideals of American democracy” included votes for women, and so he urged African Americans to support woman suffrage. Du Bois’s arguments from principle not only urged African Americans to support woman suffrage but also confronted northern women suffragists’ declaration that woman suffrage and black suffrage were unrelated. His rhetoric attempted to reestablish the link between the two issues. By bringing black suffrage and woman suffrage together under the banner of democracy, Du Bois offered a unifying term for a relationship that had been weakened since the mid-nineteenth century. This unification argued that woman suffrage and black suffrage were philosophically linked and that the white northern suffragists’ tactical decision to delink the two issues undermined the foundations of democracy. Du Bois’s idealistic rhetoric provided a moral high ground for the link between women’s rights and African Americans’ rights and made northern suffragists’ arguments from expediency seem unprincipled. The northerners’ expediency arguments had rhetorical force, but typically people wanted to act in accordance with higher principles too—a need that the northern woman suffragists’ rhetoric did not fulfill. By confronting their arguments from expediency with idealistic rhetoric, Du Bois asked the suffragists to examine their tolerance of racism within the movement and to evaluate their actions within a new frame. Du Bois’s idealistic rhetoric also encouraged his black audience to focus on the arguments involved in extending the franchise to women. The following passages show that “argument” was a key term in his discourse on woman suffrage:

“Is there a single argument [italics added] for the right of men to vote, or for the right of black men to vote, that does not apply to the vote for women?”36 “Essentially the arguments [italics added] are the same.”37 148 Garth E. Pauley

“Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for woman’s suffrage; every argument for woman suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage” [italics added].38

By focusing on argument, Du Bois stressed that African Americans should make a reasoned judgment based on higher principles rather than an emotional decision. He realized that many blacks still had bitter feelings toward white woman suffragists, and so he asked them to put their passions aside to support a higher principle. Du Bois made this appeal explicit in his April 1915 editorial “Woman Suffrage.” To overcome the emotional barriers to African American support for woman suffrage, Du Bois claimed, “We tend to oppose [woman suffrage] because we do not like the reactionary attitude of most white women toward our problems. We must remember, however, that we are facing a great question in which personal hatreds have no place.” In a November 1915 editorial also titled “Woman Suffrage,” Du Bois again urged African Americans to make a reasoned decision when voting on the suffrage question, claiming, “In- telligence is the only real support of democracy.” This emphasis on intelligent, rational decision making was a common theme in Du Bois’s rhetoric and was central to his “Talented Tenth” ideal.39

Pragmatic Arguments

Du Bois’s argument from the principle of democracy demonstrated that woman suffrage was in accordance with higher ideals, but most listeners also had a desire for pragmatic appeals. That is, in addition to wanting to act in accordance with higher principles, people evaluated a policy by its consequences: what it is good for, what difference it will make. Du Bois’s writings on woman suffrage fulfilled this need: His editorials and opinion essays argued that African Americans should support woman suffrage because of its practical benefits for blacks. Furthermore, Du Bois’s pragmatic appeals countered white suffragists’ claims that extending the franchise to women would help strengthen white supremacy. The most prominent aspect of Du Bois’s pragmatic rhetoric was its focus on black women. Du Bois argued that woman suffrage would benefit African Americans because it would increase the number of black voters. Although he did not provide the statistics, Du Bois also suggested that population figures demonstrated woman suffrage would weaken rather than strengthen white supremacy. In his 1912 editorial “Ohio,” Du Bois wrote, “As Negroes have a larger proportion of women than the whites our relative voting importance in the North will be increased.” In 1915 Du Bois directly confronted the white suffragists who claimed that woman suffrage “would increase the native-born white vote, decrease the foreign-born white vote, [and] leave the colored vote Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 149 the same.”40 He also suggested that northern blacks should support woman suffrage by state referendum because it would change the balance of political power and could eventually lead to the enfranchisement of black women in the South. In an August 1914 editorial, Du Bois claimed,

If when the North enfranchises women the South refuses, or enfranchises only the whites, then the discrepancy between North and South in the votes cast will be even greater than now; at present the southern white voter has five to seven times the power of the northern voter. How long would the nation endure an increase or even a doubling of this power? It would not take long before southern representatives in Congress would be cut down or colored women enfranchised.41

Once black women in the South received the franchise, Du Bois claimed, “It is going to be more difficult to disfranchise colored women in the South than it was to disfranchise colored men. Even Southern ‘gentlemen,’ as used as they are to the mistreatment of colored women, cannot in the blaze of present publicity physically beat them away from the polls.”42 These population-based arguments suggested that woman suffrage would have positive consequences for African Americans; black voters, however, still would be outnumbered by whites. The key to Du Bois’s pragmatic rhetoric was his assertion that black women voters would be especially valuable to the race, that they would help the race more than African American men. In his “Ohio” editorial, Du Bois claimed, “The enfranchisement of women means the doubling of the black vote at the point where that vote is needed. . . . Moreover, we need above all classes the women’s influence in politics—the influence of the mother, the wife, the teacher and the washerwoman. In the African fatherland the women stood high in counsel. We need them here again.”43 A 1912 editorial, “Votes for Women,” echoed this type of pragmatic appeal. Du Bois claimed, “Finally, votes for women means votes for black women. There are in the United States three and a third million adult women of Negro descent . . . The enfranchisement of these women will not be a mere doubling of our vote: it will tend to stronger and more normal political life.”44 Du Bois’s editorials on woman suffrage reflected the elevated position that he accorded African American women throughout his writings. For example, his account of Josie in “Of the Meaning of Progress,” a chapter in The Souls of Black Folk, paid tribute to the drive, faith, vitality, and resourcefulness of African American women. In Du Bois’s novel The Quest of the Silver Fleece, he depicted black women as “superior to African American men in terms of spirituality, intellect, and leadership”; in “The Damnation of Women,” a chapter in Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, he also praised the character and achievements of black women. Du Bois honored African American women for 150 Garth E. Pauley overcoming the oppression of slavery, for raising their families, for laying the foundation of the black church, and for their hard labor. In fact, in this chapter, he argued that black women would play the central role in African Americans’ struggle for freedom and equality. Du Bois claimed, “As I look about me today in this veiled world of mine, despite the noisier and more spectacular advance of my brothers, I instinctively feel and know that it is the five million women of my race who really count.”45 In a November 1915 editorial titled “Woman Suffrage,” Du Bois claimed, “The actual work of the world today depends more largely upon women than upon men.”46 Given his personal opinions toward black women, it is not surprising that his Crisis editorials suggested that if any group of African Ameri- cans was to use the ballot to improve conditions for blacks, it would be the women. Du Bois’s emphasis on the black woman voter also reflected his lack of faith in black male voters. His Crisis writings depicted corrupt black men whose votes were swayed easily; black women, in contrast, would be honorable voters. In an August 1914 editorial Du Bois claimed, “If the North enfranchises women, the proportion of unselfish intelligent voters among Negroes will be increased, and the proportion of Negro voters whom white politicians have trained to venality will be decreased.” In a November 1917 editorial, “Votes for Women,” Du Bois argued, “While you can still bribe some pauperized Negro laborers with a few dollars at election time, you cannot bribe Negro women.” Whites’ economic power over black women, he claimed, “will be smaller than their power over the men.” Du Bois’s 1920 editorial “Woman Suffrage” contained a similar line of argument; he claimed that whites could “bribe our men” for their vote and therefore argued that “the political hope of the Negro, rests on its intelligent and incorruptible womanhood.”47 Du Bois’s rhetoric responded to a real concern about black men’s voting behavior. Historical documents suggest that the African American male vote was a purchasable commodity. Du Bois had firsthand experience with this political phenomenon: His own 1899 sociological study of African Americans in Phila- delphia suggested that a large group of black men “casts a corrupt purchasable vote for the highest bidder,” and that other black men, “while not open to direct bribery, accept the indirect emoluments of office or influence.” Other documents seem to corroborate Du Bois’s claim about African American men. In a speech at the 1904 NAWSA convention, President Carrie Chapman Catt claimed that “those who have come in most direct political contact with the Negro” agree that “the Negro vote is largely a purchasable vote.” In an address to the 1919 NAACP conference, B. Harrison Fisher claimed, “I believe that the Moses who is going to lead us out of the land of Egypt is going to be the black women . . . The Negro woman will not barter her vote away from a piece of silver—not for a nickel or a dime.”48 Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 151

Although Du Bois’s pragmatic rhetoric focused on the positive consequences that woman suffrage would have for blacks, he also argued that not supporting woman suffrage would have severe negative consequences. In his editorial “Ohio,” Du Bois claimed,

It would be very bad, indeed, if the colored vote should be adverse to enfranchising women . . . for the day has gone by forever when the colored men could get a respectful hearing for their protest against their own disfranchisement if, when offered the opportunity for voting for enfranchising their mothers, wives, and sisters, they should fail to do so. For still another reason it will be unfortunate if the Ohio Negroes should vote against votes for women; the vote will be analyzed with keen and eager intelligence, and the results studied for future use. The colored voters will turn many possible friends into critics, to put it mildly, if they in- flict upon women that disfranchisement which all thinking people deplore when applied to Negroes themselves.49

Du Bois’s “the whole nation is watching” argument had real political significance during his time. Since 1870, when black men received the franchise by the Fifteenth Amendment, the African American vote had been watched closely. Whites who opposed black suffrage inspected the black vote in hopes of gathering fodder for arguments that African Americans exercised their rights poorly and to the detriment of the nation. Du Bois realized that whites would inspect the black vote on woman suffrage, hoping that the issue would provide an opportunity to criticize African Americans’ exercise of the vote. The idealistic and the pragmatic, then, were bound together: Failure to support the principle of democracy would have negative consequences for African Americans.

Conclusion

The historical relationship between women suffragists and African Ameri- cans had turned many blacks away from the suffragists’ cause. Through his Cri- sis writings, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted to overcome this constraint to persuade African Americans that they should support woman suffrage. Du Bois’s essays also attempted to repair the philosophical relationship between black suffrage and woman suffrage—two issues that had been delinked by many northern suffragists and manipulated for racist arguments by southern suffragists. He attempted to overcome African American men’s bitterness toward suffragists by showing that despite their racism, their cause should be supported. Du Bois’s arguments from principle suggested that African Americans should support woman suffrage because it was in accordance with the higher ideals of American democracy. This type of rhetorical appeal likely resonated 152 Garth E. Pauley with many blacks, as democracy was a powerful cultural idiom for many Afri- can Americans in the early twentieth century. Historian V. P. Franklin (1992), for example, claimed that blacks during Du Bois’s time “firmly believed in the ‘promise of democracy.’” Du Bois’s pragmatic arguments showed that supporting woman suffrage was not only consistent with the ideals of democracy but also would have positive consequences for African Americans. Du Bois believed that the “Talented Tenth” would save the race. His Crisis writings suggested that black women were the core of that Talented Tenth; granting women the vote, therefore, would help lift up the race. Moreover, Du Bois’s discourse on woman suffrage also suggested that he was carrying on the legacy of Frederick Douglass. The relationship between woman and black suffrage so central to Douglass’s work had been abandoned by many black men since his death in 1895. Du Bois used The Crisis as a forum to re- habilitate the relationship, and even the periodical’s format suggested that Du Bois continued Douglass’s work. For example, the September 1912 issue, a special “Woman’s Suffrage Number,” featured a portrait of Douglass on the cover. Du Bois may have seen woman suffrage as an issue that could be managed to suggest that he, not Booker T. Washington, was the true heir of Douglass’s leadership. Washington claimed that woman suffrage would not have any real benefits for African Americans as a race or for black women. In a 1908 essay in the New York Times, Washington claimed, “It is not clear to me that she would exercise any greater or more beneficent influence upon the world than she now does, if the duty of taking an active part in party politics were imposed upon her.” 50 Du Bois, by contrast, argued that woman suffrage would make a difference, a position that helped him win the support of black suffragists such as Adella Hunt Logan, Washington supporter and leading suffragist of the Tuske- gee Woman’s Club. In The Souls of Black Folk Du Bois identified deficiencies in Washington’s race program; his Crisis writings on woman suffrage identified yet another problem in the wizard’s vision for African Americans. Du Bois directed his arguments on woman suffrage toward a particular set of historical circumstances, yet analysis of his Crisis writings reveals transhistorical insights into the rhetoric of reform and the nature of social movements. Du Bois’s own discourse illustrates the tension between principles and pragmatics in nearly all reform movements: this tension is a peculiarly rhetorical problem involving interpretation and emphasis. Reformers committed to principles often see a rhetorical emphasis on pragmatics as an unprincipled discourse, whereas pragmatists see an emphasis on principles as overly idealistic. To provide a balanced appeal for woman suffrage, Du Bois attempted to construct a consistent argument that effectively straddled the principle- pragmatism line. Whereas activists within social movements often become focused on and polarized by issues of principle and pragmatism, most outsiders Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 153

—the public—are interested in hearing a coherent mixture of idealism and practicality. Finally, Du Bois’s writings on woman suffrage illustrate the tensions that evolve during social campaigns as reforms attempt to appropriate dominant discourses for progressive ends. Mainstream audiences are more likely to find the rhetoric of social change acceptable if reformers can connect their discourse with a dominant ideology. Du Bois, along with many suffragists, spoke the rhetoric of American democracy in his arguments for granting women the franchise. At that same moment, southern suffragists began to speak the rhetoric of white supremacy in their efforts to gain the vote. Both groups attempted to use a social ideology to advance their cause, and these competing ideological discourses complicated the suffrage issue. Du Bois’s response to white supremacist arguments by some suffragists illustrated how race had become a central issue in a controversy seemingly—to some— disconnected from issues of race.

——————————— Notes

This revised essay first appeared in the Journal of Black Studies, and it is reproduced with the permission of Sage Publications, Inc., copyright 2000. 1. Reiland Rabaka, “W. E. B. Du Bois and ‘The Damnation of Women’: An Essay on Africana Anti-Sexist Critical Social Theory,” Journal of African American Studies 7, no. 2 (2003): 51–53. 2. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 417. 3. bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 3. 4. Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 166–67. 5. Anthony’s quote is cited in Rheta Childe Dorr, Susan B. Anthony: The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1928), 183. 6. Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 50. 7. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2 (Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1922), 216. 8. Frederick Douglass, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 4, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 212–13. 9. Philip S. Foner, “Introduction,” in Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights, ed. Fon- er (New York: Da Capo, 1992), 3–48. 10. Mari Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle, eds., The Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Se- lections from the Classic Works of Stanton, Anthony, Gage, and Harper (Urbana: Univer- sity of Illinois Press, 1978), 259. 154 Garth E. Pauley

11. Ibid., 267. 12. Ibid. 13. Douglass supported woman suffrage but argued that the Fifteenth Amend- ment should pass even if it did not enfranchise women. S. Jay Walker noted, “Doug- lass knew that the essential northern states felt strongly about the propriety of women voting, and he felt that the inclusion of woman’s suffrage would result in the loss of the Amendment, thus denying the vote to women and blacks alike.” Walker, “Frederick Douglass and Woman Suffrage,” Black Scholar 4 (1973): 28. 14. Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 258. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 260. 17. Alma Lutz, Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815–1902 (New York: John Day, 1940), 46. 18. Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement; Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 19. Rufus Burrow Jr., “Some African American Males’ Perspectives on the Black Woman,” Western Journal of Black Studies 16 (1992): 65. 20. Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, ed. A. M. Duster (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 228–29. 21. Kearney’s quote is cited in Nancie Caraway, Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 153. 22. Steven M. Buechler, Women’s Movements in the United States: Woman Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Beyond (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Kradi- tor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement. 23. Marianna W. Davis, ed., Contributions of Black Women to America (Columbia, SC: Kenday Press, 1982), 102. 24. Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, The Southern Problem (New Or- leans, 1912). The first quote is on p. 4; the second and third quotes are on p. 1. 25. Mrs. Guilford Dudley, The Negro Vote in the South: A Southern Woman’s View- point (New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing, 1918), 1–2. 26. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Forward Backward,” The Crisis, October 1911, 243–44. 27. Ibid., 244. 28. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Suffering Suffragettes,” The Crisis, June 1912, 76–77. 29. Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1984), 41. 30. Du Bois, “Forward Backward,” 243. 31. Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 411. 32. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Heckling the Hecklers,” The Crisis, March 1912, 195–96; Du Bois, “Suffering Suffragettes,” 76–77; Du Bois, “Ohio,” The Crisis, August 1912, 181–82; Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, September 1912, 234. 33. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., New York: Dover, 1994), 7, 28; Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (Or- lando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1940), 28; Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage 155

A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: In- ternational Publishers, 1968), 92. 34. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Woman’s Suffrage,” The Crisis, May 1913, 29; Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, August 1914, 180; Du Bois, “Woman Suffrage,” The Crisis, April 1915, 285. 35. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Prospectus,” in Pamphlets and Leaflets by W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1986), 94. Original work published in 1910. 36. Du Bois, “Ohio,” The Crisis, August 1912, 182. 37. Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, September 1912, 234. 38. Du Bois, “Woman Suffrage,” The Crisis, April 1915, 285. 39. Ibid.; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Woman Suffrage,” The Crisis, November 1915, 29; Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of To-day (New York: James Port and Company, 1903), 31–76. 40. Du Bois, “Ohio”; Du Bois, “Suffrage and Women,” The Crisis, February 1915, 182. 41. Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, August 1914, 180. 42. Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, November 1917, 3. 43. Du Bois, “Ohio,” 182. 44. Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, September 1912, 234. 45. Du Bois, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), original work published in 1911; Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (New York: Shocken, 1969), original work published in 1920. 46. Du Bois, “Woman Suffrage,” The Crisis, November 1915, 29. 47. Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, August 1914, 180; Du Bois, “Votes for Women,” The Crisis, November 1917, 3; Du Bois, “Woman Suffrage,” The Crisis, March 1920, 234. 48. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (New York: Shocken, 1967), 373, original work published in 1899; Catt quote cited in Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suf- frage Movement, 198; B. H. Fisher, “The Negro and the Vote,” unpublished speech given at the meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1919. 49. Du Bois, “Ohio,” 182. 50. “Booker T. Washington Questions the Benefit to Women,” New York Times, De- cember 20, 1908, sec. 5, p. 4. Chapter 6

The Crisis Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic

Katharine Capshaw Smith

In an editorial in The Crisis in October 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, “There is a real sense in which the world is growing young; and that is the reason we are paying more attention to the Youth, the Child, and the Baby.”1 Du Bois understood that the Harlem Renaissance, one of the greatest periods of black cultural reinvention, would have an impact on young people. As the newest of “New Negroes,” children would carry into the future the ideals of progressive black thinkers like Du Bois, as well as the dreams and ambitions of their parents and the larger community. The Crisis’s annual October Children’s Number and its magazine for young people, The Brownies’ Book (1920–1921), became the foremost avenues for dialogue about the possibilities for black youth in a new era. Although Du Bois in an editorial would refer to children as “embry- onic men and women,”2 the black community, particularly the middle class, struggled to define its relationship to youth as the ambition to create race leaders collided with the longing to insulate children from prejudice and hatred. The Brownies’ Book, the first major periodical for African American children, developed as a response to Du Bois’s desire to balance racial self-respect with protectionism. By exploring the origins of the children’s magazine, this chapter addresses the relationship of The Crisis to The Brownies’ Book and explores the distinct contributions of the children’s magazine, particularly in terms of the fantastic, to African American literature. Several factors contributed to the cultural ascendance of black childhood in the 1920s. First, the racial uplift movement helped reposition attention toward childhood, since the black elite in the 1900s and 1910s offered parenting directions in women’s club publications and in conduct books. Proper parenting became a form of civil rights activity as it produced well-behaved, refined, upper-middle-class children who would demonstrate black cultural and ma-

156 Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 157 terial success.3 Second, the eugenics movement permitted Du Bois and others to appropriate the rhetoric of physical and intellectual superiority in order to demonstrate the vigor and dynamism of black childhood, in opposition to the defamations of racial pseudoscience.4 Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Du Bois included on the pages of The Crisis thousands of photographs of African American babies and small children in order to evidence the progress of the race through the health and beauty of the black child body. Third, as the Great Migration drew families from the Deep South to the urban North, children found themselves in new spaces with new possibilities, sharing in their parents’ commitment to modernity and economic possibility. Finally, the long- standing African American cultural drive for education gained traction during the 1920s, as black children became increasingly invested in the authority of the printed word and the classroom.5 The Harlem Renaissance thus transformed expectations for black childhood. Children had always been important within black families and communities, of course; the popularity in recitation of poems like Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Little Brown Baby” attests to the African American community’s desire to see in art a reflection of the deep affection between parents and children. However, it was in the late 1910s and early 1920s that the public image of black childhood shifted dramatically, and Du Bois at The Crisis helped spearhead the black civic commitment to children as embodiments of social change and possibility. Du Bois proclaimed in his 1926 editorial, “Few magazines have tried to do more for the children than The Crisis.”6 Indeed, the magazine under Du Bois’s leadership devoted much space and attention to issues concerning youth, including his influential editorials on education and parenting. The annual Children’s Number appeared each October from 1912 until shortly after Du Bois’s departure from The Crisis in 1934, offering a fascinating miscellany of material connected to childhood: from reports on education and child health, to photographs of children and young adults, to poetry, illustrations, and short stories both addressing young people and concerning the situation of parents. The Children’s Numbers demonstrated the vitality of childhood as a subject of interest, and children as an audience, throughout the 1910s and 1920s. In his first Children’s Number editorial, Du Bois articulated what would become the dominant construction of childhood within the pages of The Crisis: “Your child is wiser than you think.”7 For Du Bois, children as an audience were sophisticated, intelligent, and capable, able to move seamlessly between descriptions of NAACP civil rights efforts and fanciful poetry, between blunt assessments of brutal racial prejudice and studio photographs of children with books and violins. The “wise” child of Du Bois’s Crisis was also resolutely political, ready to take action toward the cause of civil rights. Although Du Bois did not encourage discussions of racism too early in a child’s life, explaining, 158 Katharine Capshaw Smith

“It is wrong to introduce the child to race consciousness prematurely,” the real threat to black childhood was total parental protection. As Du Bois argued in his first Children’s Number editorial, “Once the colored child understands the world’s attitude and the shameful wrong of it, you have furnished it with a great life motive—a power and impulse toward good, which is the mightiest thing man has.”8 When children recognize prejudice, they should be trained for the battle that awaits them, Du Bois contended. The pages of the Children’s Number thus served as sustenance for children as race leaders, offering them information about injustices as well as creative writing that often bolstered the child’s racial self-image.9 The idea for a separate childrens’ magazine first surfaced in an NAACP column by Carrie W. Clifford, titled “Our Children,” in the 1917 Children’s Number. Here Clifford outlined the activities of the “Juvenile Department” of the organization, which included readings of Shakespeare by black performers, presenta- tions of creative writing by young people, staging of two plays (“Fulfillment” by Hallie E. Queen and the unattributed “Tradition”), a field trip to Frederick Dou- glass’s home, and a tribute to Archibald H. Grimké; all of these activities suggest a robust creative energy among child NAACP members and supporters of The Crisis. Clifford ended by asking, “Dare we report to you briefly of our dreams?” and continued with a description that would seem prescient:

A children’s magazine, where juveniles may send stories, drawings, charades, puzzles, etc., and to which grown-ups may also contribute whatever will help us reach the goal of race unity. The life story of the colored American is truly so marvelous that it can be woven into stories more fascinating and entertaining than any fairy-tale it has ever entered into the mind of man to conceive . . . An- other idea is to gather and preserve the folk-tales of the race. A number of games have been prepared which are designed to bring to the juveniles the wealth of information concerning the race, and in a most entertaining form. It is through story-telling, games, recitations and periodicals that we hope to awaken in the children race consciousness and race pride.10

Clifford’s description of the young NAACP members’ “dreams” conspicuously anticipated the contents of Du Bois’s The Brownies’ Book, the first extensive periodical addressing African American children. Truly an inclusive assemblage, The Brownies’ Book published biography, games, puzzles, quizzes, poetry, plays, folk tales, and short stories, both by adults and by young people. Remembering Clifford’s call for a children’s periodical permits us to understand the multiple threads that led to the initiation of The Brownies’ Book. Du Bois’s biographer, David Levering Lewis, sees the children’s magazine as an extension of Du Bois’s own activities as a parent; he explains that the time Du Bois’s daughter, Yolande, had spent in a British boarding school was de- Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 159 structive to her sense of racial pride, and that the magazine became a way for him to make amends: “her father may well have felt that his children’s magazine afforded another opportunity for parental advice—advice that now had the painful, chastening, compensatory benefit of hindsight.”11 But in addition to his particular position as a father, Du Bois must have listened to the voice of Clifford, who spoke for a body of creative and politically active “juvenile” NAACP members. Recalling Clifford enables us to recognize the involvement and influence of children during the Harlem Renaissance, as well as to consider Du Bois’s receptivity to their request for a creative outlet that would spur racial self-respect. The final factor propelling the emergence of The Brownies’ Book was the surge in racial violence in 1919 (the year that prefaced the magazine’s appearance). Although his editorials in The Crisis repeatedly argued against shelter- ing children from social realities, Du Bois certainly recognized the severity of the information offered to children in the October issues. In an October 1919 editorial, “The True Brownies,” he explained, “To the consternation of the Edi- tors of The Crisis we have had to record some horror in nearly every Children’s Number—in 1915, it was Leo Frank; in 1916, the lynching at Gainesville, Fla.; in 1917 and 1918, the riot and court marital at Houston, Tex., etc.” The “Red Summer” of 1919 brought intensified white racial viciousness nationwide. An- gered by African American resistance to discriminatory labor and housing practices, white mobs rioted in Chicago; Washington, DC; Elaine, Arkansas; and at least twenty other towns and cities, killing hundreds of African Ameri- cans. Du Bois found it difficult to balance the needs of his “wise child” in the face of such brutality, asking of his obligation to cover race riots, “what effect must it have on our children? To educate them in human hatred is more disastrous to them than to the hated; to seek to raise them in ignorance of their racial identity and peculiar situation is inadvisable—impossible.”12 Despite the note of caution in his editorial, Du Bois did not retreat from connecting children to political action. Even within this 1919 Children’s Num- ber, an image of a line of screaming babies (followed on the next page by a photograph of an unnamed murdered African American man) accompanied Walter White’s scathing article on the Chicago riots, “Chicago and Its Eight Reasons”; this issue also excerpted Claude McKay’s militant poem “If We Must Die” and paired it with a photograph of a somber, nude, vulnerable female tod- dler. How did young people respond to the provocative combination of lynching reports with images of children? Did they recognize Du Bois’s call to take up the battle against racial prejudice? In truth, only a few records of the effects of Crisis Children’s Numbers remain. One, by Horace Mann Bond, the first black president of Lincoln University, appeared in a tribute to Du Bois after his death and spoke of the influence of the Children’s Numbers on Bond’s rural Kentucky childhood: 160 Katharine Capshaw Smith

Through The Crisis Du Bois helped shape my inner world to a degree impossible to imagine in the world of contemporary children, and the flood of various mass media to which they are exposed. I remember the pleasant faces of brown and black children pictured in the magazine . . . [Du Bois revealed] The real truth about a brutal social order, however frightening; the beauty and dignity of black people; these learnings were almost impossible to come by, for children of whatever color or race in the United States, when I was a child. This is what I know that Du Bois did for me.13

It is difficult to underestimate the influence of The Crisis’s Children’s Num- bers on an audience of young people like Bond, whose 1940s social science research on black childhood would sustain the NAACP’s work on behalf of Brown v. Board of Education, and who would become the father of Julian Bond, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The effects of the Children’s Number can only be surmised through such anecdotal evidence, but one can sense in Bond’s testimony the generative effects of Du Bois’s willingness to tell the truth about both prejudice and the dignity of blackness. For Du Bois, The Brownies’ Book was a way to balance exposure to social realities with nurturing a child’s sense of well-being, pride, and optimism. This separate magazine for young people aimed to “seek to teach Universal Love and Brotherhood for all little folk—black and brown and yellow and white.” Du Bois lists seven particular goals for the magazine,14 including “To make colored children realize that being ‘colored’ is a normal, beautiful thing.”15 Many of the Harlem Renaissance’s most famous writers saw their first publication within The Brownies’ Book, including a teenaged Langston Hughes, whose poetry, travel writing, games, and drama drew on his experience visiting his father in Mexico. Other important Harlem Renaissance writers appeared in the periodical such as Georgia Douglas Johnson, Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson, Arthur Huff Fauset, and Mary Effie Lee (maiden name of Effie Lee Newsome). Undoubtedly, however, Jessie Fauset was the most influential force alongside Du Bois in shaping The Brownies’ Book. Fauset worked as the literary editor of The Crisis magazine from 1919 to 1926 as well as literary editor of the children’s magazine; in addition to many attributed poems and stories within the children’s magazine, Fauset also wrote much of the magazine’s unattributed or anonymous material. Fauset wrote a monthly feature titled “The Judge,” in which four children and an elderly judge discuss questions about education, child behavior, and social practice. Dianne Johnson-Feelings writes of the inclusion of children in determining corrective social action, “This Judge does not solely lay down the law; he also acknowledges that the Law is in need of profound revision. And the Judge makes it clear that children will be a part of this process of civic activity and legal change.”16 Fauset’s columns imagined children as thoughtful, inquisitive, engaged citizens. Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 161

With a magazine of such range, the perspective on race relations and on the role of childhood to racial progress was not monolithic; some pieces seemed to encourage a retreat into fairy land as a way to escape from racial tensions, while others used biography of famous African Americans—like Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks, Paul Cuffee, and others—as models to inspire activism in child readers. Perhaps its most overtly political feature came directly from Du Bois in a monthly column he wrote for the magazine: “As the Crow Flies” offered sophisticated reportage of social and political events from across the globe. It was in this column that Du Bois turned directly to racial violence, for within the first issue of The Brownies’ Book, Du Bois included a straightforward description of the Red Summer: “There have been many race riots and lynchings during the year. The chief riots were in Washington, Chicago, Omaha; Longview, Texas, and Phillips County, Arkansas.”17 Du Bois did not tell the reader how to respond, nor did he attach the description to photographs of murdered individuals, as he had in the 1919 Children’s Number. Instead, Du Bois included in this first issue an image of children marching in the 1917 Silent Protest Parade,18 a demonstration organized by the NAACP in response to the July 2 East St. Louis riot and to lynching in general. The children in the image held signs that read, “Give Us a Chance to Live,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Mother, Do Lynchers Go To Heaven?” Protest, then, is the proper response to injustice according to Du Bois, for children should be involved in politics and in the larger work of the civil rights organization. The detailed political information offered by “As the Crow Flies” confirms that the magazine expected children to be concerned with injustice at home and across the globe, and believed that information would fuel social action.19 The call to child activism is certainly at play in the pages of the magazine, and Du Bois’s groundbreaking construction of the “wise child” informed much of its political writing. As Horace Mann Bond wrote, Du Bois valued children enough to share the “real truth about a brutal social order” in the hopes of involving youth in social activism.20 In another fundamentally respectful move, Du Bois gave over much of the space of the magazine to young writers. Just as the editor aimed for child participation in civil rights efforts, he (and Jessie Fauset) welcomed the creative involvement of readers in the magazine. Pocahontas Foster, a frequent contributor, began by writing letters to the magazine, and then contributed stories and poems. John Bolden, a young man figured in a photograph, published “The Three Golden Hairs of the Sun-King” (September 1920) and even Du Bois’s daughter, Nina Yolande Du Bois, wrote creative pieces like “The Land behind the Sun” (December 1921), nonfiction like “Retrospec- tion” (August 1921), and illustrated others’ work, such as Augusta Bird’s story “Hilda and Frederick” (August 1921). Seventeen-year-old Ruth Marie Thom- as and her sister interviewed the actor Charles S. Gilpin, and their account of the exchange appeared in the July 1921 issue. As Thomas glowingly described 162 Katharine Capshaw Smith

Gilpin’s approachability, we become aware of the young interviewer’s alert- ness to how adults treat her:

He is very sympathetic and entered into my interview with complete sincerity. He is known to be especially interested in school children, as he has a son, who is eighteen years old attending school. He has a very straightforward and frank way of speaking when addressing one. When we left he stood and shook hands with us in a very cordial manner. My own opinion is that Mr. Gilpin is a wonderful man, a thorough gentleman and above all he is not egotistical.21

The creative control afforded to readers was quite extraordinary, and one can sense in the example of Ruth Marie Thomas an excitement about not only meeting and interviewing a famous actor but also his respectful treatment of young people; and, of course, Thomas is elated to have that conversation published in a national magazine. The magazine also covered readers as news makers in its “Little People of the Month” column, which included photographs as well as descriptions of young people and their accomplishments, particularly in terms of education. The sense of pride the magazine inculcated in its readers derived not only from reading the rich biographical essays of historical figures like Phillis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker, but also from awareness of the experience of its own readers. Typical is the glowing announcement of Mildred Turner’s accomplishment in the September 1921 “Little People of the Month” column: selected to write the “ode” for her high school in Brockton, Massachu- setts, Turner achieved “a signal honor for her race, since she is the first Negro to win this distinction at the school.”22 Not only could black children emulate success stories from history, but in their own everyday actions they became the modern heroes of the race. The Brownies’ Book offered an impressive variety of material to its audience: fairy tales, African folktales, Brer Rabbit stories, and whimsical poetry all sit side by side, a testament to the generous and capacious aesthetic of Jessie Fauset. The multiple genres represented in the magazine speak to the publication’s awareness of the various literary worlds inhabited by black children. The magazine’s creators imagined the child reader as moving seamlessly between genres, conversant in fairy tale and in oral tradition, in poetic modes and in anthropological narrative.23 Although each of these genres would provide ample material for discussion, especially in light of the Harlem Renais- sance’s emphasis on reinvention, one distinguishing feature of The Brownies’ Book material that has not drawn much critical attention is its investment in fantasy. While critics like Fern Kory have addressed the magazine’s use of fairy tale tropes, the magazine’s larger interest in the fantastic and mystical has been overlooked. The fantastic becomes especially salient to a discussion of The Brownies’ Book’s distinctiveness because the genre of African Ameri- Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 163 can fantasy has been considered to be relatively new.24 Attention to the fantastic in The Brownies’ Book thus permits a reconsideration of the roots of the genre. Brian Attebery offers a fundamental definition of fantasy in his study, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to LeGuin, explaining that its parameters are inclusive; fantasy texts are “narratives evoking wonder through the consistent treatment of the impossible as though it were possible.”25 One might consider supernatural and mystical events as falling within this definition of the fantastic. In The Brownies’ Book, nature often fuses with the fantastic, as is the case with Yetta Kay Stottard’s “A Few Pumpkins for Hallowe’en” (October 1920), in which a magical pumpkin vine nearly overtakes the city: “It began to wander all over the place; it covered the flowers on the fence in three days. Willt [the main character] had to keep snipping and clipping it to prevent it from crossing the street-car track.”26 The fantastic and the natural world also cohered in the contributions by Peg- gy Poe, “Pumpkin Land” (January 1920) and “The Watermelon Dance” (Sep- tember 1920), which Kory accurately describes as “problematic hybrid[s] of the most didactic sort of fairy story and a conventional plantation story.”27 In addition to the curious fusions of nature with the supernatural and the appropriations of fairy lore, The Brownies’ Book explored the fantastic through the lens of fortune telling and the occult.28 Considering the magazine’s struggle to balance race leadership with protectionism, the interest in the occult becomes particularly striking: telling the fortune of the race or predicting the future enables a productive hybridity in purpose for The Brownies’ Book texts. Fortune telling and the occult appealed because of their potential for a reader to escape from social realities, but then also to have power over social conditions through knowledge. The power to tell the future is attractive to a community in the process of redefinition. It is not surprising, however, for a magazine as variously configured as The Brownies’ Book to offer a mixture of perspectives on magic and the occult, some affirmative and some decidedly negative. In its first issue, the magazine issued “The Ouija Board,” a critical story by Edna May Harrold, a writer who had published previously on religion in The Crisis. The story described three young girls who competed in English class for a prize. The arrogant central character, Gloria, decided to visit a fortune teller; she walked up to her friends “with an air of mystery”:

“I’m going to have my fortune told and I want you to go with me,” she whispered, enjoying the shocked surprise of the other girls. “Gloria, you wouldn’t dare!” exclaimed Maude. “Why, that’s a sin.” Betty was speechless. “It is not a sin!” denied Gloria indignantly. “It’s just in fun, anyway. Why, I know lots of people who go to Mrs. Gray and have their fortunes told. People who belong to the church, too . . .”29 164 Katharine Capshaw Smith

What follows is a somewhat comic scene, in which the fortune teller hiked up her prices and refused to foretell Gloria’s future; instead, she divined it by reading a Ouija board and offered, among other vague predictions, the stum- bling, “You’ve got some friends and some enemies. Look out for a slim, brown- skin woman. An’—an’—that’s all.” The other girls recognized that the medium is “a fake and a big one, too,”30 especially since she used the board with her eyes closed, unable to read any message from the spirit world even if there were one. The topic of Ouija boards was timely in 1920, since Spiritualism experienced a resurgence after World War I, and figures like Pearl Curran wrote novels and poetry in the 1910s supposedly via spirits channeled through a Ouija board. Through her story, Harrold expressed skepticism toward the renewed interest in truth telling through mysticism, envisioning it as an affront to traditional religion. None of the predictions came true for Harrold’s main character, Gloria, who loses at the contest to her religious friend Maude. Harrold offered another piece disapproving of mysticism and magic in May 1921. Titled “Black Cat Magic,” the short story began by referring to the interest in the 1910s in studying the paranormal through scientific evidence. Two dim-witted boys, Carl and Ray, start a conversation; Carl begins, “I’m sick and tired of hearing about it, that’s what. . . . Every time I pick up a newspaper or magazine there’s a whole lot in it about psychical research. Talk about something else” and Ray responds, “Well you’re foolish and behind the times, that’s all I’ve got to say. . . . The leading men of the world are taken up with it, and it’s a good thing to know about.” When asked “Why” by a sneering Carl, Ray has no rational response, and instead reveals his real interest in psychical research: “Well because it is, that’s why. And if you don’t buy a ticket from me you’re a cheap skate and not my buddy.” As the narrator explains, “Ray had been such a boob as to let some old professor foist a lot of tickets off on him with the promise of a dollar if he sold them all.”31 Although the story offers no additional information about the lecture, it appears to represent the interest of the period in proving scientifically the existence of telepathy and the physical manifestation of thoughts. A journal of the era, The Medical World, offered the following announcement in 1913; it sheds light on the kind of scientific lecture for which Ray sells tickets: “The American Society of Psycho-Physical Research has just been founded in San Francisco, Cal., with Dr. Albert Abrams as president. Cu- rious phenomena of a physical nature, as yet unclassified by science, are to be studied.”32 The story begins, then, with two very stupid, argumentative boys, one of whom is used by a professor to defraud his community. Harrold’s story becomes terribly gruesome as she advances her critique of mysticism on the grounds that it cannot be proved empirically. The boys decide to conduct their own version of psychical research, deciding to test a particular superstition about black cats. Ray explains, “If you boil a black cat alive Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 165 and then chew a certain bone that comes out of its head you’ll be able to do anything in the world that you want to, no matter what it is.” The children do not find a live cat, so they make due with a bloated corpse they find in a pas- ture. They boil it on Carl’s mother’s stove (when she is away) after hiding it for a few days in their woodshed. The scene is profoundly disgusting, as the children attempt to eat lunch while the cat boils on the stove. Finally, overcome by the smell, they dump the animal in an alley, and Carl shouts at Ray, “You shut up that foolishness, right now. . . . I’ve made a big enough boob of myself hiding a dead cat, let alone messing through it looking for a bone. Don’t you ever come to me with that tale again. D’you hear?”33 The repulsiveness of the scene is the very point for Harrold, who wished to discourage children from magic, specifically from the idea of mysticism’s legitimacy. “Black Cat Magic” as the lead story in the May 1921 issue of The Brownies’ Book indicated the journal’s strong strain of disapproval when it came to the occult. For Du Bois, however, the appeal of the occult did not include Ouija boards and black cats. The occult held deep attraction to the editor as a means to connect spiritually with accomplishments across black history. Susan Gillman’s invaluable text, Blood Talk: American Race Melodrama and the Culture of the Occult, described the prevalence of occult symbology in conceptions of racialized identity, both black and white, during the early decades of the twentieth century. While The Brownies’ Book did not explicitly invoke the iconography of the Masons, for instance, or the language of Theosophy, or the symbolic reso- nance of Egypt, it is useful to be aware of Du Bois’s investment in the occult in his own works and in his promotion of occultist texts within the pages of The Crisis, including George W. Crawford’s history of the black Masons, Prince Hall and His Followers (1914). Gillman explains that for Du Bois, “an occult syncretism of New World and Africanist epistemologies, religious and scientific, ancient and modern, fostered the intellectual concept of African ‘surviv- als’ throughout the diaspora and enabled the narrating of a global history of race consciousness.”34 For the purposes of examining The Brownies’ Book, we should remember that The Crisis heavily advertised Du Bois’s occult pageant “The Star of Ethiopia” (first produced in 1913 and subsequently throughout the 1910s), and that Du Bois devoted the December 1915 Crisis issue to celebrating its production and would continue to cover the pageant with both text and photographs. As Gillman details, occult representations enabled Du Bois to navigate historical representation and engage the popular imagination. Du Bois sought for his audience—in Crisis, at his pageant, and in The Brownies’ Book—an intensified awareness (a second sight, if you will) of the contributions of people of African descent across history and geography. Du Bois found an able partner in Willis Richardson, a playwright from Washington, DC, who had long admired the editor. Best known today for his 166 Katharine Capshaw Smith

1920s folk dramas and for editing two volumes of drama for Carter G. Wood- son’s publishing house in the 1930s, Richardson was the first African Ameri- can playwright to have a noncomedic play produced on Broadway; his The Chip Woman’s Fortune opened on May 15, 1923, at New York’s Frazee Theater (along with Oscar Wilde’s Solome), after having been staged at Harlem’s Lafay- ette Theater. Richardson would go on to win the Amy Spingarn Prize from the NAACP in 1925 for his play The Broken Banjo, becoming one of the premier playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance. Based on his work for The Brownies’ Book and for Woodson’s Associated Publishers, Richardson can also be considered the first major African American playwright for young people; he collected his early work in a volume published in 1956 and titled The King’s Dilemma and Other Plays for Children.35 For The Brownies’ Book Richardson wrote four children’s dramas; two of them connect explicitly with the Du Boisean perspective on the historical occult. “The Dragon’s Tooth,” set in the “ancient world,” described four children who lose a ball when it rolls over a cliff. They consult an old man, “The Sooth- sayer,” who interpreted dreams and read ancient, mystical writing. He tells them that their ball has rolled into the lair of a dragon:

Years ago, when I was young and strong, there lived two dragons in the cave below, with many young ones. At that time a spirit whispered in my ear that the female dragon had in her mouth a tooth on which was written the secret of the future good of the world. I told the king and he, in spite of my warning, sent two of his warriors down to kill the dragons; but these warriors never returned.36

The Soothsayer explains that the warriors had killed the female dragon, and that the tooth lay in the lair. The children wish to bring back the tooth, and the Soothsayer replies, “An innocent child, unarmored and weaponless, can bring the secret of the future good of the world.” Two children hold hands as they walk into the lair, and emerge untouched with the tooth. The Soothsayer reads its ancient script: “The secret of the future good of the world depends upon the growth of Love and Brotherhood. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity must rule the world in the place of Inequality, Envy and Hate.”37 The meaning is quite straightforward: children incarnate an optimistic vision of the future as they work toward racial amity (“Love and Brotherhood”) and egalitarian ideals. Richardson here participated in a fantastic version of Gillman’s “occult history,” which she defines as “a prophetic form and futurist imagining of a transhistorical racial consciousness that crosses boundaries of blood and nation.”38 Richardson did not draw on actual black history in his children’s play, but rather employed the idea of futurism in order to link the present moment with an idealized, preracialized past where “Inequality, Envy, and Hate” exist Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 167 only in the abstract. The position is deliberate, for in casting the transhistorical exchange through the lens of fantasy, Richardson retained the kind of protectionism desired by many adult readers of The Brownies’ Book while attaching the child reader to ideals of social progress and activism. Fantasy allowed Rich- ardson to employ the framework of occult history without actually discussing elements of a painful past. A more direct invocation of Du Boisean occult historicism occurred in Rich- ardson’s “The Gypsy’s Finger-Ring,” a play which described the encounter of three children with a fortune teller they met while gathering flowers in a field. One child, Rose, asks the woman, “Aren’t you colored too?” and she replies, “I am in a way but not the same as you. I was born in Africa, but I’m not a Negro. I was born in Egypt.” The reference to Egypt as the source of mystical enlight- enment conspicuously aligned the story with the occult symbology attractive to Du Bois and other African American visual and literary artists of the Har- lem Renaissance.39 The gypsy tells the children that her ring, fashioned from a piece of pearl “found on the banks of the Nile in Egypt,” permits its wearer to dream of the past, present, or future. The ability to skip across time in order to discover historical truth is a prominent feature of the African American occult, as Gillman explains: “the occult vision of an infinite universe, unbounded by space or time, provided a medium of transracial contact and the promise of transracial consciousness.”40 One of the children in the play discovers such consciousness as she wears the ring and dreams of enslavement:

I saw women and children beaten and driven about; I saw half-naked children walking barefoot on the cold, hard ground, carrying burdens heavy enough for men. I saw wives sold from their husbands and mothers sold from their children, men beaten upon their backs with knotted whips—things far too cruel to tell.41

Suggestively, the gypsy had been reluctant to permit the child, Eleanor, to see slavery: “Why choose such a dreary time, such a cruel place?” This dynamic reflected the practice of many adult writers for children during the Harlem Re- naissance, those who wished to share only hero stories from slavery in order to inspire children,42 and those invested in uplift modes of middle-class attainment who wished to minimize discussions of poverty. The child led the adult back in time to enslavement in order to draw a connection between the present and the past. Eleanor states, “I wanted to see how much we had attained. I want to know how much more it will take of time and strife and pain to make us great. . . . To be great as a people, so that the people of a thousand years from now will read their histories and know that we were as great as other people.” Richardson employed the “disjunctive temporalities” which characterized 168 Katharine Capshaw Smith occult race literature of the moment, drawing his child into the past in order to permit connection with the present and with the future.43 The next section of the play draws on The Brownies’ Book’s commitment to internationalism, particularly in describing the global exploitation of the poor and people of color. A child, Rose, asks the gypsy for the ring in order to “see the Jews in the east of London, to see how they live,” because she had heard her parents say that “They suffer, too.” The gypsy again resists the children witnessing misery; she says, “But England is a prosperous country, no one suffers there.” One child replies, “So is America a prosperous country, but we Negroes suffer here,” and another offers a sentiment redolent of Socialist ideals: “All toiling people suffer in all countries.” The gypsy affirms their sympathy and their knowledge, saying, “You are wise children. You have heard and remembered much,” and offers Rose the ring. The child states after her dream:

I saw things nearly as bad as Eleanor saw. The Jews are not bought and sold, they are not beaten, nor are they forced to bear too heavy loads. The thrifty Jews, the buyers and sellers of things, the makers of money, live harsh and bitter lives. They live on crusts in dark, cold, filthy places and only get a pittance for their toil. The rest, the people of power, steal from them. I saw a dozen people sleeping in one room, I saw mothers, fathers, and children working side by side through long dull hours.44

Crisis readers would be familiar with British anti-Semitism in the 1910s and with the living conditions in the impoverished East End of London, where many Jewish Russian Poles settled in the wake of the pogroms. Du Bois had been one of the most vocal African American opponents to anti-Semitism, for he had witnessed prejudice against Jews as a student at the University of Berlin and had worked with many Jewish activists through the NAACP. As Alphine Jefferson writes, “Du Bois’s encounter with anti-Semitism inspired not only a greater compassion for persecuted Jews but also a realization of one oppressed race’s relation to another.”45 Richardson invoked this Crisis context by calling for empathy for impoverished Jewish people (an empathy complicated, perhaps, by passage’s stereotypical assessment of the “thrifty Jews”). By drawing commonalities between both the African American past as well as the present in stating “we Negroes suffer” in America, Richardson also attached his work to the mode of occult historicism practiced by Du Bois, one which involved “the production of an emerging mystical history of a race consciousness that is pan- racial, transnational, and metahistorical.”46 Richardson also used the mystical in order to reveal continuities between racialized communities, all with the goal of offering children a new vision of history’s connectivity. Another feature of occult historicism apparent in Richardson’s play was its emphasis on futurity. As in “The Dragon’s Tooth,” in “The Gypsy’s Finger- Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 169

Ring” Richardson permitted his children a prophetic vision of a glorious future. Leon, the only male child in the play, wears the ring to dream of the future and sees “men and women and children happy at last. None of them were so poor that they were suffering, none were so rich that they were overbearing. The whole five races were in harmony, all working side by side for the good of all.” It became clear that the New Negro boy, who “should make a good strong man,” according to the gypsy, would lead the children into the future, a con- figuration common within the masculine ethos of the New Negro Renaissance. When the children return to their mother, she concludes the play by confirm- ing, “The future is your great promise, your great hope, it’s all you have to live for. Work to make it happy, wait for it, and be patient while you wait.” The emphasis on patience in the mother’s advice adhered to conduct material of the era, which stressed decorum as a civil rights effort.47 Richardson’s linkage of the past, present, and future was quite common within pageantry of the Harlem Renaissance, which also often includes a female lynchpin figure, a chronicler or spirit who revealed different phases of black history.48 Importantly, drama enveloped Richardson’s texts. Unlike Harrold’s severe prose critiques of occultism, Richardson’s plays took their energy from the context of Harlem Renaissance performance: parades, pro- cessions, street performances, and street preachers all flourished during this period, alongside formal theatricals in the form of pageants and plays. As Gillman reminds us, the various structured and unstructured performances employed an aesthetic influenced by the popular occult; such performances “represent the historically specific use of spectacle to promote fraternal and race-based, national and internationalist, social and political movements.”49 Of course, one might suggest that children’s plays about fortune tellers are more indebted to fairy tales than to the occult, and an argument could be made to place Richardson’s work within the traditional expectations for children’s fantasy. Such work would certainly be credible and useful, as has been Fern Kory’s study of The Brownies’ Book’s fairy-tale configurations. But remembering the particular connections between Richardson’s plays and Du Bois’s investment in the occult—including the texts’ performance genre, fortune-teller figure, conflation of time and sympathy, and prophetic conclusion—we can reenvision Richardson’s work as an expression of Harlem Renaissance fantastic historicism. By invoking both fantasy and social reality, Richardson evidenced that balance between protectionism and racial consciousness sought by Du Bois in his creation of The Brownies’ Book. Although the magazine only survived for two years due to financial problems, the threads it wove—in biography, folk- tale, poetry, fairy tale, and fantasy—constitute the fabric of African American children’s literature even today. After the demise of The Brownies’ Book, Du Bois continued his commitment to children as an audience and as a subject by 170 Katharine Capshaw Smith issuing The Crisis Children’s Numbers each year and by publishing his column “As the Crow Flies” periodically. Effie Lee Newsome, a poet first published in The Brownies’ Book, created in the 1920s a “Children’s Page” for The Crisis which included her nature writing, fiction, poetry, and personal essays. Du Bois published Newsome’s page nearly every month from March 1925 until November 1930. The editor recognized that the thoughtful, politically engaged, creative children of the Harlem Renaissance—those “juvenile” NAACP members represented by Carrie Clifford in her call for a children’s magazine, and those young people who eagerly sent letters, poems, and prose to The Brownies’ Book—did not disappear when the magazine ceased publication in December of 1921. Young people were central to the dynamism of the New Negro movement, and Du Bois remained one of their most innovative and committed advocates.

——————————— Notes

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Crisis Children,” The Crisis, October 1926, 283. 2. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Discipline,” The Crisis, October 1916, 270. 3. For a comprehensive study of the uplift movement, see Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). Michelle Mitchell explores the role of conduct to the black elite in her Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Smith discusses black conduct books and photography in Katharine Capshaw Smith, “Childhood, the Body, and Race Performance: Early 20th-Century Etiquette Books for Black Children,” African American Review 40, no. 4 (1996): 795–811. 4. On the role of eugenics and the Harlem Renaissance, see Daylanne English, Un- natural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Cha- pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 5. See Katharine Capshaw Smith, Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) for information on the role of formal education to new perspectives on black childhood. 6. Du Bois, “Crisis Children,” 283. 7. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Children,” The Crisis, October 1912, 288. 8. Ibid., 288, 289. 9. In contrast to the racial self-respect theme, the Children’s Number also often contained poetry which meditated on the negative social consequences of physical blackness, such as Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poems about motherhood; her poem “Hope,” published in the 1917 Children’s Number, describes young people as “Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue.” “Hope,” The Crisis, October 1917, 293. 10. Carrie W. Clifford, “Our Children,” The Crisis, October 1917, 306–7. 11. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 32. Another factor that locates the Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic 171 origins of The Brownies’ Book in Du Bois’s role as a parent of Yolande is the Septem- ber 1912 announcement of that year’s Children’s Number, in which Yolande requests creative writing: “Little Girl looked up from her stewed beans: ‘Will it have a children’s story?’ she asked. The Editor looked down at her. ‘Really, I hadn’t planned—’ ‘But who ever heard of a Children’s Number without a story for children?’ persisted Little Girl. ‘Why—to be sure,’ surrendered the Editor. So the Children’s Number in October will have a children’s story to go with the baby faces.” Du Bois, “Publisher’s Chat,” The Cri- sis, September 1912, 251. 12. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The True Brownies,” The Crisis, October 1919, 285. 13. Horace Mann Bond, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Freedomways (Winter 1965): 16–17. My thanks to Michelle Phillips for alerting me to this essay, one of the only recollections from a reader of the Crisis Children’s Numbers. 14. The goals are listed as such: To make colored children realize that being ‘colored’ is a normal, beautiful thing. To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race. To make them know that other colored children have grown into beautiful, useful and famous persons. To teach them delicately a code of honor and action in their relations with white children. To turn their little hurts and resentments into emulation, ambition and love of their own homes and companions. To point out the best amusements and joys and worth-while things of life. To inspire them to prepare for definite occupations and duties with a broad spirit of sacrifice. (Du Bois, “True Brownies,” 286.) 15. Ibid. 16. Dianne Johnson-Feelings, “Afterword,” in The Best of the Brownies’ Book (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 339. 17. W. E. B. Du Bois, “As the Crow Flies,” The Brownies’ Book, January 1920, 24. 18. Du Bois had originally published the image in the September 1917 Crisis. 19. Space prevents an in-depth examination of The Brownies’ Book’s encouragement of social protest and youth activism. This would be a ripe topic for future scholarship since Du Bois’s column, “As the Crow Flies,” is particularly dense and suggestive in its efforts at informing children in order to inspire social response. 20. Bond, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois,” 16. 21. Ruth Marie Thomas, “An Interview with Charles S. Gilpin,” The Brownies’ Book, July 1921, 212. 22. The Brownies’ Book, September 1921, 266. 23. In Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, I discuss the New Negro child’s discursive flexibility. Conversant in the language of the schoolroom as well as of oral tradition, black children were multiply literate and capable of negotiating various systems of power. 24. Samuel Delaney, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Tananarive Due are major African American fantasy writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. 172 Katharine Capshaw Smith

25. Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le- Guin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 5. 26. Yetta Kay Stottard, “A Few Pumpkins for Hallowe’en,” The Brownies’ Book, Oc- tober 1920, 309. 27. Fern Kory, “Once upon a Time in Aframerica: The Peculiar Significance of Fair- ies in The Brownies’ Book,” Children’s Literature 29 (2001): 103. 28. I am using Susan Gillman’s definition of the occult as an “umbrella term, intended primarily to summon forth a specific historical context.” Gillman, Blood Talk: American Race Melodrama and the Culture of the Occult (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 2003), 8. 29. Edna May Harrold, “The Ouija Board,” The Brownies’ Book, January 1920, 18. 30. Ibid., 19. 31. Edna May Harrold, “Black Cat Magic,” The Brownies’ Book, May 1921, 131. 32. “The Medical Month,” The Medical World 31 (1913): 401. 33. Harrold, “Black Cat Magic,” 132–33. 34. Gillman, Blood Talk, 10. 35. For more on Richardson, see Christine Gray, Willis Richardson, Forgotten Pio- neer of African American Drama (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999). 36. Willis Richardson, “The Dragon’s Tooth,” The Brownies’ Book, October 1921, 276. 37. Ibid., 278–79. 38. Gillman, Blood Talk, 26. 39. Willis Richardson, “The Gypsy’s Finger-Ring,” The Brownies’ Book, March 1921, 68. Egypt figures prominently in the visual arts, as in works by Lois Mailou Jones and Aaron Douglass as well as in black drama of the period. Not every reference to Egypt during the Harlem Renaissance necessarily invokes the mystical, of course. Within a play about fortune telling, however, the reference appears deliberate. See Gillman on the predominance of Egypt to the black occult. 40. Gillman, Blood Talk, 8. 41. Richardson, “The Gypsy’s Finger-Ring,” 70. 42. As I discuss in Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, slavery was nearly unspeakable for many children’s writers. 43. Gillman, Blood Talk, 29. 44. Richardson, “The Gypsy’s Finger-Ring,” 70. 45. Alphine Jefferson, “Anti-Semitism,” in W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia, ed. Gerald Horne and Mary Young (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 10. 46. Gillman, Blood Talk, 151. 47. Richardson, “The Gypsy’s Finger-Ring,” 71. See Smith, “Childhood, the Body, and Race Performance” for information on the connection between conduct and protest. 48. Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance discusses the structure and expectations for children’s pageantry; Gillman productively places Du Bois’s pageant within an occult historicist context. 49. Gillman, Blood Talk, 27. Chapter 7

God in Crisis

Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance

Edward J. Blum

God’s only son was in trouble and everyone seemed to know it. It was the early twentieth century, and the Jesus of the nineteenth-century imagination failed to have answers for the modern world’s problems. To Bruce Barton, a former advertising executive, the old Jesus was too feminine. He could not deal with the new world of big business and even bigger wars. In The Man Nobody Knows (1924), a wildly popular book, Barton remembered being indoctrinated as a child with an effeminate Christ. “The little boy looked up at the picture which hung on the Sunday-school wall. It showed a pale young man with flab- by forearms and a sad expression. The young man had red whiskers.” This Je- sus was a bore, a killjoy, and a weakling. “Jesus was the ‘lamb of God,’” and this “sounded like Mary’s little lamb something for girls—sissified. Jesus was also ‘meek and lowly,’ a ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ He went around for three years telling people not to do things.”1 To F. S. Cherry, known on the streets of Philadelphia as Prophet Cherry, this Jesus was too white. Tired of racial discrimination, violence, and political disfranchisement, Cherry had moved from the rural South to the urban North— part of the Great Migration as it would come to be called. In Philadelphia, he attacked what he considered the sacred symbol of white supremacy—the white Christ. As anthropologist Arthur Fauset related in Black Gods of the Metropolis, Cherry “will pull out a so-called picture of Jesus suddenly and scream to his followers, ‘Who in the hell is this? Nobody knows! They say it is Jesus. That’s a damned lie!’” “He makes fun of a picture of Jesus,” Fauset continued, “embar- rassing a Baptist preacher who is seated on the rostrum by making him get the picture from behind his chair and hold it up to the congregation while he calls out, ‘I’ll give anybody one thousand dollars tomorrow night who can tell me who the hell that is!’”2

173 174 Edward J. Blum

Cherry and Barton grew tired of older representations of Jesus, and they looked backward to recast God’s son in the image of the new century. Bar- ton wanted Christ interpreted as a modern man: strong, tenacious, and the founder of contemporary business: “He picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business,” Barton boasted, “and forged them into an organization that conquered the world.”3 Socialist and labor activist Eugene V. Debs found this Jesus too conservative. For him, Christ was not a businessman, but a work- ingman. “Jesus Christ belongs to the working class. I have always felt that he was my friend and comrade.”4 Prophet Cherry described Christ as black and poor. Proof of Christ’s blackness was in his parents’ decision to flee to Egypt when he was just a babe. “Jesus had been taken right off to Egypt,” Cherry claimed, “because there he was among people of his own color where his presence would not be conspicuous.”5 As Shirley Jackson Case, a liberal theologian at the University of Chicago, wrote in 1925,

There is hardly an area of modern religious interest where Jesus has not been himself made the ideal modern man. The increasing variety and complexity of life within Protestantism in recent years has furnished a great many different garments with which to adorn the figure of Jesus. Every shade of modern activity which has behind it the inspiration of a religious impulse depicts Jesus in accordance with its own immediate interests and ideals. He is made the authoritative teacher for a modern social order, or even an exemplary social reformer himself. Some interpreters have made him the ideal pacifist, while others would see in him the ideal belligerent. At other times he becomes an ideal for the man of affairs, or the model for a Y.M.C.A. worker. In short, whatever one thinks the ideal Christian for today to be in one’s own particular area of experience and activity, it is natural and proper to make Jesus just that sort of person.6

But there was another approach to Christ in the early decades of the twentieth century, one that came not from seminaries or from pulpits. It did not come from denominational literature or from street preachers. This new approach came from the heart of Harlem. It came from the pens of poets and the energies of editors. It came from The Crisis and from the authors of fiction in the journal’s orbit. Rather than searching for similarities between Christ and the modern or for ways to square biblical teachings with current trends, W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes focused on Christ as an outsider in the new world. It was how that Christ would fail to fit in modern America that struck them as illustrative of the moral shape of the nation and world. Du Bois and Hughes sought in a variety of works not to reenvision Christ’s past, but to save him in the present—to save him from the crisis of the times. This was a great theological reversal. For centuries, followers rendered Jesus Christ as a savior.7 Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 175

Now, in the United States, he seemed to need salvation. To Du Bois and Hughes, Jesus needed to be saved from class antagonism and alienation; he needed to be saved from Jim Crow segregation and brutal lynch mobs; and he needed to be saved from imperialism and war. They imagined the possibilities and limits of redeeming Christ and God, and they articulated these visions in poetry and on the pages of The Crisis. Du Bois and Hughes, in their renderings of Christ, fashioned the Harlem Renaissance into, in part, a religious renaissance. In one sense, by playing with depictions of Jesus, Du Bois and Hughes took part in a long American tradition of reinventing Christ. As Stephen Prothero and Richard Wightman Fox have shown in their studies of Jesus in America, countless Americans have remade Christ to fit their particular circumstances and moods. Thomas Jefferson literally clipped out the miraculous and supernatural elements of the New Testament so he could have a Jesus who was an “enlightened sage.” Victorian Americans saw Jesus as a “sweet savior” who sanctified domesticity. Marcus Garvey envisioned Christ as a black man of sorrows to appeal to African Americans suffering in the age of Jim Crow. In short, American history testifies to numerous attempts to imagine and articulate the “color of Christ.”8 Du Bois and Hughes, however, imagined and depicted Jesus in distinct ways in concert with emerging modernist theological trends, prophetic black religious traditions, and African American literary innovations. Scholarship on Du Bois, Hughes, and The Crisis has overwhelmingly tended to neglect the vital importance of religion, but in their writings we find crucial religious insights and creations.9 Scholars have missed the religious visions of these two and of the broader Harlem Renaissance, primarily because those interested in liberal theology have long ignored African Americans and those interested in the Harlem Renaissance have long ignored religion. This last point has changed recently, particularly with the work of art historian Amy Kirschke.10 We need a reevaluating of the Harlem Renaissance, one that situates religion at the center. In the works of Du Bois and Hughes, we find The Crisis and the broader Har- lem Renaissance as the venues for a merger of modernist liberal theology and black prophetic religion.11 An examination of the ways Du Bois and Hughes approached Jesus and God, particularly their literary efforts to save the sacred in Du Bois’s “The Prayers of God” (1914) and Hughes’s “Two on the Road” (1935), reveals four important points. First, it shows the religious innovativeness of the Harlem Renaissance; second, it discloses connections between religious liberal modernism and Af- rican American writers; third, it reveals the modernist theological impulse not to replace the sacred, but to focus on the importance of human agency; and fourth, it provides a new take on Jesus in America. Rather than looking backward, these narratives focused squarely on the present of the early twentieth 176 Edward J. Blum century and questioned how Jesus and God could still be relevant. Before the “God is dead” theologians of the 1960s could make their claim that the idea of God was no longer relevant (an idea that has come into disrepute since the late 1970s), Du Bois and Hughes toyed with the idea of salvaging the sacred. They imagined that faith had failed, that Jesus and God must be saved, and that salvation for the nation or the world had fallen to the hands of humans. Through new literary venues, particularly The Crisis, these authors located sacred power in the spirit of humanity. It must help a falling, and perhaps dying, deity. For these writers, Christ’s otherness, his fundamental un-Americanness, and his strangeness made him most relevant. Thus, it was not an “American Jesus” that appealed to them, but an “un-American” one. At the nexus of early twentieth- century modernism and African American prophetic sensibilities, and in the place of Harlem and the space of The Crisis, we find Du Bois and Hughes rendering new approaches to the divine and the world.

“Help for God’s Sake”: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Salvation of God

W. E. B. Du Bois had a great deal to say about Jesus and God, and he routinely used the pages of The Crisis to punctuate his political and social views with religious points. In the process, he articulated a modernist liberal Protestantism that focused on this world and the agency of human characters and societies. Born in Massachusetts in 1868 and eventually gaining a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, Du Bois was the leading African American intellectual and activist of the first half of the twentieth century. An accomplished historian, sociologist, poet, playwright, novelist, and teacher, from 1910 to 1934 he served as the guiding editor of The Crisis, where he wrote most of the material, provided a venue for authors and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and inspired countless Americans. Some writers, such as Langston Hughes, considered The Crisis a sacred text. “My earliest memories of written words are of those of Du Bois and the Bible,” Hughes wrote at the time of Du Bois’s death. “My maternal grandmother in Kansas, the last surviving widow of John Brown’s Raid, read to me as a child from both the Bible and The Crisis.” 12 Only recently have scholars looked seriously at Du Bois’s religious ideas. For the most part, past biographers paid little attention to the religious dimensions or aspects of his writings. David Levering Lewis and Arnold Rampersad, for instance, assert that Du Bois was an agnostic or an atheist and then give little regard to his religious reflections.13 But in the twenty-first century, several scholars unveiled Du Bois’s religious thoughts. It is difficult, in fact, to read anything by Du Bois without encountering some reference to Christ, God, or spiritual life. Christ and God appeared in his sociological work, his historical studies, his editorials, his poems, and the prayers that he wrote for his students Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 177 at Atlanta University. Religious ideas and symbols were ubiquitous in his writing, and they reveal the place of theological liberalism and African American prophetic religion in his thought and the religious inventiveness of the Harlem Renaissance as printed through The Crisis.14 Du Bois published several short stories of Jesus in modern America in The Crisis, and within them he described Jesus as a stranger or outsider. In “Jesus Christ in Texas,” originally published in The Crisis as “Jesus Christ in Georgia” (1911), the story is accompanied by a pen-and-ink drawing of Christ’s image on a cross of flames, his face, crowned with thorns and full of sorrow, looking down at the right quadrant of the page, under the arm of the cross, where a photograph of a lynching victim was found.15 The story was reprinted in a collection of Du Bois’s essays, Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920). Jesus appeared in the story as a “stranger” in the twentieth-century South. To local whites, he was racially ambiguous. One woman stared “in amazement” at him and felt, “Why, the man was a mulatto, surely.” But it seemed that Du Bois presented Jesus as a Mediterranean Jew: “even if he did not own the Negro blood, their practiced eyes knew it. He was tall and straight and the coat looked like a Jewish gabardine. His hair hung in close curls far down the sides of his face and his face was olive, even yellow.” This Christ reached out to the poor and help- less; as Du Bois wrote of one case, “the stranger had stretched out his arms and with a glad cry the child nestled in them.” For his efforts and appeal to the black community, crucifixion ended this stranger’s life.16 In “The Son of God,” published in The Crisis in 1933, a black Jesus ended up at the end of a noosed rope because he spent time with white women and Communists and made bold proclamations against wealth. In a revoicing of the Sermon on the Mount this Jesus claimed, “Heaven is going to be filled with people who are down-hearted and you that are mourning will get a lot of comfort some day. It’s meek folk who are lucky, and going to get everything; and you that are hungry, too. Poor people are better than rich people because they work for what they wear and eat. There won’t be any rich people in Heaven.” He implored his audience to choose kindness in a world of competition. “You got to be easy on guys when they do wrong. Then they’ll be easy on you, when you get in bad. God’s sons are those that won’t quarrel. You must treat other people just like you want to be treated. Let’m call you names. Listen! They have called some of the biggest folks that ever lived, dirty names. What’s the difference? Which ones do we remember? Don’t work all the time. Sit down and rest and sing sometimes. Everything’s all right.”17 In another short story, “The Crucifixion of God,” never published and buried in Du Bois’s archive, Du Bois had Christ reach out to humanity for help. The tale was meant to startle the reader. It began with a priest walking into a forest and encountering a Jesus that was racially ambiguous. He was “a young man thin and tall, naked, with thickly curled brown hair and a face—it was a 178 Edward J. Blum face that made the Priest start and gasp. It was a face of sorrow sown with a sort of awful fear; a face white with pain and dark with passion, scarred with the fury of life and yet luminous, strangely and wonderfully luminous with the vision of some Unseen Thing, and eyes—ah what eyes looked from that face upon the Priest.” The priest and Christ then conversed. Asked what he seeks, the priest murmured, “I seek Almighty God.” Jesus responded, “I am God . . . but I am not Almighty.” The priest asked if he could see God, the Almighty one. “Him then I seek,” cried the Priest, “Where is HE?” The young Jesus retorted with words designed to shock the priest and the reader, “Her too I seek.” Here were two surprises for the priest. Jesus was young, thin, frail, and not almighty; and God was a woman. The two traveled only to find another surprise: God was death and death was a black woman. As Du Bois put it, “The Priest shud- dered and looked again. The form was the form of a maiden—a black maiden whose body was like the light of a soft summer midnight and whose hair was smoke curling and swaying about her head in a crimson halo.” The young Christ announced his mission as one of death, one in which he would cede his divinity. “Must you be God?” the priest asked, and Jesus responded, “No and therefore I must—hark?”18 At this point, death came in the form of flames. It was a storm of flames, perhaps symbolizing war. With the priest cowering in a corner, Jesus threw himself against a tree and held fast. The storm and the fire raged against him. Christ was tearing the tree from its roots. Then he cried out: “Help.” Again, he shouted to the priest: “Help.” Confused, the priest asked himself, “Can I help— God?” Again, Christ shouted, “Help for God’s sake!” As the priest bent down to aid, Christ was crucified. Seeing the dead body, the priest now decided that he would give his life to help God with the words, “Here am I—send me.” The example of the young Christ confirmed to the priest that he could indeed aid God, that God in fact needed his help.19 The idea of saving the sacred was important to Du Bois, and it pointed to the modernism of his theological sensibilities—how he would not rely on sacred, otherworldly forces to make change. In this way, Du Bois pushed well beyond the liberal sentiments of prominent theologians who focused on human agency. William Wallace Fenn of Harvard Divinity School, for instance, wrote that liberal theologians of this age taught that “God Himself was making the best of things and of men, and . . . that it was up to man to join issue with God in the glorious enterprise.”20 For Du Bois, human agency was necessary because God was in trouble—not because God was “making the best of things.” Du Bois invoked the notion of God’s need of salvation most explicitly in “The Prayers of God.” First published in The Crisis in 1914 and then reprinted in Darkwater in 1920, the poem opened with Du Bois lamenting the violent chaos that satu- rated America and the world. Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 179

Name of God’s Name! Red murder reigns; All hell is loose; On gold autumnal air Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed; While high on hills of hate, Black-blossomed, crimson-sky’d, Thou sittest, dumb.

The notion of a “dumb” God reverberated in the next stanza. Du Bois indicted God for failing to stop the madness:

Father Almighty! This earth is mad! Palsied, our cunning hands; Rotten, our gold; Our argosies reel and stagger Over empty seas; All the long aisles Of Thy Great Temples, God, Stink with the entrails Of our souls. And Thou art dumb.

Du Bois continued to bemoan war, murder, and violence, and he called for God to bring mercy and justice. Du Bois looked to Jesus to usher God into action.

Have mercy! Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners! Stand forth, unveil Thy Face, Pour down the light That seethes above Thy Throne, And blaze this devil’s dance to darkness! Hear! Speak! In Christ’s Great Name—

Then, the miraculous happened. Du Bois heard God. But the words dis- turbed the narrator. God did not assail others, but challenged the author of the poem. Du Bois had partaken in the sins of the world he hates so much. 180 Edward J. Blum

(Wait, God, a little space. It is so strange to talk with Thee— Alone!) This gold? I took it. Is it Thine? Forgive; I did not know.

Then the revelation became even more disturbing. The author and his society were equally responsible for killing, even the murder of Christ.

Thou? Thee? I lynched Thee?

At this point, Du Bois began to plead with God; he pleaded for courage and strength and forgiveness. But then there was a sacred switch. Perhaps God was the one praying to Du Bois and not the other way around; perhaps God needed help.

Who cries? Who weeps? With silent sob that rends and tears— Can God sob? Who prays? I hear strong prayers throng by, Like mighty winds on dusky moors— Can God pray? Prayest Thou, Lord, and to me? Thou needest me? Thou needest me? Thou needest me? Poor, wounded soul! Of this I never dreamed. I thought— Courage, God, I come!”21

Du Bois or the narrator, like the priest in “The Crucifixion of God,” was now convinced that he could save or aid God. What began with man looking to God for help turned into God looking to man for help. What began as a call for God to Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 181 act on humanity’s behalf turned into a call for humanity to act on God’s behalf. It was not that the sacred did not matter. It was that the divine had need of human agency to survive, and God needed to be saved from racial discrimination, violence, and hate. It was from within the Harlem Renaissance—and Du Bois’s essays in The Crisis—that a new approach to God evolved. Du Bois’s works were part of liberal theology’s emphasis on human agency and African American prophetic traditions that abhorred injustice, and were situated as part of the Harlem Renaissance and its dedication to using art to challenge racism.

“They have kept me nailed on a cross for nearly two thousand years”: Langston Hughes and the Salvation of Christ

Famed Harlem Renaissance author Langston Hughes was almost forty years younger than Du Bois. The two men knew each other well, ran in the same literary circles, and The Crisis was one of the first forums for Hughes’s writings. Coincidentally, both died in the 1960s. Born in Missouri in 1902, Hughes traveled extensively as a young man. In the early 1920s, he moved to Harlem and from there his short stories, plays, and poems became synonymous with the renaissance. Hughes’s most famous biographer, Arnold Rampersad, claimed that Hughes was an outsider in American Protestantism. Hughes’s distance from black Christianity began in his childhood Sunday school class and took on new force after a failed conversion experience during a revival meeting. According to Rampersad, Hughes throughout his life felt deeply pained by his outsider feelings and “oscillated between self-blame and rage at his parents—and at Je- sus.”22 Yet Hughes’s personal faith may be unknowable and impossible to glean from his writings. In one poem, “Personal” (1935), Hughes wrote:

In an envelope marked: Personal God addressed me a letter. In an envelope marked: Personal I have given my answer.23

Regardless of his individual faith, Hughes wrote frequently on religious themes and refused to let his failed conversion experience or his outsider status stop him from commenting about faith in America. He denounced the notion of the United States as a “Christian Country,” he criticized church segregation and religious hypocrisy unmercifully, and he wrote plays that included black nativity scenes.24 In a number of poems and short stories he approached Jesus. In his most controversial poem, “Goodbye Christ” (1932), Hughes declared 182 Edward J. Blum that Christ’s era had passed and it was time for a workers’ revolution: “And step on the gas, Christ! / Move!”25 With “Christ in Alabama” (1931) Hughes began:

Christ is a nigger, Beaten and black: Oh, bare your back!

This Jesus was the son of an African American woman from the South and God, the “White Master above.”

Most holy bastard Of the bleeding mouth, Nigger Christ On the cross Of the South26

Asserting Christ’s blackness, Hughes extended a growing trend among some African Americans like W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey who attacked whitened images of Christ in the early twentieth century. Hughes, Du Bois, and Garvey presaged the black liberation theological revolution of the late 1960s, where James Cone, J. Deotis Roberts, and Albert Cleage, among others, endeavored to tie blackness to godliness.27 Years later, Hughes mused that “Christ in Alabama” was “an ironic poem inspired by the thought of how Christ, with no human father, would be accepted were He born in the south of a Negro mother.”28 By figuring Jesus of mixed parentage and in some ways fatherless, Hughes drew attention to his “stranger” status in the United States. Jesus was neither white nor black. He was neither human nor divine. Du Bois had done the same in his essays. The “stranger” motif signaled the importance of Christ’s otherness in American culture—the inability to render him intelligibly within the structures of race and class in the United States. Before the philosophical work of Albert Camus, the main sociological theorizing on the role of the stranger came from German sociologist Georg Simmel. To Simmel, the stranger held a special social role—that of the insider/outsider who could confront and challenge that society. “The stranger is an element of the group itself, not unlike the poor and sundry ‘inner enemies,’” Simmel wrote in 1908. As a social type, the stranger is “an element whose membership within the group involves both being outside of it and confronting it.” “Because he is not bound by roots to the particular constituents and partisan dispositions of the group,” Simmel concluded, “he confronts all of these with a distinctly ‘objective’ attitude.” In the case of the stranger Christ, however, it was not an objective attitude that he Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 183 bore, but one rooted in the words and ideas of biblical texts (or more precisely the understandings of biblical texts by Hughes and Du Bois).29 Then in his poem “Bible Belt,” Hughes again pointed out Christ’s otherness, or possible otherness, in America’s racialized society.

It would be too bad if Jesus Were to come back black. There are so many churches Where he could not pray In the U.S.A., Where entrances to Negroes, No matter how sanctified, Is denied, Where race, not religion, Is glorified. But say it— You may be Crucified.30

Jesus—the founder of Christianity—if brought into the present would be an outsider in American Christianity. In Hughes’s first novel, Not without Laughter (1930), several characters expressed disdain for the white Christ and how he stultified black joy. “Aw, the church has made a lot of you old Negroes act like Salvation Army people,” one girl proclaimed. “Afraid to even laugh on Sundays, afraid for a girl and boy to look at one another, or for people to go to dances. Your old Jesus is white, I guess, that’s why! He’s white and stiff and don’t like niggers!” Then later, another character expressed confusion and comedy about Jesus. “But Jesus was white and wore a long, white robe, like a woman’s, on the Sunday-school cards. . . . Once Jimmy Lane said: ‘God damn Jesus’ when the teacher scolded him for not knowing his Bible lessons. He said it out loud in church, too, and the church didn’t fall down on him, as Sandy thought it might.”31 In one poem from the early 1930s, Hughes portrayed God as a slave of society’s evils and then taunted him to rise against them. “A Christian Country” was a short, yet poignant, poem. It called God’s manhood into question, but not in the ways of feminist and womanist scholars in the late twentieth century:

God slumbers in a back alley With a gin bottle in His hand. Come on, God, get up and fight Like a man.32 184 Edward J. Blum

In this poem, Hughes used overtly masculinized language to shame God, to draw him into action. While similar to Du Bois’s attempts to provoke God into action, Hughes employed greater sarcasm and evinced greater anger. Hughes turned to the possible salvation of Christ in his 1935 short story “Two on the Road,” later republished with the title “On the Road.” His literary agent called this story “damned good” and sold the piece to Esquire.33 This was the tale of Christ’s liberation in the Midwest during the Great Depression. It spoke to the problems of race and class through the prism of encounters with organized religion and Jesus. White snowflakes fell everywhere and enveloped Sargeant, the lead character. He was searching for a place to get warm. He arrived at a church, one with “two doors.” On the outside of the church, “way up, a round lacy window with a stone crucifix in the middle and Christ on the crucifix in stone.” The church doors were locked; a theme that persisted throughout the story. Yet Sargeant was intent on entering. “He put his shoulder against the door and his long black body slanted like a ramrod. He pushed. With loud rhythmic grunts, like the grunts in a chain-gang song, he pushed against the door.” As the door opened, white onlookers intervened. They sought to stop Sargeant, a black stranger to the community, and eventually two white police officers arrived. To stop a black man from entering a white church, they beat Sargeant over the head. But then, as if the spirit of Sampson was mani- fest in Sargeant, the “church fell down.” With it tumbled Christ. Miraculously too the whites were now gone. Sargeant “looked around and there was Christ walking along beside him, the same Christ that had been on the cross on the church—still stone with a rough stone surface, walking along beside him.” Be- fore Sargeant could worry that Jesus was mad, the stone Christ exclaimed, “You did a good job . . . They have kept me nailed on a cross for nearly two thousand years.” Sargeant had freed Christ.34 Sargeant and Jesus then had a conversation about whether Jesus really knew and understood the world. After Christ declined Sargeant’s offer to show him around, Sargeant responded, “Yeah, but that was a long time ago.” “All the same,” Jesus retorted, “I’ve been around.” At that point, the two parted company. Christ said he was on his way to Kansas City and Sargeant “never did see Christ no more.” Then, Sargeant woke up. He had been dreaming. Sargeant was in prison, probably knocked unconscious the night before by the policemen outside of the church. Once again, doors separated Sargeant from his desires—this time the prison doors. He threatened to tear them down as well. The short story ended with two questions, “Then he must have been talking to himself because he said, ‘I wonder where Christ’s gone? I wonder if he’s gone to Kansas City?’” The questions were chilling. “I wonder where Christ’s gone?” was a lament— that Jesus, his spirit, his teachings, his essence, were nowhere to be found in the Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 185 economic dislocation of the compassionless Great Depression and the denial of equality in Jim Crow America. This was a land where policemen patrolled churches, where white Christians barred homeless black men from congregations. Perhaps Christ could be found in Kansas City, but probably not there either. Reflecting on the story in the early 1950s, Hughes claimed, “All I had in mind was cold, hunger, a strange town at night whose permanent residents were not so cold and hungry, and a black vagabond named Sargeant against white snow, cold people, hard doors, trying to get somewhere, but too tired and hungry to make it—hemmed in on the ground by the same people who hemmed Christ in by rigid rituals surrounding a man-made cross.” Hughes selected Kansas City because of its status as somehow in the middle of the country: “His destination, Kansas City, being a half-way point across the country, half-way to somewhere.”35 It was unclear where that somewhere was. Yet that was the point. Christ, like the nation, was “somewhere” that was unclear, un- certain, and confused. Jesus could only be liberated by humans, but he did not seem to have solutions for this world.

Conclusion

Hughes and Du Bois had a great deal in common in their fictional writings on religion, especially on Jesus and God. Both used literary means to make political and social points, one of the hallmarks of the Harlem Renaissance. Both situated God and Christ within problems of race and class in American society and ultimately found America unable to house Jesus. Both fixated on the non- whiteness of Christ and how this laid bare the link between racial and religious thought in the United States in ways that linked modern Protestant liberalism with prophetic African American faith. And finally, both drew attention to the agency of humanity vis-à-vis the sacred, and in so doing articulated modernist liberal theological sentiments. The two were distinct, though. Hughes’s works dripped with more irony, bitterness, and anger. Du Bois’s “The Prayers of God” had God asking to be saved. The Jesus of “Two on the Road” is brought down from the cross by accident—or rather, in a fit of rage. Du Bois’s work ended in a hopeful tone and the message was that humans should, after having read the work, proceed to help in the cause of civil rights. Hughes’s work often ended in frustration with little certainty or encouragement to act. Jesus wanders off at the end of “Two on the Road.” Hughes and Du Bois—and the literature of the Harlem Renaissance situated profoundly in The Crisis—showed that approaches to Christ were more complicated than merely translating him into contemporary culture. To them, it was the claim that Jesus could not be reconciled with the present and that 186 Edward J. Blum he was in need of dire help that was most instructive. Whether or not humanity could save Jesus or God was much in doubt, but it appeared possible. In a nation and world replete with violence, racism, and antagonism, these authors looked to save God from death. If they failed, however, it was they and not God that bore the responsibility: and this was the lesson Hughes and Du Bois seemed to want to teach the people of their times. Theologians and artists would declare God dead in the 1960s, but in the decades before, two unortho- dox authors of the Harlem Renaissance had tried to save Jesus before it was too late. The Harlem Renaissance revealed not just a society and world in crisis, but also a God in crisis.

——————————— Notes

1. Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus (Indianapo- lis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1924), n.p.; Richard M. Fried, The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005). 2. Arthur Huff Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Ur- ban North (1944; repr., New York: Octagon Books, 1970), 31–39; Edward E. Curtis IV and Danielle Brune Sigler, eds., The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religions (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Milton C. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migra- tion (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). 3. Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, n.p. 4. Quoted in Richard Wightman Fox, Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2004), 290. A. Philip Randolph often made the same claim. See Allen Dwight Callahan, The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 213. 5. Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis, 39. 6. Shirley Jackson Case, “The Life of Jesus during the Last Quarter-Century,” Journal of Religion 5, no. 6 (November 1925): 566–67. 7. Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 8. Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003); Fox, Jesus in America; Kelly Brown Doug- las, The Black Christ (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994); Alice L. Birney, The Literary Lives of Jesus: An International Bibliography of Poetry, Drama, Fiction, and Criticism (New York: Garland Press, 1989); George L. Berlin, Defending the Faith: Nineteenth- Century American Jewish Writings on Christianity and Jesus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Bruce M. Stephens, The Prism of Time and Eternity: Images of Christ in American Protestant Thought from Jonathan Edwards to Horace Bushnell (Lan- ham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996); W. Barnes Tatum, Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1997); Adele Reinhartz, Jesus Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 187 of Hollywood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Callahan, The Talking Book, 185–235; Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 141–204. 9. Since 2007 there has been an outpouring of work on religion in the life and thoughts of Du Bois. See Edward J. Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Brian Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism, 1868–1934 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008); Jon- athon S. Kahn, Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Edward J. Blum and Jason R. Young, eds., The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009). There has not been a similar development in Langston Hughes studies. 10. Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 11. For more on the emergence of liberal theology, see William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Ferenc Morton Szasz, The Divided Mind of Protestant America, 1880–1930 (University: University of Alabama Press, 1982); Albert F. Scheenkel, The Rich Man and the Kingdom: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Protestant Establishment (Minneap- olis: Fortress Press, 1995); Gary J. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theolo- gy: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900–1950 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003). For new works on the Harlem Renaissance, see Amy Helene Kirschke, Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995); Cary D. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (Hous- ton: Rice University Press, 1988); Martha J. Nadell, Enter the New Negroes: Images of Race in American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Hous- ton A. Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). For more on African American prophetic traditions, see David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet; Cornel West, Proph- esy Deliverance! (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); and Peter Heltzel, Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni- versity Press, 2009). 12. Quoted in John Henrik Clarke, Esther Jackson, Ernest Kaiser, and J. H. O’Dell, eds., Black Titan: W. E. B. Du Bois, An Anthology by the Editors of Freedomways (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 8. 13. Elliot M. Rudwick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest (1960; repr., New York: Atheneum, 1969), 156. S. P. Fullinwider, The Mind and Mood of Black America: Twentieth Century Thought (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1969), 55. See also Francis L. Broderick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959); Keith E. Byerman, Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Work of W. E. B. Du Bois (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994); Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (Cambridge, MA: 188 Edward J. Blum

Harvard University Press, 1976), 20. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biogra- phy of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 49–50, 65–66; David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000); Shamoon Zamir, Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888–1903 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3; Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), 191–93. 14. For more on Du Bois and religion, see Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet; Manning Marable, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne Publish- ers, 1986); David Howard-Pitney, The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). Phil Zuckerman, ed., Du Bois on Religion (New York: Altamira Press, 2000); Phil Zuckerman, “The Sociology of Reli- gion of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Sociology of Religion 63, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 239–53; Kahn, Divine Discontent; Craig A. Forney, “W. E. B. Du Bois: The Spirituality of a Weary Traveler,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago Divinity School, 2002; Dwight N. Hopkins, Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a Constructive Black Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Or- bis Books, 1993), 133–66; Callahan, The Talking Book, 225; Fox, Jesus in America, 293, 358–60; Prothero, American Jesus, 49–50, 97, 212, 216. 15. Kirschke, Art in Crisis, 64. 16. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Jesus Christ in Texas,” in Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920; repr., Mineola, NY: Cover, 1999), 70–77. 17. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Son of God,” The Crisis, December 1933, 276–77. 18. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Crucifixion of God,” W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, microfilm, reel 88, frames 1211–13. 19. Du Bois, “The Crucifixion of God.” 20. Quoted in Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, 247. 21. Du Bois, Darkwater, 145–48; “The Christmas Prayers of God,” The Crisis, De- cember 1914, 83–84. 22. Arnold Rampersad, I, Too, Sing America: The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume I: 1902–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 16, 21, 47, 64–65. For more on Hughes and religion, see Mary Beth Culp, “Religion in the Poetry of Langston Hughes,” Phylon 48, no. 3 (1987): 240–45; Hans Ostrom, A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia (West- port, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 323–26. 23. Quoted in Rampersad, I, Too, Sing America, 310. 24. See “Feet o’ Jesus,” “God to Hungry Child,” “Merry Christmas,” “A Chris- tian Country,” and “God,” in Arnold Rampersad, ed., The Collected Works of Langs- ton Hughes, Volume 1, The Poems: 1921–1940 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 93, 163–64, 199–200, 204, 206. 25. “Goodbye Christ,” in Rampersad, ed., The Poems: 1921–1940, 228–29. Michael Thurston, “Black Christ, Red Flag: Langston Hughes on Scottsboro.” College Literature (October 1995): 30–49. 26. “Christ in Alabama,” in Langston Hughes, The Panther and The Lash: Poems of Our Times (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 37. 27. For more on African Americans and the black Christ, see Brown, The Black Christ; Blum, Du Bois, American Prophet; James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 189

(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970); J. Deotis Roberts, A Black Political Theology (Philadel- phia: Westminster Press, 1974); William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973); Albert B. Cleage Jr., Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church (New York: William Morrow, 1972); Albert B. Cleage Jr., The Black Messiah (1968; repr., Trenton, NJ: Af- rica World Press, 1991); William L. Eichelberger, “A Mytho-Historical Approach to the Black Messiah,” Journal of Religious Thought 33 (Spring–Summer 1976): 63–74; Calla- han, The Talking Book, 231; Brown, The Black Christ; Prothero, American Jesus, 221–22. 28. Quoted in Ostrom, A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia, 74–75. 29. Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 143–48, originally published as “Der Fremde,” in Soziologie (Munich and Lepizig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908), 685–91. George Ritzer, Sociological Theory, 5th ed (New York: McGraw Hill, 2000). This is not to suggest that any of these authors read Simmel’s work or consciously employed it. For Camus on the stranger, see Albert Camus, The Stranger, trans. Matthew Ward (New York: Knopf, 1988). 30. Hughes, The Panther and The Lash, 38. 31. Langston Hughes, Not without Laughter (1930; repr., New York: Scribner Paper- back Fiction, 1995), 55–56, 174–75. 32. “A Christian Country,” in Rampersad, ed., The Poems: 1921–1940, 204. For feminist and womanist theologies, see Rosemary Radford Ruether, ed., Feminist Theologies: Legacy and Prospect (New York: Fortress Press, 2007); Douglas, The Black Christ, 97– 117; Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Chris- tology and Womanist Response (Atlanta: American Academy of Religion, 1989); Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999); Diana L. Hayes, Hagar’s Daughters: Womanist Ways of Being in the World (New York: Paulist Press, 1995); Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gar- dens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983); Prothero, Ameri- can Jesus, 206–7. 33. Quoted in Faith Berry, Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1992), 221. 34. Langston Hughes, “Two on the Road,” Esquire (January 1935); Langston Hughes, “On the Road,” The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: Volume 15, the Short Stories, ed. R. Baxter Miller (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 272–76. For more on this story, see Carolyn P. Walker, “Liberating Christ: Sargeant’s Metamorphosis in Langston Hughes’s ‘On the Road,’” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 745–52. 35. Quoted in Berry, Langston Hughes, 224. Chapter 8

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda

Religion and The Crisis, 1910–1934

Phillip Luke Sinitiere

In 1909 W. E. B. Du Bois left Atlanta University for New York City to begin work at the NAACP. While Du Bois provided much of the energy behind the NAACP’s founding, his primary focus was the association’s magazine, The Crisis. Du Bois spent nearly twenty-five years of his life as its editor, a period equivalent to roughly one-quarter of his long and distinguished working life. He maintained strong editorial control over the magazine; thus, The Crisis represents the struggle, the ingenuity, and the fruit of its founder. The magazine circulated nationally and internationally, and Du Bois had a clear sense that readers heard his voice far and wide. In autobiographical writings Du Bois always included reflections on his tenure as editor of The Crisis. In Dusk of Dawn (1940), Du Bois maintained that through the work of the NAACP and The Crisis he could “place consistently and continuously before the country a clear-cut statement of the legitimate aims of the American Negro and the facts concerning his condition.” In Autobiography, Du Bois remembered that “With The Crisis, I essayed a new role of interpreting to the world the hindrances and aspirations of American Negroes.”1 Over one hundred years after its genesis, The Crisis remains a largely unmined archive for studying Du Bois’s impres- sions and opinions about American politics and culture. Most of the scholarly work on The Crisis—particularly considered in relation to its contemporary competitors which included the National Urban League’s organ Opportunity (founded in 1923) and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’ The Messen- ger (founded in 1917)—examines its significance as literature and its political statements about gender, art, and identity. Scholars of religion who address The Crisis focus mostly on Du Bois’s spiritual short stories without including his editorials and other commentary about religion.2 Peering into the contents of The Crisis documents how Du Bois brought specifically religious insights into many of the problems that plagued American society in the early twentieth century.

190 Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 191

This chapter examines how Du Bois used what I term “prophetic propaganda” in The Crisis to address the social, political, economic, and cultural matters most pressing for black Americans. It observes Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda from three vantage points: editorial essays and forums; religious fiction coupled with artistic representation; and reader responses. I employ the term “prophetic” since in The Crisis Du Bois most specifically addressed issues related to Protestant and Catholic Christianity. Propaganda refers to Du Bois’s meditations about the politics of creative expression and scholarship. Du Bois outlined his convictions regarding the social and cultural role of art in his 1926 speech “The Criteria of Negro Art.” According to Du Bois, the politics of creative expression should strive to tell the truth; it should speak to the empirical realities of the world in the service of justice. For black Americans, this meant challenging directly the ubiquity of white supremacy.3 Du Bois addressed the politics of historical scholarship most directly in Black Reconstruction in America (1935). In a chapter aptly titled “The Propaganda of History” Du Bois wrote, “[I]n propaganda against the Negro since emancipation in this land we face one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings, an effort involving universities, history, science, social life, and religion.” For Du Bois, the propaganda of history should do more than educate and inform; the ethics surrounding its social scientific application bolstered the power of facts to alter the material fortunes of those on the margins. Voiced in religious language, the prophetic propaganda of Du Bois’s Crisis writing offered empirically based, justice-oriented solutions to social, cultural, political, and economic inequality.4

The Moon and Horizon as Forethought

While Du Bois taught at Atlanta University at the turn of the twentieth century, in addition to teaching, writing and other responsibilities he edited two periodicals, The Moon and Horizon. Any appraisal of The Crisis must consider the importance of its predecessors. These short-lived newspapers extended Du Bois’s early journalistic efforts in New York Globe as a teenager in Massachusetts and built upon his experience as a college writer for the Fisk Herald. They also represented his initial efforts at “prophetic propaganda” and anticipated his most successful editorial venture, The Crisis. As early as 1901 Du Bois had contemplated starting a periodical, and after the necessary groundwork The Moon Illustrated Weekly appeared in 1905. Ul- timately, The Moon did not survive, and the magazine folded after two years. According to scholar Paul Partington, Du Bois’s first journalistic effort could not compete with his other interests, including his extensive travel and work in the Niagara Movement. Nevertheless, Du Bois’s work on The Moon proved 192 Phillip Luke Sinitiere foundational for future efforts, including his resolute commitment to possess sole editorial control of the magazine.5 Despite its short history, The Moon featured essays and articles about black life in the United States, national politics, and religious matters. For example, the March 2, 1906, issue praised the work of the Reverend Joseph C. Hartzell, a missionary with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Characteristic of Du Bois’s focus, he did not discuss Hartzell’s religious beliefs but highlighted the missionary’s efforts to initiate mission schools across the continent that trained students in industrial vocations. In a column titled “Christianity” in the March 17, 1906, issue, Du Bois referenced an Outlook report on a Christian youth meeting in Nashville. He severely upbraided the magazine for failing to criticize the segregated religious services. Moreover, to Du Bois’s chagrin, Outlook highlighted the monies collected and emotionalism of the revivals. Offering praise of the Nashville American’s story on the same event, Du Bois quoted this newspaper as pointing out that “the caste spirit rampant everywhere in church and religious gatherings are turning away from the faith of their fathers, some to disbelief and atheism, others to the Catholic Church.” Despite these realities, James Bend of the Nashville American remained hopeful that Christianity in the United States was not “retrograding.” Du Bois seemed less hopeful: “Yes, we are—yes we are, and the more is the pity [of] fellow Christians.”6 Du Bois’s second periodical, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line, commenced publication in January 1907. The Horizon, unlike The Moon but an- ticipating The Crisis, utilized artwork and illustrations to drive home its claims and arguments. But similar to The Moon, part of Horizon’s documentary project involved discussion and analysis of American religion.7 Horizon’s editor, as he was to do consistently in The Crisis, gave critical attention to members of the clergy, one of which was Henry Yates Satterlee, Episco- pal bishop of Washington, DC, and pastor at Washington National Cathedral from 1896 to 1908. Satterlee, who was white, regularly trained Black Episcopal clergy at Howard University and was a progressive voice in the church. The church “must not bring up its colored clergy in the position of tutelage,” Satter- lee observed, “It must simply give to those colored people who desired to better their condition, full opportunities for improvement and education. If the Epis- copal Church does not do this, the better class of negroes in the future will not be Church people, but Roman Catholics, Methodists or Baptists.” Moreover, a colleague priest described Satterlee as “deeply interested in the work among negroes,” while another noted that Satterlee’s “heart has responded to the spiritual needs of the negro.” Du Bois echoed these sentiments when he described the Washington bishop as “a priest of the meek and lowly Jesus—a Servant of the Servant.” Yet Du Bois also knew that Satterlee’s theological convictions as a white bishop would meet with stiff resistance by Episcopal leaders who pre- Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 193 ferred a Jim Crow Jesus: “God pity the Episcopal church under such leadership. God succor Christianity amid such conditions.”8 Du Bois did not limit his commentary on clergy to Protestants. In “The Cath- olic Church and the Negro” he lauded the efforts of a black priest from St. Paul, Minnesota, the Reverend Stephen L. Theobald. Quoting a story from the Pio- neer Press of St. Paul, Du Bois relayed that Theobald assisted the archbishop at Communion and then sang a hymn “in a rich, musical voice, characteristic of his race.” Du Bois later remarked that in St. Paul the Colored Catholic Church was “not a ‘Jim Crow’ institution, but has as many white as colored members. . . . Watch the Catholic Church, my brothers, we may yet find there the Christian- ity which we miss in many Protestant denominations.” Theobald’s church work also included membership in the St. Paul NAACP chapter. It is also likely that Du Bois and Theobald eventually met. Du Bois traveled to St. Paul while working on the Niagara campaign, and Theobald represented the St. Paul chapter while attending the 1914 NAACP annual convention in Baltimore.9 A final notable feature of religion and The Horizon is an article titled “John Brown and Christmas,” published the same year as Du Bois’s biography. In “John Brown,” the epigraphs Du Bois began each chapter with included a verse taken from the New Testament or the Hebrew Bible. This practice reflected Du Bois’s comparison of John Brown to Jesus Christ; he routinely praised Brown’s ethic of service to black Americans and his sacrifice at slavery’s altar. Echoing the language of the ancient Christian Apostles’ Creed, Du Bois wrote that “On the second of this month he was crucified, on the 8th he was buried and on the 25th, fifty years later let him rise from the dead in every Negro-American home.” Writing about Jesus and John Brown, Du Bois observed, “Both these mighty spirits were failures: they owned no real estate, had no money, kept no bank accounts and received no homage.” Du Bois ended this article by quoting the so-called suffering servant passage from Isaiah 55, verses that Christians believe prophesy the death of Jesus Christ.10 Du Bois’s early work in The Moon and The Horizon laid the foundation for his efforts at The Crisis. As an editor he aimed to inform, inspire, offend, and invest black readers with a sense of self-worth and pride. Regarding religion, similar to The Crisis, Du Bois’s initial efforts witnessed consistent attention to this topic, keen analysis of racism and faith, and unfettered praise for those clergy whose political activities enacted inclusion and equality.

Prophetic Propaganda in Editorials and Essays

While Du Bois publicly reflected on the aims, goals, and accomplishments of his efforts as editor of The Crisis, he also spent time brainstorming and 194 Phillip Luke Sinitiere planning issues. As art historian Amy Helene Kirschke documents, Du Bois always carefully considered Crisis content in terms of its visual, artistic, or political impact. An undated document in the Du Bois Papers titled “Editorials” unveils some of his plans for The Crisis:

Sing Unto the Lord a New Song Amen I Am the Lord Thy God Sit Thou Silent Awake Awake Put on Thy Strength Break Forth Into Joy He is Despised and Rejected of Men—Is[aiah] 53. Sing O Barren Isa[iah] 54 Ho Everyone That Thirsteth Cry Aloud and Spare Not Arise Shine for Thy Light is Come Be Astonished O Ye Heavens Lift Up Thine Eyes Hear O Earth Hear Now This O Foolish People A Voice of Wailing Pour out Thy Fury Upon the Heathen Lift Up Your Hands

A list of planned editorials not only speaks to Kirschke’s astute argument but also reflects Du Bois’s desire to creatively voice political convictions through religious language and religious ideas. Du Bois adapted the majority of these phrases from the writings of Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. References drawn from biblical, prophetic books unveil Du Bois’s interest in using these texts to reflect on his own social, cultural, political, and economic situation.11 If Du Bois brainstormed potential columns organized around religious ideals, then he wasted no time putting these ideas to use in The Crisis. In Decem- ber 1910, in the magazine’s second issue, Du Bois published “Good Will toward Men.” Referencing a familiar refrain from a well-known holiday carol, Du Bois used the Christmas season and religion as a way to reflect on the political realities of early twentieth-century America. “This is the month of the Christ Child,” Du Bois began, “when there was re- born in men the idea of doing to their neighbors that which they would wish done to themselves.” Christmas, for Du Bois, was not occasion to reflect on the wonder of the Incarnation as a theological concept, but on its manifestation Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 195 in the world, what he called “a divine idea—a veritable Son of God.” Du Bois ended this holiday editorial with a political plea voiced as a prayer: “God grant that on some Christmas day our nation and all others will plant themselves on this one platform: Equal justice and equal opportunity for all races.” This early column represents Du Bois’s use of religious ideas to offer commentary on the American political order. The moral dimensions of his language, emblematic of the Progressive Era in which he wrote, serve as a witness to Du Bois’s focus on ethical principles derived from the Christian tradition.12 While Du Bois sometimes voiced prophetic propaganda through editorials using specific language of Christian ethical standards, at other times, similar to The Horizon, he singled out religious leaders whose congregations he felt most embodied Jesus’s basic teachings. A resident of New York City for over a dozen years by the time he published “The Abyssinian Church of New York,” Du Bois profiled the distinguished minister Adam Clayton Powell and his Harlem congregation. He referenced Abyssinian’s impressive fund-raising efforts of $265,000 and described the church’s immaculate architecture, “Gothic and Tu- dor in design, constructed of New York stone, [and] trimmed with terra cotta,” along with its marble pulpit, pipe organ, and stained-glass windows in order to highlight its bourgeoisie status. Although Du Bois saw in Abyssinian Church an example of black economic clout in the 1920s, he highlighted the congregation’s social gospel, religious practices he attributed specifically to Pastor Pow- ell. Powell “has always had a great interest in social problems,” Du Bois wrote, which led the church to create a housing program, religious classes, vocational opportunities, and an employment service. For Du Bois, Abyssinian’s service- oriented faith represented “[o]ne of the greatest signs of progress among colored Americans,” signaling that the church was not just a religious institution but “the center . . . of social and community activities.”13 In contrast to Du Bois’s effusive praise of Powell, in May 1924 he round- ly criticized another well-known minister, Russell Conwell. Titled “The Rev. Russell Conwell and the Devil,” this column took dead aim at the Civil War veteran, founder of Temple University, and well-known Baptist minister. Conwell achieved notoriety with his famous Gilded Age prosperity gospel sermon, “Acres of Diamonds,” first preached in the 1890s. Reprinting seg- ments from Conwell’s sermons, Du Bois creatively brought Satan into Con- well’s Philadelphia church and had him preach alongside the noted minister. Using quotations from Conwell’s sermons, in the article Du Bois crafted a set of imagined exchanges between Conwell and the Devil, a conversation intended to reflect the Christian investment in the regimes of white supremacy. Du Bois’s satirical closing commentary noted that at sermon’s end both Con- well and the Devil departed the pulpit together as the church sang “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” In this column, Du Bois used a city he 196 Phillip Luke Sinitiere knew well to criticize Christianity he knew intimately—white Christianity— in order to highlight the economic, political, and social injustices for which this brand of faith formed a foundation. Du Bois’s fieldwork in Philadelphia, carried out a quarter century before he wrote this column, revealed that the color line split the church. Considered in the context of Du Bois’s coverage of the black church in The Philadelphia Negro (1899), the struggling spirituality and ordinary faith of black folks far outshined the smug, arrogant, heartless faith of Caucasian Christianity.14 Du Bois further communicated prophetic propaganda by publishing the perspectives of ministers or other religious officials. British pastor C. F. An- drews, for example, writing in the August 1929 issue of The Crisis, discussed racialized religion as practiced throughout British India. Andrews unfolded the history of race within Christianity, from its earliest days “when it stood out for racial equality [as] the declaration was finally made, that there could not possibly be any distinction between the Jew and the Greek, the barbarian and the Scythian, the slave and the freeman, because all were one humanity in Christ Jesus,” to the abolitionist movement birthed in the Atlantic world. However, Andrews found that late nineteenth-century Western imperialism couched in racial science and social Darwinism solidified a “white race religion,” a “nox- ious epidemic” that “infected the Christian Church.” Andrews related how during 1913 and 1914, Mahatma Gandhi was barred from entering a church at which Andrews preached. Such “dark deeds of Christendom,” Andrews argued, explained why “the still small voice of the Holy Spirit of God cannot be heard.” Andrews’s solution to counteract these “racial Christian Churches” rested on a renewed commitment to service and “a revival of the spirit of martyrdom and sacrifice.” While his article embodied the principles of acceptance, its reference to India, Kenya, South Africa, the Atlantic world, and the global slave trade also speak to Du Bois’s increasingly international vision of the late 1920s, found most readily in Dark Princess (1928). Importantly, Du Bois’s emerging global perspective accounted for the role of Christianity in creating and challenging the color line around the world.15 A final Du Bois editorial reflected a thoughtful engagement with theories of religion. Published in 1933, the year before Du Bois left the NAACP to return to teaching at Atlanta University, “The Church and Religion” documents the consistent attention he devoted to religion in The Crisis. In this editorial Du Bois drew a distinction between religion, an idea or theory, and the church, an institution. “Religion,” Du Bois wrote, “is a theory of the ultimate constitution of the world, more particularly in its moral aspects, and as applied to questions of individual right and wrong.” For Du Bois, religion made sense when the tools of social scientific analysis could help to solve ethical dilemmas and moral quandaries. As an institution, the church was “the organization which writes down and from time to time rewrites the exact religious belief which is Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 197 prevalent and which carries out celebrations and methods of worship.” Du Bois also noted the church’s economic role, as it “particularly collects and spends money for its own organization and for certain religious and ethical objects.” Above all, Du Bois found the church as an institution problematic since he believed it emphasized theology to the exclusion of ethical actions and service. It asked members to assent to doctrinal systems, often without a requirement of religious ethics. Furthermore, in Du Bois’s experience the church did not wel- come independent thinking. “We must have a religion in the sense of a striving for the infinite, the ultimate and the best,” concluded Du Bois, “But just as truly we must straitly curb the effort of any exclusive guild to be the single and final arbitraitor of individual interpretation of desired and desirable truth.”16 Reflecting Du Bois’s commitment to publishing propaganda, through the pages of The Crisis he chastised economic inequality and praised humility and spiritual service. He also creatively criticized the hollow messages of a prominent preacher, and addressed theoretical differences between religion as lived and practiced and religion as creed embedded in the institutional church. Du Bois’s religious reflections focused on ethical teaching and moral action, ideals that found expression in the concrete realities of the everyday world.17

Prophetic Propaganda in Spiritual Fiction and Artistic Representation

While Du Bois’s writing in The Crisis provided commentary on the current events of his day, he also adopted an empirical focus expressed through religious fiction that imagined a black Jesus living in twentieth-century America. In these stories Jesus’s teaching embodied religious ethics and promoted racial and economic justice. As prophetic propaganda, Du Bois often commissioned religious artwork for the cover of the Crisis issues in which his spiritual short stories appeared. Typically, Du Bois published his nearly two dozen fictional accounts of a black Christ in either the April or December issues, intervals that defined important Christian holidays readers found particularly meaningful. In the December 1913 issue of The Crisis, Du Bois offered a creative retell- ing of Jesus’s birth. Devoid of mangers, inns, and animals, in Du Bois’s story Jesus’s advent took place in the city. Instead of a Star of David shining with cos- mic intent to announce the birth of a Savior, a blazing comet beckoned those Du Bois called “the three wise men,” a pastor, priest, and rabbi who witnessed the coming of the political Messiah. This Christmas tale began with sounds of the city: songs ringing from cathedrals and churches and chants reverberating from a synagogue. “So the three men threaded the maize [sic] of the Christmas- mad streets,” Du Bois wrote, “neither looking on the surging crowds nor listening to the shouts of the people, but seeing only the star.” Each arrived at 198 Phillip Luke Sinitiere same apartment house at the same time, strangely astonished at the simultaneous moment; up to the seventh floor they ascended. Du Bois contextualized this early twentieth-century Christmas story, placing the three wise men in the middle of New York City’s holiday bustle faithfully executing their religious tasks and following a spiritual sign.18 Enclosed in the quiet of a seventh-floor apartment where Du Bois took the story next sat a “tall and shapely and well gowned” woman. After each religious leader made prophetic statements, a revelation emerged, stating that the black woman was to gift the world with everlasting love. Echoing the so- called “Mary’s Song” found in the New Testament Gospel of Luke, Du Bois narrated her joy: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his hand-maiden, for behold! From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” Full of surprise and flush with superlatives, the maiden then strolled around city streets with the “shouting, careless, noisy midnight crowds.” The story ends with loud praises, as the maiden sings a line from the Gospel of Luke: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, good will toward men.”19 This prophetic parable, whose setting in early twentieth-century New York City readers would have recognized, displayed both Du Bois’s religious ideas and his political convictions. The ethical ideals expressed in this short story began on the cover of the December 1913 Crisis issue as Du Bois commissioned an image of a black Madonna with child by W. L. Brockman.

“The Great Surgeon” (1922)

Du Bois returned to the city in the December 1922 issue to tell the story of “The Great Surgeon,” a Christ figure from whose hands came not physical healing, but new knowledge and self-understanding—spiritual insight. The story is set in urban America at a hospital called St. Michael’s. The Great Surgeon, a man “short and square, bald with a fringe of black curly hair,” scandalized many in the medical community who decried “[t]he idea of a Jew operating at St. Michael’s!” Moreover, locals reported that in addition to very low rates and no doctor’s office, with the Great Surgeon’s healing touch “the deaf hear, the blind see, and the crippled walk!” The Great Surgeon was also known to “roam the streets of the yellow East side and the red West Side and black High Harlem. You can see him any day talking with harlots, touts and cripples, thieves, merchants and peddlers, grinning children, dogs and stray cats.”20 One day the hospital owner, a rich white man, found the Great Surgeon on the street and asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Into surgery he went. The prim and proper wife and daughter of the owner, decked out with jewels, silk, and fur, sat in the waiting room. They waited eagerly for the surgery’s out- Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 199 come and sat bewildered, wondering why their husband and father, respectively, chose to have surgery in the general ward. Returning from surgery, the Great Surgeon then led mother and daughter to the bedside of the ailing hospital owner. The hospital owner shocked his family by saying, “You are poor. You have left but the things on your backs. I have sold all my goods and re- stored them to the Poor. I have taken this hospital from the Rich and given it to the Son of Man—to the sons of men; to the good and the bad, the black and the white, Jew and Gentile—all human kind of every raced and creed.” Aghast, all the nurses wondered what ailed the owner and if he were really dead. “Stone. Stone in the Heart!” the Great Surgeon replied; “He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall be live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die!”21 At a time when many black Americans had difficulty gaining access to regular medical care while black physicians struggled for professional legitimacy, Du Bois scripted a story where a black Christ brought healing and restoration. Notably, the story about the Great Surgeon depicted the hospital as a place of healing; wholeness and redemption were not to be found in the church. And in the hospital, like the church, the color line reigned supreme. Strikingly, in the end the white Christian, the hospital owner, successfully negotiated the color line—at the cost of his life and wealth and by submission to the teachings of a black Christ. Similar to the December 1913 Crisis cover in which “Three Wise Men” appeared, Du Bois continued with a visual, religious complement to spiritual short stories by commissioning Henry Ossawa Turner’s “Head of a Beth- lehem Woman” for the December 1922 Crisis issue.

“No Room in the Inn” (January 1926)

A short piece from January 1926 offers a final illustration of how Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda used art to reinforce religious reflections. In this account Du Bois fashioned a story from Matthew 2 about the travels of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Egypt titled “No Room in the Inn.” Harlem Renaissance artist Lau- ra Wheeler, whom Du Bois depended on extensively for Crisis illustrations, fashioned an image for this issue’s cover where Joseph pleads with a hotel clerk for a room so that his pregnant, tired wife might rest. Du Bois began this story with a quote from Luke 2, an account of Christ’s birth, swaddling clothes, a manger, and an inn with no vacancy. Updating Luke’s account by narrating experiences from participants in the Great Migration, Du Bois mused with sarcasm and satire, “Perhaps the inn was really full. Perhaps there was still place for the Rich but none for the Poor. Perhaps the manners of Joseph were not suited to the better bred patrons; perhaps Mary’s condition made the sleek gowned ladies, who could not be bother with children, high incensed; how 200 Phillip Luke Sinitiere shocking!” Or, “Perhaps the nose of Joseph was too high and his color too dark for the clerk at the inn.”22 Using Mary, Du Bois reflected on the experiences of black females. And much like the biblical accounts that depict Jesus’s birth, Joseph receded from the picture. “Ah, but how we black folk can sympathize with the poor little homeless mother of God! Long had been the journey and you had come into the great strange town at night. You hesitate—a stranger, a dark and harried stranger. Then taking desperate courage, you walk into the inn.” Denied service and a place to stay, bewildered and humiliated from the stinging pain and harsh reality of Jim Crow, Du Bois used this Christmas story to editorialize about white supremacy and black rage: “And all the time your heart sinks down, down, till the wave of anger and contempt sweeps it up . . . And so you storm into the night. There is no room in the inn. Not even for Jesus Christ.”23

“The Son of God” (1933)

About eight months before Du Bois resigned from the NAACP, he published a short story in December 1933 titled “The Son of God.” Set in the American South during the Great Depression, the first part of the story depicts the con- tentious relationship between Joe, a jealous and violence-prone laborer, and Mary, a slim, attractive, and humble black maiden. In the story Mary ends up pregnant, and in fits of rage Joe demands to know who the father is, convinced Mary had been unfaithful. In time she gives birth to a son—in December—and names him Joshua. By the age of twelve Joshua’s questions and challenges in Sunday school raise the ire of the local Methodist minister, and his father once finds him in the midst of the church elders preaching and exhorting as one with divine authority.24 As Joshua grows into adulthood, he decides to become a carpenter. Joe is often at odds with Joshua, since he makes little money and wears secondhand clothing to work. Joe notices Joshua spending time with “curious people” like “[o]utcastes and tramps” and “holding meetings and haranging [sic] on street corners” where “white women were listening.” Joshua’s parents witness one of these meetings and hear their son proclaim:

Heaven is going to be filled with people who are down-hearted and you that are mourning will get a lot of comfort some day. It’s meek folk who are lucky, and going to get everything; and you that are hungry, too. Poor people are better than rich people because they work for what they wear and eat. There won’t be any rich people in Heaven . . . God’s sons are those that won’t quarrel. You must treat other people just like you want to be treated . . . And say, you know how folks use Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 201

to think they must get even with their enemies? Well, I’ll tell you what: you just live your enemies. And if anybody hits you, don’t hit ’em back.25

Joshua’s egalitarian message, a reformulation of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, challenges the connection between white supremacy and economic control, and even declares that earthly suffering of the poor, weary, and marginalized will meet with vindication in the afterlife. Radical teaching, both in fiction and in reality, often meet with resistance, and in “Son of God” the So- cialist thrust of Joshua’s preaching results in the extralegal practice of white supremacy: lynching. At the end of the story a mob grabs Joshua. Levying charges against him, including carousing with white women, sparking a revolution, and engaging in criminal activity, the mob lynches the young, radical carpenter. Mary’s resolve astonishes and frustrates Joe, as he yells at her and ultimately throws himself on the ground in grief over his son’s unjust execution. “He is despised and rejected of men, [a] man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” Mary cried. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Councillor, the Mighty God, the Ever Lasting Father, and the Prince of Peace . . . Behold the Sign of Salvation—a noosed rope.”26 Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda offered literary snapshots of the public ministry of an activist Christ, a radical peasant Jesus who understood that the color line was the most pressing problem of the twentieth century. Through these stories, Du Bois highlighted the democratic and practical expressions of a gospel of egalitarian politics. Du Bois excelled at inventive and artful reread- ing of Jesus’s parables, reformulating them to place African Americans at the center of biblical stories. In short, in The Crisis Du Bois used religion as a way to interrogate racism even as he used it as a tool of political liberation. The cultural context of Du Bois’s spiritual short stories about a black Christ fit with religious ideas and images Harlem Renaissance writers used to narrate social or political concerns. Langston Hughes, for example, published the poems “Goodbye, Christ” and “Christ in Alabama” in 1931. “Goodbye, Christ” offered a fierce criticism of the Christian church, which Hughes believed rejected the teachings of Jesus that focused on love, equality, and inclusion. “Christ in Alabama,” similar to Du Bois’s short stories, depicted Jesus as black and associated lynching with crucifixion. Much like Hughes, Countee Cullen’s “Christ Recrucified” (1922) and The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) imagined the life of a Jesus of African descent in early twentieth-century America.27 Du Bois’s spiritual short stories of a black Jesus were also part of what theologians call the quest for the historical Jesus. In scholarship originating in nineteenth-century Germany, New Testament scholars critically reevalu- ated the teachings, sayings, and miracles of Jesus in the context of modern, scientific inquiry. This new scholarship was most notably associated with the 202 Phillip Luke Sinitiere work of Albert Schweitzer and The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), his book that symbolized the movement to critically analyze the historicity of Jesus and emblematized a trend to popularize a modern Jesus for the masses, in text, in image, and in moving pictures. The quest often took cultural form in the United States through the Social Gospel or other forms of political activism. Upton Sinclair’s They Call Me Carpenter (1922), for example, followed a Christ figure through a modern city whose concern focused on the poor and marginalized, and his Profits of Religion (1918) valorized religious practice that addressed the needs of the downtrodden. Rather than philosophize about systems of theology, writers influenced by the Social Gospel worked to present a faith that practiced the attributes and teachings of Christ. Some wrote Social Gospel novels, while others created fictional stories with didactic intent. While the politics of Du Bois’s literary Christ mirrored contemporary manifestations of a political Jesus, his depiction of a specifically black Christ challenged other racialized images of a liberating savior. Further distinguishing his work, spiritual short stories like the kind Du Bois wrote for The Crisis did not appear in Opportunity or Messenger.28

Crisis Readers Respond to Prophetic Propaganda

Throughout his life W. E. B. Du Bois exchanged letters with thousands of individuals. Some inquired about personal issues, while others felt compelled to comment on one of Du Bois’s many speeches or respond to an idea or claim published in a book or essay. As Herbert Aptheker observed, “[Du Bois] was a most conscientious and prompt correspondent; rare are the letters to which he did not reply and rarer still the replies of which he did not retain a copy.” In a 1961 interview Du Bois recalled that he had recently reread early issues of The Crisis, and took delight in canvassing the combative reader replies he published while editor. The letters Du Bois received in response to what he published in The Crisis offer stimulating evidence for and understanding of his prophetic propaganda.29 The earliest reader responses regarding religion came in March 1915. In a short article titled “The White Christ,” Du Bois assailed the support white Christians gave to World War I and their complicity in stirring nationalist and nativist sentiment wrapped in religious language of Protestant Christianity. He railed against the “widespread and costly murder that is being waged today by the children of the Prince of Peace . . . It simply spells the failure of christianity.” Du Bois criticized the masculinized religious expression of Billy Sunday’s revivals and the way he used “unusual contortions” and heated rhetoric to stir emotions for religious effect. Du Bois even took aim at Sunday’s “picturesque abuse of the English language” in his sermons. However, Du Bois’s gravest con- Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 203 cern about Sunday, and about the majority of white Christians, was a “moral obtuseness” that supported the unholy lie of white supremacy, to which, according to Du Bois, “[r]eason does not appeal. Suffering and poverty does not appeal. The lynching and burning of human beings and torturing of women has no effect.” For Du Bois, white Christianity was a moral failure because it used religion to uphold structures of oppression and create a context for segregation. As Du Bois saw it, despite his customary criticism of African Ameri- can clergy, the black church was “at least democratic. It welcomes everybody. It draws no color line.”30 Not surprisingly, reader responses to “The White Christ” ranged from glee- ful support to suspicion, anger, and sadness. A letter from Pennsylvania asked Du Bois to “kindly discontinue The CRISIS to my address.” Although this white writer assumed the motives behind the column were “probably right,” the erst- while subscriber wrote that Du Bois’s “influence can only be regrettable” since Christianity was not complicit in causing World War I. Another writer, a white female from the South, took issue with Du Bois’s commentary on white Chris- tianity’s moral failure and expressed deep concern for the state of his soul. “That editorial distresses me so,” the woman wrote, “both for the one who felt it and for those whose faith may be diminished in reading it.” Another letter found Du Bois’s column “so absolutely rich in truth, so exquisitely sarcastic in tone, and so altogether appealing” that this African American writer thought all persons in the “‘white contingent’ of Christianity, especially those afflicted with Spiritual pride” should take notice and read. Making a connection between racism and religion, in a keen reference to The Souls of Black Folk, this writer observed that white Christians with “Spiritual pride” were “muffled in thick veils; veils of ignorance, superstition, imagination, prejudice. It’s the most pathetic spectacle of so-called modern civilization to witness on all sides the fruit of prejudice: namely, oppression.”31 Sixteen years later, readers continued to respond to Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda with energy and vigor. In an April 1931 letter to the editor, New York- er J. J. Mulholland wrote: “Remove my name from your mailing list. I am still interested in the movement but not in the atheism of Du Bois. This continual flaunting of his atheism has made THE CRISIS a menace to a Christian home, black or white.” Two months later, in the June 1931 edition of The Crisis, Mabel S. Levine of South Dakota responded with this letter: “Continue my name on your mailing list indefinitely. I am interested in the movement and also in the ‘atheism’ of Dr. Du Bois. The continual diffusion of his liberal spirit is making THE CRISIS a blessing to every home, black or white.”32 So just what was it in The Crisis that raised the ire of Mulholland, and what inspired Levine to weigh in positively about the question of Du Bois’s religious faith (or lack thereof)? Unlike responses to “The White Christ,” neither Mulholland nor Levine singled out an article or column. Perhaps they had 204 Phillip Luke Sinitiere read Du Bois’s books The Negro Church (1903) or even The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and its section on the city’s religious life. Maybe Levine and Mulholland formed their opinion about Du Bois’s religious outlook from reading The Souls of Black Folk (1903) or the chapter on black religion in The Gift of Black Folk (1924). Yet most immediately striking is the forum in which both subscribers chose to comment about Du Bois’s faith. From this, one can surmise that these readers responded to what they had read in The Crisis over the years. Their comments about Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda suggest clearly that much of the NAACP’s magazine had significant religious content. Additional unpublished letters demonstrate further how readers engaged with Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda. Anne Rankin, editor of South- ern Woman’s Magazine, wrote in December 1917 to thank Du Bois for “The White Christ.” Yet this editorial gave Rankin some pause. “It seems to me to call for a big response,” Rankin suggested. “There is a bitterness in it that hurts.” Rankin unveiled some of her misgivings with a handwritten note in the margins: “I agree with you about Billy Sunday—but he does not stand for all Christians by a great deal!” Shortly after receiving Rankin’s letter, Du Bois read L. B. Cash’s comments about a spiritual short story, “The Second Com- ing,” in which Du Bois’s rendering of a black Jesus placed his birth in post- Reconstruction Georgia. Cash, a Baptist minister, official in the Northeast Texas Baptist Association, and state treasurer for the NAACP, wrote, “‘The Second Coming’ was an Editorial gem and I do wish you would just give one or two more pages to the story.”33 The preceding responses demonstrate how readers richly engaged with Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda in The Crisis. Debating publicly the nature of Du Bois’s faith no doubt proved astonishing for readers and editor alike. And Du Bois’s critical observations about the intersection between race, religion, and global conflict incited spirited defenses of a racialized Christianity, for example, while his spiritual short stories generated longing for additional depictions of a black Jesus with whom readers could readily identify. Du Bois’s publications in The Crisis drew deeply from the prophetic seg- ments of the Old Testament and the religious ethics from the New Testament. His religious understanding considered white supremacy as a theological problem and spiritual calamity with pronounced political, social, and economic implications. Du Bois’s published thoughts in The Crisis bore witness to the reality that those in power wielded a Christian faith that aimed to justify death, war, racism, greed, and exploitation. Yet as some readers suggested, there were many faithful amongst the masses who embraced a Christianity of prophetic proportions that cared for neighbors, loved enemies, and lifted up the hurting. Whether he commented about African American religious life or renarrated scriptural stories about a black Christ who confounded the ways of the wise, Du Bois’s prophetic propaganda creatively and critically called for justice and equality in a decidedly unjust world. Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 205 ——————————— Notes

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1940; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 111–33; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from the N.A.A.C.P.’s Crisis Magazine, ed. Sondra Kathryn Wilson (New York: Modern Library, 1999), xxvii–xxxii; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1968; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 162–75. 2. Helpful studies about The Crisis include Elliott M. Rudwick, “Du Bois in the Role of Crisis Editor,” Journal of Negro History 43, no. 3 (July 1958): 214–40; “Du Bois’s Last Year as Crisis Editor,” Journal of Negro Education 27, no. 4 (Autumn 1958): 526–33; Murray Dennis Arndt, “The Crisis Years of W. E. B. Du Bois, 1910–1934” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1970); Garth Pauley, “W. E. B. Du Bois on Woman Suffrage: A Criti- cal Analysis of His Crisis Writings,” Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 3 (January 2000): 383–410 (revised for this volume); Ann Elizabeth Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Caroline Goeser, Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African Ameri- can Identity and Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). Scholars of religion who consider Crisis contents include Don Hufford, “The Religious Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Journal of Religious Thought 53–54, nos. 1–2 (1997): 73–94; Phil Zuckerman, “The Sociology of Religion of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Sociology of Religion 63, no. 2 (2002): 239–53; Edward J. Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Jonathon S. Kahn, Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Edward J. Blum and Jason R. Young, eds., The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009). Cynthia Taylor examines how A. Philip Randolph explored religious ideas in The Messenger in A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of an African American Labor Leader (New York: New York Uni- versity Press, 2006). 3. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” in The Emerging Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Henry Lee Moon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 360–68. 4. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1935; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). On propaganda see Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Keith Byerman, Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Work of W. E. B. Du Bois (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994); and Herman Beavers, “Romancing the Body Politic: Du Bois’s Propaganda of the Dark World,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568 (March 2000): 250–64. 5. Paul G. Partington, “The Moon Illustrated Weekly: Precursor of the Crisis,” Jour- nal of Negro History 48, no. 3 (July 1963): 206–16; Abby Arthur Johnson and Ronald Maberry Johnson, Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 206 Phillip Luke Sinitiere

1979), 24–29. W. E. B. Du Bois commented briefly about these efforts in Dusk of Dawn (46–47) and Autobiography (160), observing in both works that both The Moon and Horizon worked as “precursors” to The Crisis. 6. Paul G. Partington, The Moon Illustrated Weekly: Black America’s First Weekly Magazine (Thornton, CO: C&M Press, 1986). This invaluable resource assembled by Partington includes unpaginated facsimiles of all extant copies of The Moon. 7. Susanna Ashton, “Du Bois’s Horizon: Documenting Movements of the Color Line,” MELUS 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 3–23. 8. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Satterlee,” Horizon (June 1907): 3–4; also in W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings in Periodicals Edited by W. E. B Du Bois: Selections from The Horizon, ed. Her- bert Aptheker (White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1985), 19–20. On Satterlee see Charles H. Brent, A Master Builder: Being the Life and Letters of Henry Yates Satterlee, First Bishop of Washington (New York: Longman, 1916), 340, 411. I thank Samford University historian David R. Bains for providing biographical information and bibliographic materials about Satterlee. 9. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Catholic Church and the Negro,” Horizon (May 1904): 2–4, in Writings in Periodicals, 110–11. On Theobald see Arthur C. McWatt, “Small and Cohesive: St. Paul’s Resourceful African American Community,” Ramsey County History 26, no. 1 (Spring 1991); Albert J. Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), 126; Marvin C. McMick- le, An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 2002); “Black Priest Known for Holiness, Civil Rights Advocacy,” The Catholic Spirit (January 28, 2010) at http://archive.thecatholicspirit.com/content/view/3210/136/. 10. W. E. B. Du Bois, “John Brown and Christmas,” Horizon (December 1909): 1, in ibid., 85. 11. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Editorials,” Du Bois Papers, Box 334, Folder 6251, Special Col- lections, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 12. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Good Will toward Men,” The Crisis, December 1910, 16. 13. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Abyssinian Church of New York,” The Crisis, September 1923, 203–4. 14. For biographical details about Conwell, see Russell H. Conwell, Acres of Dia- monds, Introduction by David Adamany, Foreword by Russell F. Weigley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), and “Russell L. Conwell,” in Randall Balmer, ed., En- cyclopedia of Evangelicalism (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004), 187–88; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Rev. Russell Conwell and the Devil,” The Crisis, May 1924, 32–33. See also W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, in Du Bois on Religion, ed. Phil Zuckerman (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000), 29–42. 15. C. F. Andrews, “Christianity and Race Prejudice,” The Crisis, August 1929, 271– 72. Gerald Horne addresses Du Bois’s international vision at this time in The End of Empires: African Americans and India (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008). 16. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Church and Religion,” The Crisis, October 1933, 236–37. 17. Other important nonfiction writing that referenced religion includes “Negro Preachers,” The Crisis, February 1911, 4–5; “A Prayer,” The Crisis, January 1918, 114; “Christianity Rampant,” The Crisis, November 1911, 25–26; and “The Color Line and the Church,” The Crisis, November 1929, 387. Reflecting concerns found in Crisis ar- Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda 207 ticles, in 1931 Du Bois wrote an important essay for Christian Century titled “Will the Church Remove the Color Line?” reprinted in Du Bois, Du Bois on Religion, 173–80. 18. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Three Wise Men,” The Crisis, December 1913, 80–82. 19. Ibid., 83. 20. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Great Surgeon,” The Crisis, December 1922, 58–60. 21. Ibid., 60. 22. W. E. B. Du Bois, “No Room in the Inn,” The Crisis, January 1926, 111–12. 23. Ibid., 112. 24. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Son of God,” The Crisis, December 1933, 276. 25. Ibid., 277. 26. Ibid. 27. On religion and the Harlem Renaissance see Jon Michael Spencer, “The Black Church and the Harlem Renaissance,” African American Review 30, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 453–60. On Hughes and religion see Mary Beth Culp, “Religion in the Poetry of Langston Hughes,” Phylon 48, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 240–45. On Cullen’s Black Christ, see James H. Smylie, “Countee Cullen’s ‘The Black Christ,’” Theology Today 38, no. 2 (July 1981): 160–73. 28. Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), 87–123; Walter P. Weaver, The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, 1900–1950 (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 313–59; Richard Wightman Fox, Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 307–50; Gregory S. Jackson, The Word and Its Witness: The Spiritualization of American Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 157–214; Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- lina Press, 2012). 29. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, Volume 1: Selections, 1877–1934, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), xxiii; W. E. B. Du Bois, A Recorded Autobiography (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folk- ways, 1961). 30. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The White Christ,” The Crisis, March 1915, 238. 31. See reader responses to “The White Christ” in “Editorial,” The Crisis, April 1915, 284–85. 32. See Mulholland’s letter in “Our Readers Say,” The Crisis, April 1931, 135; for Levine’s letter see “Our Readers Say,” The Crisis, June 1931, 178. 33. Anne Rankin to W. E. B. Du Bois, December 10, 1917, W. E. B. Du Bois Pa- pers, reel 5, frame 1324; L. B. Cash to W. E. B. Du Bois, December 17, 1917, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, reel 5, frame 1262; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Second Coming,” The Cri- sis, December 1917, in Du Bois on Religion, 147–49; Kharen Monsho, “Christine Ben- ton Cash,” Handbook of Texas Online at http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ articles/fcaeb. Chapter 9

The Crisis Cover Girl

Lena Horne, Walter White, and the NAACP’s Representation of African American Femininity

Megan E. Williams

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) first featured two-year-old Lena Horne in its October 1919 issue of the Branch Bulletin.1 Touting her as one of the organization’s youngest members, the Branch Bulletin photograph of light-skinned Lena Horne commenced a lifetime of visibility in the black press. During the war era, The Crisis, official organ of the NAACP, would attempt to construct an image of Horne that both empowered African American women to reject dominant images of black womanhood and reflected the association’s goals of racial advancement and integration. Though it went unsaid, Horne felt that Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP and a key member of the editorial advisory board for The Crisis, viewed her as “an interesting weapon” in his attempt to coerce wartime Hollywood “to shake off its fears and taboos and to depict the Negro in films as a normal human being and an integral part of the life of America and the world.”2 Throughout the war years, The Crisis sought to infuse its image of Horne with White’s notion of normality—a notion influenced by class status, skin color, and a desire for racial integration. Horne’s light complexion, enduring relationship with the NAACP, familial ties to the black bourgeoisie in Brooklyn, mainstream success among white audiences, refusal to play stereotypical film roles, performance of popular music, and willingness to contest Jim Crowism in the entertainment industry all made her an ideal Crisis cover girl during World War II. Still, Horne did not allow herself to be viewed as passively accepting this prescribed role of bourgeois race woman. Throughout her career as a songstress and film star, Horne constructed herself as maintaining, negotiating, and resisting the NAACP’s construction of her as a model of acceptable African American femi-

208 The Crisis Cover Girl 209 ninity in order to achieve her stated “motive” of “protecting [her] opportunity to sing,” an opportunity which afforded her the means, as a divorced mother, to provide for her children.3 Lena Horne first appeared on The Crisis’s cover in 1941 and again in 1943. Historically, editors of periodicals have employed images of women on their covers as a means of attracting the attention of potential buyers and announc- ing their magazine’s persona and potential. According to historian Carolyn Kitch, cover girls “conveyed ideas about women’s natures and roles, but they also stood for societal values.”4 Beginning in the early twentieth century, The Crisis, a monthly published in New York City by the NAACP, pictured well- dressed, educated, and primarily light-skinned African American women on its covers in an attempt to subvert dominant representations of black women. The Crisis, which achieved a circulation of forty-five thousand during the war years, published sixty issues between 1941 and 1945; thirty-eight featured cover photographs of women.5 Of the thirty-eight cover girls chosen to represent respectable African American femininity, Horne was the only woman to appear twice on the cover of The Crisis within this five-year span. The Crisis is the official publication of the NAACP, an interracial group of northern elites founded in 1909. Since its inception, the NAACP has sought to attain the privileges guaranteed African Americans by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments but denied them under Jim Crow. Historically, the NAACP has worked to gain civil rights and achieve integration by exposing and rectifying injustices through the existing legal system and by valuing respectability and morality, values in many ways shared by the dominant culture. Many middle-class African Americans believed that the mores and values they shared with middle-class whites acted as a foundation for communicating with white America and achieving integration.6 Originally viewed as radicals, especially when compared to the conciliatory followers of Booker T. Washington’s philosophy, leaders of the national branch of the NAACP later gained a reputation as conservatives interested in preserving the gains of the nearly assimilated black elite. They were charged with being insensitive to the problems facing the African American working class. While the war-mobilized economy and passage of Executive Order 8802, which barred racial and ethnic discrimination in hiring for government and defense industry jobs, solidified the NAACP’s interest in the black working class, the organization continued to privilege a bourgeois image of African American femininity on the covers of its journal, The Crisis, throughout World War II.7 African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier referred to The Crisis as “the most important magazine of public opinion among Negroes.”8 According to Gail Lumet Buckley, Lena Horne’s daughter and biographer, The Crisis “lay next to the Bible in most middle-class black homes.”9 First published in 1910, 210 Megan E. Williams

The Crisis remained under the editorship of W. E. B. Du Bois, cofounder of the civil rights organization, until his controversial resignation in 1934. Du Bois originally conceived of The Crisis as a journal of thought, opinion, and analysis, which would interrogate the problem of the color line within an international context and play a central role in the movement for African American advancement. Walter White believed that The Crisis would best serve the NAACP by publicizing its affairs, promoting its legal campaigns to uphold and extend the rights of African Americans, and adopting a “popular” approach.10 In 1931 the NAACP created a board of four, including Walter White and Roy Wilkins, to oversee The Crisis’s finances, which sought to wrest power over the magazine from Du Bois.11 After much infighting and politicking between Du Bois and White, Du Bois resigned from his position in July 1934. White’s biographer writes, “With Du Bois gone, White took control of The Crisis,” selecting assistant secretary Roy Wilkins as Du Bois’s successor and exercising his newly unchallenged influence at the magazine board’s nominating committee meetings.12 Wilkins, like White, felt that the NAACP should “move away from the magazine’s lofty, ebony-tower approach and broaden its appeal, audience, and circulation.”13 Despite its attempts at reaching a “popular” audience, The Crisis in many ways continued to conform to E. Franklin Frazier’s biting characterization of black news media in general. Frazier wrote, “Although the Negro press declares itself to be the spokesman for the Negro group as a whole, it represents essentially the interests and outlook of the black bourgeoisie.”14 Since its inception, The NAACP purported to improve the station of all blacks. However, its original choice and continued use of “Colored People” to describe Afri- can Americans reflects the organization’s bourgeois roots. The term “colored,” which alluded to white or Indian lineage and implied middle-class status, was preferred to “Negro” or “Afro-American” by many light-skinned and affluent blacks because it evoked their connections to white America.15 Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the mulatto editors of black newspapers and magazines, such Ringwood’s Afro American Journal of Fashion (1891–1894), sought to rewrite the cultural meanings of black women’s bodies by claiming light skin as a condition for privilege. These editors fashioned themselves as the elite, responsible for racial uplift. Through style and appearance, the writers of Ringwood’s Journal constructed themselves as respectable, moral, and worthy of the title “lady.”16 Yet, in their attempt to displace entrenched notions of black women as trollops or sexual victims, the light- skinned writers of Ringwood’s Journal produced a concept of African American femininity that excluded those who were working-class, uneducated, and dark- skinned. This equating of light skin with class status and race leadership pre- dated the Civil War and continued into the 1940s. For example, Walter White was, in the words of his biographer, “a ‘voluntary Negro,’ that is, an African The Crisis Cover Girl 211

American who appears to be white but chooses to live in the black world and identify with its experience(s).”17 Likewise, Lena Horne was often confused for a “Latin-American” by her film audiences or enjoined to “pass” as Spanish by nightclub managers.18 Whereas white audiences associated light skin with the myth of the erotic octoroon and male fantasies of sex across the color line, African Americans viewed light-skinned black women in another way. Although the correlation between light skin and respectability, constructed by the black bourgeoisie and a reflection of white racism, began to lose credibility by World War II, the women photographed as Crisis cover girls between 1941 and 1945 elucidate the persistence of skin color as an indicator of middle-class status among African Americans during the 1940s. Much like the writers of Ringwood’s Journal decades prior, the editors of The Crisis used photographs of predominantly light- skinned, college-educated “cover girls” to supplant dominant stereotypes of African American women and to refashion black women as respectable ladies. As cultural theorist bell hooks has observed, “Access and mass appeal have historically made photography a powerful location for the construction of an oppositional black aesthetic.”19 A photograph taken by an African American of a black subject acts as “a critical intervention, a disruption of white control of black images.”20 By photographing elegant, well-groomed black women for its covers, the editors of The Crisis demonstrated the standards of behavior, dress, and attractiveness its leaders thought all African Americans should emulate. Additionally, The Crisis sought to use its cover girl photographs to displace what Patricia Hill Collins has named the “controlling images of Black womanhood,” indelible stereotypes of African American women as asexual mammies or lascivious jezebels.21 Likewise, the precision with which black women are coded in these Crisis photographs reveals the assimilationist politics of the NAACP as well as the standards of behavior, dress, and attractiveness its leaders thought all African Americans should emulate. Throughout the early 1940s, The Crisis touted those African American women participating in war-related jobs—as war-production laborers, victory farmers, and members of the armed forces. The Crisis occasionally presented them actively engaged in welding or tilling on its covers, but the majority of issues disseminated during this period replicated hegemonic notions of women as passive by featuring portraits of inactive glamour girls. The few women, like Beryl Cobham (April 1942) and Ida Mae Smith (May 1943), shown actively engaged in war production work were darker-skinned. In contrast to Cobham and Smith, The Crisis photographed light-skinned Aurelia Carter (September 1944), labeled “Miss Negro Victory Worker, 1944,” in full welding garb while sitting for a studio portrait. While her uniform is featured prominently in the photograph, Carter was removed from her work environment and, smiling cheerily at her viewer, was visually rendered passive and traditionally feminine. 212 Megan E. Williams

This representation of Carter was verbally fixed in the cover description; she was characterized as “a typical American girl with a fragile, glamorous appearance,” who prior to the war “was interested in more feminine pursuits.”22 The copy and cover pose imply that Carter will return to these “more feminine pursuits” at the war’s end. Interestingly, Carter, like the majority of those women portrayed in inactive poses as glamour girls, was light-skinned, exposing the history of social stratification among African Americans based on the intensity of labor performed and its correlation to skin color.23 The magazine preferred head shots of well- dressed, light-skinned African American women who were college-educated ladies, beauty-contest winners, soldiers’ wives, or celebrated entertainers over photographs of dark-skinned women engaged in war production work. The tendency of The Crisis to avoid cover images of overtly blue-collar women and to privilege those of women who conformed to bourgeois standards of femininity reflects the NAACP’s use of hegemonic constructions of gender to define middle-class black femininity. The few products advertised regularly within The Crisis reiterated this message that middle-class standards of cleanliness, grooming, and manners defined acceptable femininity. For example, advertisements for Madam C. J. Walker’s “Wonderful Hair and Scalp Preparation” featuring a light-skinned woman with long, wavy hair abutted announcements of Howard University and Tou- galoo College degree offerings. They informed readers that “The hair and the skin require extra attention” and that “Discriminating women use Madam C. J. Walker’s Egyptian Brown Face Powder.”24 A well-dressed, light-skinned woman, identified as “Mrs. Grace Clifford, New York social leader,” represented “Palm- er’s Skin Success Ointment,” which claimed to rid users of the “unattractive complexions” that make “it extremely difficult to gain entree to society.”25 First published in 1941, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, and to Wear, by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, was often advertised in The Crisis as yet another way to secure upward social mobility. Brown, known as the “First Lady of So- cial Graces,” was dedicated to teaching proper manners; advertisements for her book stated, “With good manners again in vogue, everybody needs this ready reference.”26 These particular product notices, repeatedly found within The Crisis throughout the early 1940s, stressed the importance of proper decorum, as well as skin and hair care, for African American women seeking class advancement. During the 1940s, advertisements produced by African American businesses and aimed at black female consumers, such as these found in The Crisis, dif- fered from those produced by white businesses for the same audience.27 Unlike white-produced advertisements for bleaching creams and hair straighteners, endorsements for Madam C. J. Walker’s products, Palmer’s skin cream, and Brown’s etiquette manual avoided denigrating African American physiolo- The Crisis Cover Girl 213 gy.28 These endorsements promoted consumption and use of these products as a means of upward mobility rather than a means of achieving whiteness. Madam C. J. Walker refused to sell skin bleaches and eschewed the words “hair straightener” in her promotions.29 The black beauty industry, produced in part by segregation, also created a space for black women to fashion careers and gain economic independence for themselves outside of white people’s homes and white-owned factories. Leaders of the beauty industry also acted as leaders of their race, contributing time and money to secure civil rights for African Americans and bolstering race pride. Historian Julia Kirk Blackweld- er contends that the African American beauty industry “overall embraced the richness of skin and hair variation among African Americans, praising dark as well as fair” and “helped to build racial solidarity among African American women.”30 Still, the use of light-skinned women in these advertisements points to these companies’ ambivalence concerning skin color. Like advertisements aimed at white women capitalizing on their “inarticulate longings,” these advertisements might be viewed as encouraging black women to assimilate white, “middle- class mores rather than seek out new and possibly more revolutionary alternatives.”31 However, by performing respectability through the use of beauty products and etiquette guides, a space was opened up whereby African Ameri- can women could potentially empower themselves to reject stereotypical images of black womanhood and expose race as a construction. In her groundbreaking history of African American women’s role in the black Baptist church, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham conceptualizes black churchwomen’s resistance to Jim Crowism in terms of a “politics of respectability.”32 Higginbotham writes that black Baptist women “perceived respectability to be the first step in their communication with white America.”33 Likewise, in her study of the ideological bases for national African American women’s clubs such as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), Deborah Gray White discusses black clubwomen’s perception and usage of the politics of respectability as a means of uplifting the race in the eyes of white Americans. These NACW women, who were collaborating with black men in the NAACP by the 1920s, sought to reclaim their image, to be viewed as decent, pure, honorable, and feminine ladies rather than depraved tempt- resses or masculine mammies.34 Augmenting the work of Higginbotham and White, Victoria W. Wolcott, in her analysis of African American women in interwar Detroit, contends that the discourse of respectability articulated by middle-class, black clubwomen waned during the 1930s.35 Respectability was “remade” by working-class African American women who favored notions of “self-worth, family survival, and racial pride” over “dress, demeanor, and neighborhood cleanliness.”36 While the performance of female respectability as articulated by the black elite may have declined in the years leading up 214 Megan E. Williams to World War II, it remained implicit in the photographs of African Ameri- can women selected to represent the NAACP as Crisis cover girls. Education, talent, fashion, and grooming fixed the image of femininity favored by the NAACP and signified The Crisis cover girl’s respectability. During this period, the editors of The Crisis proudly characterized 34 percent of its cover girls as students or graduates of higher or vocational education, celebrating African Americans’ promotion of education as a method for racial advancement and uplift since the late nineteenth century.37 In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B Du Bois had criticized the educational philosophy of Booker T. Washington, who promoted a program of industrial education for African Americans, as “practically accept[ing] the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.”38 Du Bois wrote of the need for college-educated African Ameri- cans, who he famously termed the “Talented Tenth,” to act as race leaders. He espoused “the rule of inequality,” arguing that certain African American men possessed the talent to be leaders while the rest possessed the talent to be laborers.39 Despite his resignation in 1934, the type of woman regularly chosen to represent The Crisis “cover girl” throughout the early 1940s reflected Du Bois’s emphasis on the importance of higher learning for African Americans. The number of college or university women selected for the cover between 1941 and 1945 outnumbered those represented as trade school students or graduates by more than five to one. In addition to stressing education for African American women, The Crisis emphasized black women’s glamour, esteem, and spousal relationships by depicting popularity- and beauty-contest winners and soldiers’ wives on eight of its covers during this period. Maxine Leeds Craig has traced the history of black beauty contests to the 1890s, arguing that varied discursive strategies for racial rearticulation tied black beauty contests to the ideological positions of their producers and their reviewers in the black press. The Crisis used images of beauty-contest winners on its covers to demonstrate its pride in African Amer- ican pulchritude, yet endorsed middle-class images of women that sustained what Craig calls “the African American pigmentocracy.”40 Cover girls Jolita Watson (January 1942) and Hazel Geraldine Griffin (March 1942) were named “Miss Jacksonville” and “Miss Miami,” respectively, after “several thousand bal- lots” were distributed in each city.41 Both covers depicted headshots of the smiling contest winners, who were described as an employee of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company (“Miss Jacksonville”) and a junior at Florida State College (“Miss Miami”). Not only were these women framed as beautiful but they also are described as women who aspire to the middle-class lifestyle that accompanies a job in the black business world and a college education. In contrast, Dorothy Dandridge (June 1942), “selected as the sweetheart of the Seventh Regiment, California State Guard,” posed for her Crisis cover in The Crisis Cover Girl 215 the crux of two large tree limbs.42 This full-length view of Dandridge in a pair of little white shorts and high heels emphasized her legs—the part of the female anatomy made famous by white actress and pin-up girl Betty Grable and favored, during this era, in “glamour shots” of white and black women alike. A similar, full-length view of Pricilla Williams (July 1944) posing on a ladder while wearing a white bathing suit and a white flower in her long, straightened hair appeared as a Crisis cover labeled “Tan Tidbit—Summer Style.” Williams, touted as “one of the lovely contestants in the nationwide Sepia Miss America contests,” was unsurprisingly light-skinned.43 Inside the issue were eight more “Sepia Miss America contestants,” all with light complexions and coiffed hair, wearing bathing suits or short skirts, walking hand in hand in a single-file line or posing individually, and clutching a ladder or saluting. The Crisis presented these contest winners in ways that promoted a version of racial pride linked to a specific social class and skin color. Like pageant contestants, African American servicemen’s pin-up girls were portrayed in the black press as middle-class, light-skinned beauties. Beginning in 1942, in each issue The Crisis printed an inset next to its table of contents enjoining its subscribers, “When you have finished with this copy send it to a boy in camp,” illustrating the association’s support of African American servicemen and pride in their accomplishments. In the years leading up to the war, the NAACP fought to secure the right to serve for African Americans. In 1940 The Crisis claimed, “this is no fight merely to wear a uniform. This is a struggle for status, a struggle to take democracy off of the parchment and give it life.”44 At the time of this Crisis statement, the armed forces relegated African Americans to nominal, rigidly segregated, positions. The army impeded black men’s attempts to enlist. The navy denied African Americans entry, except as mess-men, and the marines barred them entirely until both branches accepted African Americans for general service on a segregated basis in 1942.45 Likewise, the Air Corps initially excluded all African Americans; in 1941 it established a segregated training field at Tuskegee for African Americans.46 The February 1942 issue of The Crisis provided a photographic review of African American soldiers in the armed forces. One of the images featured in the pictorial of black servicemen depicted Air Cadet Lemuel R. Custis lying on his cot, grinning as he gazed at seven photographs of African American women framed or pinned to his wall. As Robert Westbrook suggests, similar images of white women pinned to barracks walls by white soldiers symbolized men’s private interests and the women they felt obligated to protect; likewise, pin-ups encouraged white women to view themselves as the pin-up girls for whom soldiers were fighting.47 The Crisis realized black soldiers’ desire for reminders of home by providing countless photographs of women on its covers suitable for pinning up; these cover photographs represented the black press’s 216 Megan E. Williams wartime demand that African American soldiers have access to the same types of comfort and brands of entertainment provided for their white counterparts. Of the Mrs. Byron C. Minor (January 1945) cover, one of three Crisis covers identifying its model as a soldier’s wife, The Crisis editors wrote, “Nothing can stop the men in uniform from using this cover as a pin-up, but we suspect that the proudest ‘pinner-upper’ will be Captain Byron C. Minor, on duty with his artillery in Italy.”48 According to Sherrie Tucker, the white woman as pin-up girl “hailed the dominant culture’s celebration of an imagined prosperous and private status quo” whereas the black woman as pin-up girl exemplified a different set of ideological aims, “in which victory over racism was conceived as a necessary component of victory over fascism.”49 African American pin-up girls, like Mrs. Byron C. Minor, acted as the female counterparts to the black soldier in the “struggle for status.” They represented models of racial beauty and pride meant to counteract “controlling images” of African American women; pin- ups of black women strengthened African American morale. Pin-ups of Afri- can American women intensified race consciousness and heightened resolve to fight inequality on the home front. During World War II, the visibility and popularity of the African Ameri- can female entertainer also strengthened race consciousness, making her second only to the educated woman as the type privileged by the editors of The Crisis for its covers. Black singers, actresses, or dancers appeared on twelve of the thirty-eight covers depicting women between 1941 and 1945. Film historian Donald Bogle has pronounced the 1940s an era infected by “the Negro Entertainment Syndrome,” a condition whereby the dominant culture repack- aged old and damaging racist stereotypes of African Americans as naturally rhythmic and farcical in a guise of progressiveness.50 Although these images of African Americans as entertainers were far from subversive of deep-rooted stereotypes, the black press valued the African American as performer, suggesting that many black spectators viewed African American players like danc- er Katherine Dunham (March 1941) as signifying a dazzling, respectable, and imitable black femininity never before represented on the stage and screen. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall maintains that this strategy, by which positive images are meant to displace the negative, is not “necessarily” effective.51 Still, The Crisis chose entertainers like Anne Wiggins Brown (July 1942), Hilda Simms (October 1944), and Muriel Burrell Smith (October 1945), all critically ac- claimed Broadway stars, as its “cover girls” because they transcended—even if only marginally—the one-dimensional caricatures of African American womanhood previously portrayed in dominant film and theater. Above all, Lena Horne famously embodied this new type of African Ameri- can entertainer—the sophisticated songstress and Hollywood actress with ties The Crisis Cover Girl 217 to the black bourgeoisie and fame among white Americans. Hollywood constructed Horne and she represented herself as mainstream cinema’s first Afri- can American actress to stand “between the two conventional ideas of Negro womanhood: the ‘good,’ quiet, Negro woman who scrubbed and cooked and was a respectable servant—and the whore.”52 She was also arguably most illustrative of the NAACP’s attempt to construct respectable images of African American femininity. Horne’s roots in the black bourgeoisie that gave rise to the NACW and NAACP combined with her visibility as a popular songstress and Hollywood star made her the perfect symbol for the NAACP’s campaign to depict the African American as a respectable and “normal human being.”53 Talented and genteel, Horne was constructed by the NAACP as symbolic of her race, as representative of the African American middle class. The Febru- ary 1941 Crisis cover depicts a young Horne from the waist up, conservatively dressed, her hair worn long and smooth. Like the majority of women selected as Crisis “cover girls” during this period, her light skin and straightened hair illuminate the internalization of colorism and conventional notions of beauty as promoted by the dominant society as well as the multiracial roots of the black bourgeoisie. Avoiding the viewer’s gaze, Horne’s head is turned to one side as her manicured hand props up her chin. Described in the photograph’s caption as “LENA HORNE: Featured Vocalist with Charlie Barnet’s Orchestra,” a popular all-white band, Horne represented the type of entertainer celebrated by the black bourgeoisie. She wrote, “I sang popular songs, romantic songs . . . most of which were written by whites. I did not do ‘race’ material, blues, for instance.”54 Since the 1920s, leaders of the black middle class had denounced the blues as vulgar and viewed blueswomen, who openly sang of sexual—including homo- sexual—situations, as perpetuating stereotypes of black women as depraved.55 In Horne’s words, urban, middle-class African Americans “did not think this kind of music was art. They thought it was dirty, an unpleasant reminder of their low origins.”56 Unable to appreciate the blues as a site of working-class black women’s resistance to racism, sexism, and classism, the black elite simply believed that “respectable girls were not supposed to go to work in Harlem night clubs.”57 In 1943 a reporter with the white press wrote, “Unlike most Negro chanteuses, Lena Horne eschews the barrel-house manner, claws no walls, conducts herself with the seductive reserve of a Hildegarde,” a famous white songstress.58 Concerned with the performance of respectability and acceptance into the dominant middle class, The Crisis bolstered Horne’s image in the white press as “unlike most Negro chanteuses” and sought to present her as representative of black female respectability. In her autobiography, Horne constructs herself as a singer who did not deliberately choose to sing popular songs instead of blues or jazz numbers; according to Horne, her repertoire, which appealed to 218 Megan E. Williams the black and white middle classes and “eschew[ed] the barrel-house” songs viewed as “low” culture by both, was not “a conscious choice on [her] part.” Horne alleges, “I sang what I could sing best, period.”59 Consciously or not, by singing mainstream songs written by popular white composers, Horne embodied the type of songstress acceptable among middle-class audiences—both black and white. With her success as a songstress among both black and white middle-class audiences, Horne garnered a long-term contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and again appeared on the cover of The Crisis in January 1943. Since last appearing on the magazine’s cover, Horne had left New York for a singing engagement in Hollywood at the urging of Walter White.60 Horne asserts that White “was anxious to bend the color line in movies” and believed that her “exposure in Hollywood might lead to movie work for a lot of other Negro people.”61 In fact, White had been working with former presidential candidate Wendell Willkie and the Office of War Information (OWI), a government agency responsible for disseminating war aims to the public and fostering mass support for the war effort, to change the portrayal of African Americans in Holly- wood films. White conceived of the liaison between the NAACP and the OWI, which commenced in 1942, as a way of altering the one-dimensional portray- als of African Americans in film, and propagandists viewed the collaboration as a means of arousing feelings of loyalty among the largely disillusioned black public. Historians have argued that, by the spring of 1943, the goals of black leaders and those of the OWI propagandists “proved to be incompatible.”62 At the time Horne appeared on the January 1943 cover of The Crisis, however, White remained full of hope for change in Hollywood. Horne’s cover image was described in the table of contents as “A new photograph of Lena Horne, now appearing at the exclusive Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City.”63 Once again, Horne is positioned in an inactive pose, her eyes directed away from her viewer. “The Cover” informed Crisis readers that “This is the first time a colored singer (not an orchestra) has been booked in the hotel of the class of the Savoy-Plaza” and lauded Horne’s “seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, largest of the Hollywood studios.”64 In her autobiography, Horne writes that she was well aware that this contract made her “the NAACP’s first available guinea pig.”65 Horne represents herself as negotiating her characterization as a token of black, middle-class gentility. In many instances, she seemingly upheld the definitions of respectability instilled in her as a child of the black bourgeoisie, but at the same time she fashioned her own version of respectability that accorded her the flexibility to uphold, negotiate, and resist the NAACP’s rigid construction of her as a model of venerable Afri- can American femininity. The granddaughter of Cora Calhoun Horne, “a devoted clubwoman” and early member of both the NAACP and the National Urban League, and the The Crisis Cover Girl 219 niece of Frank Horne, a member of FDR’s Black Cabinet, Lena Horne was regarded as a member of, in her words, “one of the ‘First Families’ of Brooklyn.” She wrote, “The world into which I was born, the one which exerted the strongest pull on my personality, was . . . the world of the Negro middle class.”66 White viewed Horne, a family friend, as a “winner,” a respectable entertainer with crossover appeal.67 In his mind, she mirrored the image and assimilationist leanings of the NAACP; she could adequately represent the black middle class of which they were both a part. In Too Heavy a Load, Deborah Gray White writes that “middle-class status in black society was associated as much with ‘style of life’ as with income.” She also emphasizes the vital role clothes played in maintaining “the clubwoman’s self-image and status.”68 Similarly, Noliwe Rooks has asserted that, historically, fashion “function[ed as] part of a larger project aimed at refuting charges of African American moral inferiority, as well as distancing African Ameri- can women from cultural associations of rape and sexual availability.”69 Both female members of the African American elite and the black Baptist church sought to control and contain the image of black women by dictating what constituted proper attire. Throughout the late nineteenth century, magazine articles aimed at black women listed appropriate colors, patterns, and styles that would indicate a woman’s respectable nature. Likewise, African Ameri- can church women condemned flashy colors, unique designs, and “conspicuous trimmings.”70 Interestingly, in her biography of the Horne family, Gail Lumet Buckley recounts an incident where White polices Horne’s choice of clothing. Thrilled with the success of her first MGM film, Panama Hattie, Horne bought herself “a little silk afternoon dress with the words ‘Good Luck’ printed all over it in various languages.” Apparently, when she wore the dress to her first informal MGM photo session, Walter White rebuked her: “You must never wear a dress with writing on it!”71 White, concerned with protecting Horne’s image, obviously subscribed to the strict decorum of dress outlined by the black bourgeoisie, its belief that clothing featuring unique designs detracted from a woman’s claim to respectability and left her open to racialized criticisms of black women as frivolous, profligate, and immoral. For her two appearances as “cover girl,” Horne, like the majority of The Crisis “cover girls” during this period, wore conservative outfits that acted as examples of the sort of fashions approved by the black elite. Despite White’s reprimand, Horne continued to resist his attempt to mold her in terms of his definition of acceptable femininity. By purchasing a mink coat, Horne, to borrow the words of Wolcott, “transgressed boundaries of bourgeois respectability.” Surely, White would have balked at Horne flaunting her social mobility by buying and wearing expensive garments, an act which linked her to young African American men and women dressed in zoot suits and furs, migrants who were viewed by many of the black elite as 220 Megan E. Williams undependable, uncultured, and uneducated.72 Yet Horne felt that the coat was “fabulous,” her “first ‘movie star’ status symbol.”73 Likewise, Horne performed acts in Hollywood films that scandalized White. White was initially hopeful that Cabin in the Sky, the all-black musical pur- chased by MGM for which Horne was offered a leading role when she signed her seven-year contract, would present African Americans as respectable “human beings.” In her autobiography, Horne writes, “Walter’s concern, and mine too, was that in the period while I was waiting for Cabin in the Sky they would force me to play roles as a maid or maybe even as some jungle type.” She continues, “Walter felt, and I agreed with him, that since I had no history in the movies and therefore had not been typecast as anything so far, it would be essential for me to try to establish a different kind of image for Negro women.”74 Both Horne and White were hopeful that Cabin in the Sky (1943) and Twenti- eth Century Fox’s competing all-black musical Stormy Weather (1943) would provide this opportunity. Although white producers, stars, directors, and executives have long dominated the production of Hollywood films, African Americans have attended motion pictures as viewers since the medium’s inception.75 By 1942, thirty-one states boasted 430 theaters, the vast majority of them white-owned or managed, that catered to Americans African audiences and another 200 theaters allowed African Americans to patronize segregated seats; African Americans spent approximately $150 million per year at the box office by 1943.76 For black audiences, aware that the white press promoted Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather as “the direct [results] of plainspoken hints . . . from Wendell Willkie, Lowell Mellett of the Office of War Information, and others, that now was the time to give the Negro his place as a dignified, responsible citizen,” Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather promised to “present the Negro as a normal human being.”77 In Cabin in the Sky, costarring Ethel Waters and Eddie “Rochester” Ander- son, Horne played Georgia Brown, a character accurately dubbed “the seductive menace” by Newsweek.78 Horne enjoyed performing in Cabin in the Sky and recalled the film’s opening as “a wonderful time” and “a fantastic engagement.”79 White’s hopes, however, were dashed. Rather than presenting a new image of the African American as he had desired, White felt the film recalled old stereotypes of blacks as superstitious, ignorant, and licentious with weaknesses for gambling and alcohol. In Twentieth Century Fox’s Stormy Weather, Horne starred as Selina Rogers, an entertainer, alongside Bill “Bojangles” Rob- inson, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, and the Nicolas Broth- ers. Walter White opposed some of the “vulgar things” Horne, as Selina, did in this film as well. Wearing a fantastic jungle costume, her character performed a pseudo-African dance on stage while singing “Diga Diga Do,” evoking stereotypes of African Americans as primitive and uncivilized.80 Despite the fact that The Crisis Cover Girl 221

Stormy Weather’s off-stage portrayal of Selina provided a representation of “the Negro . . . as a normal person,” White objected to what Lena Horne was called on to do in certain scenes of the film, acts that producers would “not think of having a white actress do.”81 Horne acknowledges in her autobiography the critiques of Stormy Weather as patronizing toward African Americans and claims that she “did not think Stormy Weather was anywhere near as good as Cabin in the Sky.” 82 Still, she apparently had no qualms about performing the “Diga Diga Do” number. In her final assessment of the film, she states, “Stormy Weather may not have been an all-time great, but I’m still grateful to it for the reputation the [title] song gave me.”83 In the end, Horne constructed herself as a person who did not view her responsibilities as an African American woman in the limelight in the same way that Walter White had envisioned them. Of her brief time in Hollywood, she candidly wrote, “It was no crusade . . . of course I hoped that I could set my own terms in the movies and also be successful, then others might be able to follow. But, I must admit, that was not my main motive.”84 According to Horne, her “chief interest” and “main motive” were “protecting [her] opportunity to sing.”85 As a breadwinner and divorced mother of two, Horne represented herself as seeking to protect her livelihood above all else. Though born into the black bourgeoisie and chosen twice by The Crisis as a representative of the NAACP, Horne constructed herself as a woman who refashioned the uplift ideology and politics of respectability emphasized by the middle-class, Afri- can American clubwomen and men who preceded her. Like the working-class women of Wolcott’s study, Horne represented herself as interpreting and “remaking” the discourse of respectability in ways that fit her life and ambitions. As a working woman, Horne defined respectability in terms of “self-worth, family survival, and racial pride” rather than as a rigidly defined performance of identity signified by tasteful dress and bourgeois deportment. While The Crisis and Walter White attempted to construct an image of Horne in keeping with its overall representation of African American femininity, Horne represented herself as resisting the constraints that accompanied her characterization by the NAACP as a symbol of her race. She endeavored to assert, “All right, I’m a symbol. But I’m a person, too. You can’t push me so hard. I’ve got a right to my own happiness.”86

——————————— Notes

This slightly revised essay first appeared in American Periodicals and is reproduced with the permission of The Ohio State University Press. Copyright 2006. I would like to thank Sherrie Tucker, Kim Warren, Albert Broussard, and the anonymous reviewers 222 Megan E. Williams at American Periodicals for reading and commenting on drafts of the original article as well as Phillip Luke Sinitiere and Amy Kirschke for inviting me to reprint it in this collection. 1. Branch Bulletin quoted in Gail Lumet Buckley, The Hornes: An American Family (New York: Applause Books, 1986), 81. 2. Lena Horne and Richard Schickel, Lena (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986), 121; Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 201. 3. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 137. 4. Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 6. 5. Maureen Honey, ed., Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II (Co- lumbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 4. 6. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 196. 7. See August Meier and John H. Bracey, Jr., “The NAACP as a Reform Movement, 1909–1965: ‘To Reach the Conscience of America,’” Journal of Southern History 59, no. 1 (1993): 3–30. 8. Edward Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), 177. 9. Buckley, The Hornes, 82. 10. Kenneth Robert Janken, White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (New York: New Press, 2003), 173. 11. Ibid., 165. 12. Ibid., 191. 13. Roy Wilkins and Tom Mathews, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (New York: Viking Press, 1982), 118. Prior to editing The Crisis, Roy Wilkins wrote for Kansas City, Missouri’s black newspaper The Call; for an analysis of representations of Lena Horne in The Call, see Megan E. Williams, “‘Lena Not the Only One’: Representa- tions of Lena Horne and Etta Moten in The Call, 1941–1945,” American Studies 51, no. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 49–67. 14. Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, 174. 15. Deborah G. White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 79. 16. Noliwe M. Rooks, Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture That Made Them (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 53. 17. Janken, White, xiii. 18. See Horne and Schickel, Lena, 106, 22, 40. 19. bell hooks, “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life,” in Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography, ed. Deborah Willis (New York: New Press, 1994), 46. 20. Ibid., 47. 21. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990), 67. 22. “Cover,” The Crisis, September 1944, 279. The Crisis Cover Girl 223

23. August Meier notes, “Social stratification among Negroes appeared before the Civil War. Among the slaves there were distinctions between house servants and . . . field laborers . . . distinctions that were to a large extent correlated with skin color and that were carried over into freedom.” See August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 150. 24. The Crisis, February 1943, 1. 25. The Crisis, December 1943, 379. 26. The Crisis, December 1942, 392. 27. For more on this difference, see “In Search of Connections” in Noliwe M. Rooks, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women (New Brunswick, NJ: Rut- gers University Press, 1996), 115–36. 28. Ibid., 127. 29. A’Lelia Perry Bundles, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (New York: Scribner, 2001), 20. 30. Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Styling Jim Crow: African American Beauty Training during Segregation (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003), 146. 31. Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), 6. 32. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 186. 33. Ibid., 196. 34. White, Too Heavy a Load, 60, 66. 35. Victoria W. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Inter- war Detroit (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 210. 36. Ibid., 95, 38. 37. Meier, Negro Thought in America, 5, 11. 38. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 87. 39. Ibid., 70. 40. Maxine Leeds Craig, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Poli- tics of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 46–47. 41. “Miami Beauty Contest Winners,” The Crisis, February 1942, 99. 42. “Cover,” The Crisis, June 1942, 182. For a biography of Dandridge, see Donald Bogle, Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography (New York: Amistad, 1997). 43. “Cover,” The Crisis, July 1944, 216. 44. “For Manhood in National Defense,” The Crisis, December 1940, 375. 45. Neil A. Wynn, “The Impact of the Second World War on the American Negro,” Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 2 (1971): 45. 46. Ibid., 45. 47. Robert B. Westbrook, “‘I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James’: American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II,” American Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1990): 596. 48. “The Cover,” The Crisis, January 1945, 7. 49. Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham: Duke Uni- versity Press, 2000), 240. 50. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive 224 Megan E. Williams

History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 2001), 118. 51. Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 274. 52. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 2–3. 53. Ibid., 121; White, A Man Called White, 201. 54. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 126. 55. See Hazel Carby, “It Just Be’s Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Wom- en’s Blues,” Radical America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9–22, and Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Vintage Books, 1999). 56. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 114. 57. Ibid., 48. 58. “Chocolate Cream Chanteuse,” Time, January 4, 1943, 62. 59. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 126. 60. Ibid., 121. 61. Ibid. 62. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, “Blacks, Loyalty, and Motion-Picture Propaganda in World War II,” Journal of American History 73, no. 2 (1986): 383. 63. “Cover,” The Crisis, January 1943, 7. 64. Ibid. 65. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 137. 66. Ibid., 2–3. 67. Walter White quoted in Buckley, The Hornes, 145. 68. White, Too Heavy a Load, 70, 76. 69. Rooks, Ladies’ Pages, 22. 70. See ibid., 52, and Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 200. 71. Walter White quoted in Buckley, The Hornes, 159. 72. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability, 39, 130. 73. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 142. 74. Ibid., 134. 75. Jacqueline Bobo, “‘The Subject Is Money’: Reconsidering the Black Film Audi- ence as Theoretical Paradigm,” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 2 (1991): 422. 76. Ibid., 424. 77. “Movies: Hollywood Cabin,” Newsweek, April 26, 1943, 88. 78. Newsweek article quoted in Buckley, The Hornes, 177. 79. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 154. 80. Walter White quoted in Koppes and Black, “Blacks, Loyalty, and Motion-Picture Propaganda in World War II,” 398. 81. Ibid., 392, 98. 82. Horne and Schickel, Lena, 163. 83. Ibid., 165. 84. Ibid., 137. 85. Ibid. 86. Quoted from a 1965 Ebony interview with Lena Horne referenced in Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds., Black Women in The Crisis Cover Girl 225

America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), vol. 2, 580. For an exploration of Lena Horne’s postwar portrayal in Ebony, see Megan E. Williams, “‘Meet the Real Lena Horne’: Representations of Lena Horne in Ebony Magazine, 1945–1949,” Journal of American Studies 43, no. 1 (2009): 145–58. Chapter 10

The Crisis Responds to Public School Desegregation

Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn

Throughout the 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used its monthly magazine, The Crisis, to survey and analyze the implications of public school desegregation. Building on the print activism and visual protest for civil and human rights deployed by its inaugural editor W. E. B. Du Bois, who spent the 1950s under an anti-Communist mi- croscope, The Crisis captured relatively obscure developments, probing the logistical problems and cultural effects of school desegregation that other media outlets either ignored or celebrated. It correctly interpreted Massive Resistance as a national problem—rather than simply a southern phenomenon—underscoring the deleterious and, often, more subtle discriminatory practices in the North and West. It confidently and predictably foresaw the ultimate end of Jim Crow schools, but it had no illusions about the difficulties and dangers associated with that long and strange death. This chapter analyzes how The Crisis covered the Brown decisions and their effects on parents, students, teachers, politicians, and pundits, spotlighting the important role that the magazine had in increasing awareness and mobilizing support for public school integration.1 The Crisis greeted the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) with cautious optimism. In a concise yet measured editorial, it approvingly noted that the court’s earlier ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was now as obsolete as the other artifacts of the late nineteenth century—“the horsecar, the bustle, and the five-cent cigar.” Yet it also reported that Brown “was a major battle won, not a campaign concluded,” and that racism would persist long after the separate but equal doctrine had expired. Most perceptive, though, was the insight that southern white moderates wanted the same thing as segregationists—total obstruction of the Supreme Court’s man- date—but by more peaceful and thus more effective means. Editors at The Cri- sis argued that the southern strategy of managing white supremacy through

226 The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 227 well-connected, well-rewarded African Americans presented the greatest danger to the black community. In order to circumvent these self-defeating machi- nations, the editorial stressed that the unconditional surrender of Jim Crow had to be pursued, even if there were bound to be the inevitable bureaucratic snafus and pedagogical issues stemming from reform. The NAACP was “not going to coddle school boards and superintendents who may attempt to use these problems as an excuse for unnecessary delay or to avoid desegregation.” It assumed that there would be fewer problems if implementation of the Su- preme Court’s order proceeded without fanfare and before its enemies had time to organize their many resources to poison the public discourse.2 Desegregation happened most quickly in border states and cities in which Jim Crow had superficial roots. Nevertheless, even in these relatively enlightened places, there remained serious problems, and The Crisis did not flinch from covering them. The November 1954 issue featured a piece by Alfred Mc- Clung Lee, the chair of anthropology at Brooklyn College in New York City, who had analyzed, along with the more famous psychologist Kenneth Clark of the City College of New York, the turbulence in Milford, Delaware. Lee and Clark argued that desegregation of Milford’s previously all-white senior high school had proceeded smoothly—with ten black students admitted—until local and outside extremists intimidated the superintendent, forcing him to close all public schools temporarily. The Milford schools quickly reopened again on a desegregated basis, but an ensuing white boycott of public schools spread throughout Delaware and enabled the governor and the State Board of Educa- tion to revert to segregation until the courts intervened. Lee and Clark gave a detailed chronological narrative of the causes and consequences of the orches- trated opposition in the small agricultural town of Milford and its surrounding district, blaming “determined and dangerous opportunists” such as Bryant W. Bowles and his National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP) for inciting poor white farmers to act upon their worst prejudices. True to form, administrators and politicians had quickly caved in to accommodate these irrational concerns of rural whites, and only the courts and the NAACP would hold them all accountable before the law. Lee ended his article with an appeal for more donations to the NAACP “to underwrite detailed studies of such cases as the Milford one.” He believed that professional studies by social scientists “would be invaluable in planning both local and national strategy for facilitating desegregation without violence.”3 While the NAACP placed its faith in social science and reason to persuade the silent majority, its enemies on the right tried to replicate their triumph in Milford in larger and higher-profile cities including Baltimore and Washing- ton, DC. They were far less successful, however, due to the resolute stance of school officials and police officers who were determined to uphold the law. In 228 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn the same November 1954 issue that had covered the Milford story, Clarence Mitchell, the director of the NAACP’s Washington chapter, exposed the direct ties between Milford and the pro-segregation pickets in front of desegregated public schools in Baltimore, publishing the criminal record of Bowles, the purported leader of the NAAWP. But Mitchell went even further, publishing the license plate numbers and car registration information of the Baltimore picket- ers, a brush back against the anonymous inflammatory phone calls to parents at integrated schools that had warned of anti-white pogroms. Most effective, though, was the Washington police’s ordering of Bowles to leave the desegregated Anacostia School and to never come back. Radio and television appeals from school officials for cooperation lowered tensions, Mitchell maintained, making it easier for police to do their job.4 The NAACP realized that activists, superintendents, and teachers on the ground needed basic and accessible advice to implement the dismantling of the old regime. This counsel needed to be informed by academic research, yet not weighed down by its nuances. Accordingly, in the January 1955 issue of The Crisis, Wagner D. Jackson, president of the local Wilmington, Delaware, branch of the NAACP, published his paper on “Working and Dealing with School Boards” given three months earlier at the Philadelphia Emergency Conference to Consider Problems Arising Out of School Integration. Jackson admonished activists to do their homework and to read an educational directory at the very least to “know something about the school personnel” with whom they were working. But they should not stop there. According to Jackson, most useful to him was a working knowledge of school laws and histories in order to combat the inevitable obfuscations, which were based upon superficially race-neutral district boundaries and jurisdictions, at least in Wilmington, with its mixture of industrial present and abolitionist past. He also argued that activists obviously needed to understand the particular social and cultural context of their district and the specific shades of opinion of the various stakeholder groups such as PTAs, faculty organizations, labor unions, and churches. Once that local knowledge had become second nature, activists were advised to compare their situation with “what has happened in other communities where integration has been effected—and how it was effected.” And of course reading and internalizing the latest social science research on desegregation equipped local branch members and their allies with informal grass-roots, actionable intelligence. Finally, Jackson went on to delineate tactical lines of communication between the organization’s local, state, and legal counsel, urging branches to select professional yet persistent advocates to chair education committees or to lead NAACP delegations to superintendents. “Uncle Toms” should be avoided, but a quiet, deliberate, and calm manner was best in delivering a firm and uncompromising message on desegregation. He also recommended the measured The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 229 and respectful vehicles of petition and conference, with responses documented in writing, as the prelude and preparation for expected further legal action. The reward for all of this detailed work, for Jackson, was seeing black and white children together without any problems on a playground of a recently integrated elementary school, and “seeing there the end of an era better forgotten.”5 While dispensing advice and strategy, The Crisis did not forget that public school desegregation had northern as well as southern dimensions. The magazine seemed to make a conscious effort to include the entire country to prevent the desegregating South from substituting one form of oppression for another—in this instance, de jure segregation for de facto segregation. And, as the NAACP’s social scientists had pointed out, the North had plenty of instances of de facto segregation from which to draw practical lessons and logistics. For example, its December 1954 issue featured a piece that examined changes in pupil assignments that would have forced some African American students in Englewood, New Jersey, to attend all-black and already-overcrowded Lincoln Elementary rather than the primary schools closest to their homes. It maintained that the Englewood Board of Education had deliberately drawn these new school attendance zones with race only in mind, and the proposed building of a brand-new facility in the center of the black community was meant to keep race-specific education going. Helping all students to succeed was secondary to maintaining discrimination, even in places such as Englewood that had never codified customary bigotry. Equalization and expansion within a segregated system thus had the same ulterior motives behind them, wherever they occurred. While condemning these subtle circumventions of the spirit, if not the letter, of Brown, the NAACP regularly reported the rebuttal of these ostensibly “race-neutral” moves. In the March 1955 issue, in particular, The Crisis noted that Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, was forced by its local NAACP branch to merge its two separate but equal school districts in which all students would be classified by grade rather than by race or neighborhood.6 While quick victories in Willow Grove and other places in the North and West meant two steps forward, editors of The Crisis reminded readers of other corresponding steps backward in places like East Palo Alto, California, and Chicago. In reference to East Palo Alto, Rachelle Marshall, the corresponding secretary of its local NAACP branch, provided the saga of “a racially-mixed community that actually did battle in order to resist becoming a ghetto.” It was a cautionary tale to all who were embarking on desegregation in the former Confederacy that, in an area that had no “cross burnings, White Citizen’s Councils, and personal victimization,” zoning by neighborhood and thus social class meant ultimately decreasing unremarkable racial mixing and increasing what sociologists would later call “the concentration effects” of contained poverty. In East Palo Alto, a popular front of working-class whites and blacks 230 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn fought an official effort to place their children on a separate but unequal foot- ing with affluent families in adjoining neighborhoods just to the west. The new dividing line separated the haves and have-nots by using the freeway of US 101 as the boundary, the so-called “Concrete Curtain.” On the surface, the school board’s decision to enclose poorer tracts facing San Francisco Bay from their wealthier counterparts seemed to make sense, based upon universal bench- marks such as “distance from homes to schools, estimated school population, minimum bus transportation, the advisability of keeping elementary school populations, and the avoidance of major traffic arteries within a school district.” Ultimately, however, a multiracial protest from East Palo Alto drew a limited compromise from the superintendent, who agreed to a deal which essentially moved the district from an integrated zoning plan to one of token desegregation. In documenting this disappointment, Marshall also accentuated the positive by underscoring “the birth of effective interracial cooperation and a new community spirit” in the struggle to retain already established racial diversity in wake of greater social stratification and suburban sprawl.7 In Chicago, The Crisis uncovered a much more significant and overt pattern of segregation. The school board there had an official policy of benign neglect in implementing Brown, relying upon the natural “mobility” of the black middle and working classes to diversify student bodies. This passive lack of a policy guaranteed the practice of segregation in places in which integration had been customary a generation before. As a result, in 1957 over 90 percent of the elementary schools in the nation’s second-largest city were segregated by race and nationality. By the 1950s, the board’s diffidence had made it especially difficult for upwardly mobile black parents and children moving into white neighborhoods, since those very neighborhoods quickly became all-black as white children and families moved to avoid the stigma of being in a mixed or “transition” area. This stigma had deliberate pedagogical consequences, according to local black leaders. Unlike in the many southern cities in which black teachers had better credentials and more experience than their white counterparts, mixed or all-black schools in Chicago had the least experienced faculty members as well as the most instances of overcrowding. The Chicago NAACP discerned that students at many of these schools had to endure double-shift schedules that reduced not only contact time but also teacher expectations.8 While pointing to egregious northern examples of dysfunctional de facto segregation, The Crisis insisted over and over again that desegregation worked. One editorial reviewed and recommended the findings of Schools in Transition, a compendium of sympathetic studies of desegregating districts. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, this book was exactly the kind of activist and academic fusion that the organization had long endorsed. Its studies looked at twenty-four districts in “border states” ranging from New Jersey to The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 231

Arizona. The review in The Crisis noted that this survey confirmed the practical truism that every district’s experience with desegregation was slightly different. But the most gratifying conclusion to The Crisis was the researchers’ observation “that immediate desegregation, when it is undertaken forthrightly and intelligently, works.” Tucson and Douglas in Arizona received praise as examples of situations in which this quick and easy approach worked the best, even where there had been complete segregation previously. In contrast, Mil- ford, Delaware, “where the authorities wobbled,” was the exception to the rule of quiescent compliance.9 This widespread progress, the organization believed, was in danger of being ignored by journalists because it was so unremarkable and proceeded without any marked violence. Documenting it would be the NAACP’s new Social Sci- ence Department, which was made possible by an eight-thousand-dollar grant from a black fraternal group, the Prince Hall Masons. This initiative intended to build upon the earlier research of Kenneth and Mamie Clark and others that Chief Justice Earl Warren cited in his unanimous decision. Alfred McClung, the prominent New York sociologist, would chair the department’s Committee of Consultants, a stunning array of “43 sociologists, anthropologists, economists, historians, psychologists, and educators on the faculties and staffs of 28 universities, colleges, research institutions, and governmental commissions.” Coming from all parts of the United States, this working group had the geographical and disciplinary diversity as well as the right credentials to market advocacy to an often unwilling public.10 Assured by the heft of this expertise, The Crisis stressed the rationality of quick desegregation with the “all deliberate speed” approach ostensibly endorsed by the second Brown decision of May 31, 1955. Trying to downplay any perceived waffling on the Supreme Court’s part, Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins themselves emphasized the uniformity of both Brown decisions with regard to ending public school segregation completely, noting that the second one reaffirmed explicitly the first one six times in its opinion. They underlined the court’s references to “obstacles to be eliminated.” Action “must start promptly” as direct endorsements of the organization’s unyielding stance against Jim Crow schools. Ignoring the “all deliberate speed” phrase entirely, Marshall and Wilkins felt “armed with the powers embodied in the language of the Court’s [second] opinion.” Both the court and the NAACP agreed in allowing some time to solve administrative and logistical problems inherent in any significant cultural change. But Marshall and Wilkins maintained that this troubleshooting must be done in “good faith” and in line with the current constitutional interpretation.11 With its faith in principled pragmatism, The Crisis frequently juxtaposed the reasonableness of compliance with suddenly fashionable extremism. In 232 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn its pages, the NAACP positioned itself as the mainstream center of American thought, as white supremacists gained both middle and working-class support in the South. In the March 1956 issue, a few weeks after Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia called for “Massive Resistance” against the implementation of the Brown decisions, Elizabeth Geyer discussed the rise of sophisticated and up- scale terrorist activity designed to use any means necessary to maintain racial segregation and discrimination in all of its forms. An assistant to the director of public relations for the NAACP, Geyer exposed the unfortunate confluence of officially sanctioned obstruction and hate groups, noting the spectrum of segregationist tactics in the Deep South that ranged from economic intimidation to murder. From her report, then, “Massive Resistance” represented a serious threat to the desegregation process, and its defeat would demand overwhelming resolve and sacrifice.12 As Geyer blasted Massive Resistance in the pages of The Crisis, southern politicians counterattacked with another stab at the Brown decision. In 1956 Strom Thurmond, Richard Russell, and Harry Byrd coordinated a devilish rhetorical thrust meant to discredit both the Supreme Court and its controversial decision on desegregation. Formally titled a “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” the document that Thurmond, Russell, and Byrd finally approved was popularly known as the Southern Manifesto. Signed by 101 of the South’s senators and congressmen, the manifesto denounced the Brown decision, calling it an “unwarranted exercise of power.” The men who signed the manifesto pledged to “use all lawful means” to “bring about a reversal” of the Brown decision, and they hoped that their rhetorical stance might prompt other forms of resistance in the eleven states of the old Confederacy.13 The Crisis responded to the Southern Manifesto in a variety of ways. In the October 1956 edition, the magazine assessed every member of the House of Representatives based on their stance on the manifesto.14 Then, in February 1957, the editors used the Looking and Listening column to place the manifesto in an international Cold War perspective. “For what the United States says in the United Nations, for what its people do with voluntary contributions, for the historic words which declared this country free and instituted its laws,” the editors wrote, “this country merits the respect and admiration of the world.” On the other hand, “the applause of [foreign] nations soon changes to raucous, derisive laughter when Uncle Sam is made to appear as a holier-than- thou hypocrite who gives lip service to the Declaration of Independence, but puts his strength behind the Southern Manifesto.”15 Of course, this criticism of American hypocrisy gained added legitimacy when the Soviet Union shot Sputnik into orbit, an event which called into question American educational and racial practices across the board. As Roy Wilkins told the participants at the NAACP’s national meeting in 1957, “One of the lessons of the sputnik is The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 233 that we dare not persist with segregated education, or with second-class citizenship. It is plain now that we do not have the exclusive ‘know-how’ and that we need every brain and every man and woman who can be mustered for the campaign of survival.”16 The editors of The Crisis argued that the effort against Massive Resistance also needed a direct scholarly rebuttal that targeted the myths of white supremacy and the seemingly spurious science that supported them. But the editors apparently realized that such a rebuttal could be too obscure, missing the forest for the trees. Accordingly, rather than featuring an academic journal article with footnotes and citations, the magazine chose accessible writing informed by, yet not bogged down in, statistics and studies. In November 1956, the magazine reprinted both a relatively long letter to the editor by Dr. Martin D. Jen- kins, the president of historically African American Morgan State College, and a joint communiqué of eighteen well-regarded college professors, “most of them members of the American Psychological Association.” Jenkins’s letter had originally been published two months earlier by the Baltimore Sun as a response both to one of its editorials, “Standards of Schooling,” and to Dr. Frank C. J. McGurk’s provocative “A Scientist’s Report on Race Difference,” which had appeared in the national news weekly U.S. News & World Report. The college president immediately scorned McGurk’s slim publishing record and previously low profile, noting that only the weekly’s predictable pro-segregation stance had enabled his sudden notoriety. But Jenkins reserved his most powerful critique for the Sun’s seemingly temperate translation of McGurk’s findings in which the newspaper warned of lower academic standards in formerly all-white schools that dared to accommodate new African American transfers. Jenkins wrote that underprivileged and at-risk children of all races did worse in school than their affluent counterparts of any background; social class, not race, was the primary factor in student success. The psychologists agreed with Jenkins, citing previous work that had deemed cultural and environmental factors stemming from class differences, rather than any inherent biological differences, as key to the performance disparities between white and black children.17 On a much more quotidian plane than the endless “nature versus nurture” debate in psychology, The Crisis commented on the many twists and turns in the struggle to desegregate the nation’s schools. Its focal points revealed the priorities of the organization in the critical months after the opposition had had time to galvanize its reactionary message. One of those priorities was to stiffen the spines of local leaders who were in positions to stand up to right- wing critics of integration. In a January 1957 editorial, the magazine noted that “one of the major obstacles to public school desegregation in the South has been [the] lack of forthrightness and courage on the part of local officials and citizens.” Furthermore, it cited the outcome of the clash in Clinton, Tennessee, 234 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn as proof “that tenacity and intelligence can conquer an ugly situation.” During the spring of 1956 the school board there had begrudgingly decided to go along with the law of the land and to begin allowing a handful of African American transfers to all-white schools during the next academic year. The board tried to placate any opposition via forums and meetings, and most middle- and upper- class whites in the town had resigned themselves to the inevitable. Then, just as school reopened that fall, Clinton, Tennessee, went down the same road that Milford, Delaware, had traversed three years earlier. Race baiters, led by a gadfly from New Jersey named John Kasper, inflamed working-class and rural whites from the surrounding counties to violence, and federal marshals from east Ten- nessee were called in to make arrests and keep the peace. The disturbances in Clinton provided editors of The Crisis with several useful insights. First, the town’s school board should have extended its public relations campaign into its rural hinterlands because the parents with the greatest fears and prejudices came from there. Changing elite hearts and minds was clearly not enough. Sec- ond, tiny local police forces were not sufficient to combat “professional agita- tors and outside busybodies”; only quick and decisive action by federal courts and law enforcement could help grassroots implementers to overcome orches- trated disorder.18 While urging federal follow-up to stem “Massive Resistance,” The Crisis also condemned state-sponsored harassment, particularly in Senator Harry F. Byrd’s Virginia. It is important to note that the magazine’s editors were keenly aware that “Massive Resistance” went beyond a few threatening letters or phone calls from deranged crackpots. Various committees in the Old Dominion’s General Assembly had been empowered to conduct fishing expeditions and witch hunts designed to scare NAACP members and branches into submission. These committees sought to publicize the organization’s membership lists and corresponding contact information, hoping to intimidate activists and donors to stop contributing to the desegregation cause. “This rising of the Southern Vendée,” though, criminalized legal behavior and the exercise of basic Ameri- can rights, and its desperate resort to extralegal measures only revealed the ultimate weakness of radical reaction.19 As the NAACP positioned itself as the embodiment of American values against intrusive and arbitrary state governments, it was quick to rebut alleged “Uncle Toms” such as Professor Clemens King of Alcorn College in Mississippi, who had questioned the patriotism and motives of its members. In a May 1957 editorial, The Crisis singled out Professor King for his “gratuitous and absurd premises” and “fantastic conclusions” in his notorious series of articles about the organization which had appeared in the State Times of Jackson, Mississippi, two months earlier. King had contended that the NAACP was really a tool of especially troublesome northern whites who included a laundry list of what The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 235 conservatives viewed as the usual fifth columns in America during the height of the Cold War—Quakers, Jews, and “disguised” Communists. King argued that the national and race traitors in the NAACP wanted to use rather than to help black people. Most galling, however, was the professor’s charge discounting the influence of most of the NAACP’s members and leadership. He had assumed that the organization’s boldness and persistence had to have come from white radicals outside of the South, but he would be proved wrong as local NAACP branches, attorneys, members, parents, and students faced down shouting mobs and desegregated schools across the nation in the years to come.20 That collective grit and determination would be sorely needed in the most dramatic episodes of the desegregation struggle: the federal intervention in Lit- tle Rock, Arkansas, in the fall of 1957, followed by the Virginia school closures a year later. For its part, The Crisis helped to shape the public perception of the Little Rock crisis, generating wider sympathy for the African American students who simply wanted to attend class without incident. In the November 1957 Crisis, Gloster B. Current, the national director of NAACP branches, gave a “review of events at Little Rock in the showdown between the state and federal government.” To Current, Little Rock followed the disgracefully familiar Milford script, with President Eisenhower eventually forced to trump the pop- ulist hand of Governor Orval Faubus. As in Clinton, the local school board had set out to comply with the Brown decision only to be scared into delay by out- of-state demagogues. This time, though, an in-state demagogue, the governor himself, used legal and extralegal means to stop any and all desegregation. The governor’s resistance only emboldened the harassment and violence, which was widely televised and forced President Eisenhower’s hand in summoning National Guard troops to enforce Brown. Current drew a number of initial lessons for his readers from the Little Rock situation. First, he noted that even the most limited and halfhearted attempts at compliance would be met with vitriolic rhetoric and official overreaction from the segregationist side. Second, he recommended sustained dialogues between officials and their stakeholders about the process and desired effects of desegregation; it was especially necessary to include parents and students in these discussions. Third, churches needed to facilitate those dialogues early in the process “and not just after a crisis.” Accordingly, the NAACP should not be the only progressive pressure group pushing the cultural envelope; grassroots support and not just lip service from moderate and liberal whites would have eased tensions before they got out of hand. Most promising to Current, however, was “that the federal government has taken a firm and positive stand at long last on school integration, and defined in a set of principles what its position will be.” Eisenhower had finally crossed the racial Rubicon, and any armed resistance by southern governors instantly became a futile fantasy.21 236 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn

The editors of The Crisis not only told the largely white story of the constitutional epic in Little Rock but also selectively reprinted sympathetic responses from around the country and across the globe to the courage of the African American students and their parents. In this survey of world opinion, Lon- don’s Daily Mirror contributed its powerful editorial cartoon of a jackbooted white thug lording over a defiant black student of indeterminate gender. This imagery, of course, further framed the semi-martyrdom of the Little Rock Nine with special reference to the ordeal of student Minnijean Brown. The Crisis was not afraid to go into the gory details of the day-to-day harassment that the students faced long after the television cameras and federal troops went elsewhere. This acknowledgment of first-year problems with desegregation in Little Rock, however, only seemed to heighten both the organization’s resolve and its profile in getting its goals accomplished, sentiments reflected clearly in the association’s magazine.22 The Crisis spent far less time on the Virginia school closures in 1958 than it had on Little Rock in 1957, but it still used that backdrop to showcase the irrational and counterproductive tactics of its “bitter-ender” opposition that was “seceding from civilization.” And what a backdrop it was, with scores of schools shut down and thousands of students displaced in Norfolk, Charlottesville, Ar- lington, Warren County, and, in the longest and most bitter dispute, Prince Ed- ward County, where the episode lasted until 1964! The Crisis wanted to show just how inane these draconian moves were, and what better way to do it than to compare the arguments of both sides in their own words? Most revealing was the magazine’s reprinted juxtaposition of Governor J. Lindsay Almond’s last-minute defense of segregation in January 1959 with the script of attorney Oliver W. Hill’s televised rebuttal to that “state of the Commonwealth” address. On the eve of the public schools reopening in Norfolk and elsewhere, Almond tried to play the victim of judicial fiat and raised the all-too-predictable spec- ters of “sadism, sex, immorality, and juvenile pregnancy,” allegedly found in integrated institutions in the District of Columbia, as the inevitable results of race mixing in the schools. This was nothing new, of course. Southern governors of all political stripes in the 1950s blamed black parents and children for having bad morals, and they wanted to insulate what they portrayed as the far more innocent white pupils from this cultural depravity. But reprinting these recycled references for a middle-class black readership proud of its own respectability probably underscored to them the absurdity of Almond’s tired, broad racial brush. Hill, in contrast, firmly connected African Americans to American history and values while refuting the idea that allegedly lower cultural mores would inevitably spring from mixed schools. Alongside Hill’s paean to a common American heritage right out of the then fashionable consensus school of Amer- The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 237 ican history, The Crisis inserted two congratulatory editorial excerpts praising the smoothness and grace by which Norfolk and Arlington seemed to reopen their schools desegregated on February 2, 1959. The editors showcased these excerpts without comment, ironically contributing to the official story of Vir- ginia’s dignified “end” to Massive Resistance. This was politically expedient for the organization in the short term, but it would have unfortunate consequences for civil rights in the Old Dominion in that Massive Resistance there did not curl up and die with grace in 1959. Tuition grants to private segregation acad- emies and state-sponsored harassment of the NAACP would continue there long into the 1960s. Furthermore, the horrors that the African American trans- fer students faced in Little Rock were the same that they would face in Norfolk, but the Norfolk 17 would get very little public and scholarly attention until the twenty-first century.23 While The Crisis gave relatively short shrift to school desegregation in Vir- ginia, in March 1959 the magazine pounced on famed television anchor Chet Huntley of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) when he said that desegregation would proceed more rapidly if the federal courts and the NAACP got out of the way. On the contrary, the editors of The Crisis wrote, the lessons of Milford, Clinton, Little Rock, and Norfolk all suggested that the coordination of federal and NAACP action was essential if local school boards were going to successfully implement desegregation. The magazine reprinted the transcripts of both Huntley’s punditry and Roy Wilkins’s response to show that self- evident truth. Like Oliver Hill, the attorney from Virginia, Wilkins grounded his argument in American history to point out that blacks were largely the victims, not the perpetuators, of racial violence and disorder designed to under- mine the extension of the American dream.24 Using the tropes of conventional patriotism, the NAACP via The Crisis quickly combated both massive and passive resistance. While Massive Resis- tance involved government-sanctioned terrorism and harassment, passive resistance allowed creative legal and political strategies to block the implementation of the Brown decisions. In the late 1950s these two types of resistance complemented each other, but the passive variety seemed even then to be the most sustainable. To the NAACP, two seemingly reasonable weapons of passive resistance—pupil placement laws and tuition assistance to segregated private schools—were much more discouraging than the obvious violence and disorder inherent in the school closures. The organization was right: these obstructionist measures lingered long after most closed schools reopened desegregated. In an October 1959 editorial, The Crisis exposed and condemned the façade of racial neutrality in the wording of the pupil placement legislation. The criteria were so general that school boards disguised inaction with the action of assignment. The situation remained the same as black applicants to 238 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn traditionally white schools were arbitrarily rejected by officials citing pedagogical excuses to maintain the status quo. The Crisis urged mass action to over- whelm these same officials: “if school boards are faced with the processing of hundreds and of thousands of complaints coming from Negro children, they must either assign a growing number of them to nonsegregated schools or be faced with the prospect of having the whole scheme upset by the courts.”25 Despite the NAACP’s remarkable efforts on behalf of school desegregation, a tremendous battle loomed ahead as the 1950s gave way to a new decade of conflict and crisis. Pupil placement laws were gradually struck down in 1960, and that same year sit-ins ushered in the desegregation of most public spaces. But as Michael Klarman has shown in his recent book, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, the sixth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education offered little to be happy about. In 1960, only 98 black students attended desegregated schools in Arkansas, 34 in North Carolina, 169 in Tennessee, and 103 in Virginia. Klar- man noted, “In the five Deep South states, not one of the 1.4 million black school children attended a racially mixed school until the fall of 1960.” The deliberate speed chosen by superintendents and school boards was glacial. While optimistic about eventual victory, The Crisis continued to note these disap- pointing figures. In May 1964, on the tenth anniversary of the Brown decision, the magazine reported that “in the South, only 1.06 per cent of Negro children are attending classes with whites.”26 Some quarters cited the slow pace of school integration as proof that the NAACP, including its lawyers and its magazine, had failed to comprehend the true nature of southern segregation and white supremacy. Indeed, in 1960 many young people fed up with the tortured pace of legal cases and school board meetings took matters into their own hands. They inaugurated a new series of sit-in demonstrations, picketing lines, and boycotts. And soon they formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which pressed for more immediate integration at restaurants, hotels, and other public establish- ments. At the same time, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress of Racial Equality continued their nonviolent protests, engaging in Freedom Rides and direct-action campaigns in Alabama, Georgia, Mis- sissippi, and other states around the nation. Yet it remained largely up to the NAACP and the editors of The Crisis to continue the crusade for school desegregation. Over the next five decades, the organization would persist in its battle for equal educational opportunities. And though it had few friends and many Pyrrhic victories, today The Crisis may certainly say that it was the magazine of the movement that helped to integrate the nation’s schools. The Crisis Responds to School Desegregation 239 ——————————— Notes

1. Two recent works on Brown v. Board of Education and its consequences are: James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Trou- bled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). See also Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008). 2. “Segregation Decision,” The Crisis, June–July 1954, 352–53. 3. Alfred McClung Lee, “Milford, Delaware, Round by Round,” The Crisis, Novem- ber 1954, 521–32, 577. 4. Clarence Mitchell, “Foes of Integration in Baltimore and Washington,” The Cri- sis, November 1954, 533–41, 577. 5. Wagner D. Jackson, “Working with School Boards to Implement Desegrega- tion,” The Crisis, January 1955, 5–9, 59–60. 6. “Englewood School Bias Charges,” The Crisis, December 1954, 608–10; “School Integration,” The Crisis, March 1955, 169. 7. Rachelle Marshall, “Concrete Curtain—the East Palo Alto Story,” The Crisis, No- vember 1957, 543–48. 8. “De Facto Segregation in the Chicago Public Schools,” The Crisis, February 1958, 87–93, 126. 9. “Report on Desegregation,” The Crisis, December 1954, 612–13. 10. “Desegregation Problems,” The Crisis, March 1955, 171–75. 11. Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins, “Interpretation of Supreme Court Deci- sion and the NAACP,” The Crisis, June–July 1955, 329–33. 12. Elizabeth Geyer, “The ‘New’ Ku Klux Klan,” The Crisis, March 1956, 139–48. See also Roy Wilkins, “Desegregation and Racial Tensions,” The Crisis, April 1956, 197–201, 254. The literature on Massive Resistance is fascinating. It includes Robbins L. Gates, The Making of Massive Resistance: Virginia’s Politics of Public School Desegregation, 1954–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964); Numan Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s (Ba- ton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis, eds., The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); Clive Webb, ed., Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2005); George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 13. Bartley, Rise of Massive Resistance, 116. Brent J. Aucoin, “The Southern Manifes- to and Southern Opposition to Desegregation,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 55, no. 2 (1996): 173–93. Tony Badger, “The Southern Manifesto: White Southerners and Civil Rights, 1956,” European Contributions to American Studies 15 (1988): 77–99. 14. “How Congress Voted on Major Legislation: House of Representatives: 84th Congress,” The Crisis, October 1956, 477–88. 240 Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn

15. “Looking and Listening,” The Crisis, February 1957, 89. 16. Roy Williams quoted in “Along the NAACP Battlefront,” The Crisis, December 1957, 627. See also Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker, 2001) and George Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anti- communism, and Massive Resistance, 1945–1965 (Gainesville: University Press of Flor- ida, 2004). 17. Martin D. Jenkins, “Are Negroes Educable?” The Crisis, November 1956, 535– 37; “Negro-White Differences in Intelligence Test Scores,” The Crisis, November 1956, 539–41. 18. “Forthrightness Wins,” The Crisis, January 1957, 34–35. 19. “Virginia Attacks NAACP,” The Crisis, March 1957, 162–63. 20. “The Witling of Alcorn,” The Crisis, May 1957, 290–91. 21. Gloster B. Current, “Crisis in Little Rock,” The Crisis, November 1957, 525–35, 580. 22. “Press Praises Courage of Negro Pupils,” The Crisis, November 1957, 536–39; “Looking and Listening,” The Crisis, November 1957, 554–58; “Looking and Listening,” The Crisis, December 1957, 618–19; “The Ordeal of Minnie Jean Brown,” The Crisis, March 1958, 162–63; Clarence A. Laws, “Nine Courageous Students,” The Crisis, May 1958, 267–72, 318. 23. “Virginia Gov. Defends Segregation,” The Crisis, March 1959, 134, 188–90; “NAACP Attorney Offers a Rebuttal,” The Crisis, March 1959, 135, 183–88. 24. Roy Wilkins, “NAACP Secretary Answers Chet Huntley,” The Crisis, March 1959, 147–53, 163. 25. “Pupil Placement Laws,” The Crisis, November, 1959, 554–55. 26. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, 349. “Highlights in School Desegrega- tion, 1936–1963,” The Crisis, May 1964, 289. Epilogue

Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

While the story of The Crisis presented in Protest and Propaganda revolves very much around the pioneering efforts and bold vision of its founder and first editor, the magazine’s history is not solely that of W. E. B. Du Bois. Since Du Bois, the magazine has seen over a dozen editors who, superbly cognizant of the magazine’s history and its cultural legacy, very much made The Crisis a magazine that encompassed the varied moments that constituted the twentieth century. At present, the same goes for The Crisis in the twenty-first century.1 Outside of Du Bois’s firm editorial control, which ended in 1934, what was The Crisis? What did its literary and artistic activism look like through the eyes of other editors and contributors? How did the magazine represent the wide range of black opinion throughout the twentieth century’s catalyst moments? How did The Crisis compete with black periodicals and magazines that developed during the twentieth century, such as Jet, Ebony, and Black World, or the radical midcentury journals such as Freedomways? To what extent does today’s Crisis reflect the complex challenges and unique opportunities of the global and digital age? To answer these questions, this Epilogue picks up where the volume’s chapters end. It presents a brief overview in order to chronicle the magazine’s change over time while pointing the way to future scholarship on The Crisis. Since the Epilogue covers modern times, it is useful at this juncture to comment on modern scholarship about The Crisis. Since its inception The Crisis has been recognized—although not always utilized by scholars—as a leading purveyor of African American life, culture, letters, and history. It was not until Du Bois’s latter years, which coincided with growing scholarly interest in black history, that academics, including Du Bois himself, began to critically assess the magazine and Du Bois’s role with it. For example, one of Du Bois’s earliest biographers, Elliott Rudwick, published two articles in the late 1950s on his role as editor. In the posthumously published An ABC of Color, Du Bois included a large number of Crisis essays. In 1969 Arno Press published bound volumes of The Crisis, making the NAACP’s magazine more widely available. Then in

241 242 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere the early 1970s two scholars anthologized Du Bois’s Crisis writings. Crisis editor Henry Lee Moon edited a collection of early Crisis editorials, and literary scholar Daniel Walden edited another offering of Crisis writings. Perhaps owing to other assessments of Du Bois’s life published in the 1970s—namely Shir- ley Graham Du Bois’s memoir and pictorial biography of Du Bois along with Herbert Aptheker’s edited volumes of Du Bois’s published writings—a significant number of graduate students during the last 40 years have written theses and dissertations on The Crisis, most of which have focused on Du Bois’s association with the magazine. To date, scholarly reflection on The Crisis analyzes its political, literary, and artistic contributions to American history, including the magazine’s representation of gender and art along with its presentation of black striving and achievement. While scholars have given steady and sustained attention to The Crisis, its rich archival presence continues to yield new and fresh insights into American history and culture.2

1960s

The 1960s was one of the most turbulent decades for the black community, and in turn, The Crisis reflected these difficult but hopeful times. The magazine referred regularly to the most important event for black Americans of the 1950s, the Brown v. Board decision, which ended the “separate but equal” doctrine dating back to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), while it covered two of the decade’s legislative events more than any other news item: the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which became law on July 2, 1964, and the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which became law with Lyndon Baines Johnson’s signature on August 6, 1965. The pages of The Crisis were hopeful, recounting important events from Washington, DC, to the West Coast. Deborah Zobel offered a review of the March on Washington: “the ultimate triumph of the fight for freedom seems as inevitable as was the March itself . . . To homes all over the country, the marchers returned with renewed enthusiasm, pledged to greater efforts; and the spirit of their March will sustain them in Alaska and in Alabama, in Mas- sachusetts and even in Mississippi. Someday, hopefully, that spirit will shine within us all.”3 The policy of The Crisis remained consistent when it came to peaceful protest: violence was never seen as the answer to positive change. An editorial after the Los Angeles Watts riots asked readers the cost and toll on the black community as there was concern that “Serious damage to the Negro image” had taken place.4 The editorial offered the following advice: “What is now needed is to establish for this disinherited black folk a real stake in their community and in their government . . . they have a contribution to make and Epilogue 243 that their contribution will be recognized and properly rewarded; that they are somebody and important to the welfare of the country and not outcasts on the fringes of American society. How to do this is the great problem.”5 Every issue of The Crisis, starting with Du Bois, strongly stressed education, and the magazine continued with an annual “Education Number,” a tradition of its founder and editor. An advertisement appeared in The Crisis regularly, reminding readers that children suffered when they were segregated and iso- lated. The ad showed a young black child alone on a playground full of white children. “This lonesome lad looks around his Louisiana schoolyard and tastes his first cup of integration . . . let’s back this lonesome lad today!”6 The Cri- sis emphasized creating a community of support in a variety of important areas. Likewise, each issue of the 1960s continued discussions of desegregating schools, the perils of newly desegregated communities, the need for fair employment, the successes of NAACP branches around the country, and the importance of youth work. The magazine covered efforts by black workers to desegregate the workforce, including a protest carried out at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, Ohio. The 1960s Crisis continued to refer to efforts of desegregation as many sought to bring to fruition the reality of Brown v. Board. The May 1964 issue included a report, “Ten Years after Brown vs. Topeka,” noting that less than 10 percent of schoolchildren in the seventeen southern and border states were attending classes with white children. “This is desegregation at the snail’s pace of less than one per cent a year. And most of these gains have been made in the Border States and in Washington D.C. In the Deep South, the pace has been even slower and consists primarily of the barest of tokenism. In Mississippi, no public school below the university level has been desegregated.”7 The Crisis covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy, remarking that it was Kennedy who hoped to pass a Civil Rights Act into law, which was ultimately carried out by Lyndon Johnson. There was strong support for Johnson on the pages of The Crisis. The magazine covered in great detail the death of Medgar Evers on June 22, 1963, and the first anniversary of his death declared that the work of Evers could not be crushed. “Out of gratitude for the supreme sacrifice which their selfless leader had made for them, Negro Mississippians regrouped their civil rights forces and laid siege on the citadels of segregation and discrimination. Aided by their white allies, Negro Mississippians displayed their new determined spirit by intensifying their efforts in voter registration drives and selective-buying campaigns. They increased their protest marches against biased lunch counters; in the churches; in the use of public facilities such as transportation . . . ”8 The editor declared the death of Medgar Evers one year earlier as the final straw. “All over the state, black men and black women, black boys and black girls, are saying in one determined voice: “WHATEVER 244 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM, WE WILL PAY IT!”9 The Crisis both in this issue and in this decade strongly encouraged involvement in voter registration. Throughout the sixties, Mississippi received more coverage for discrimination and atrocities committed against blacks than any other state in America. Every month the magazine recounted discrimination in housing, the workplace, schools, limits on voting rights, and racial terrorism. When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, it received careful and thorough coverage on the pages of The Crisis; so too when Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was extended for five years in 1970 and another seven years in 1975. Just as children were always included in The Crisis during the Du Bois years, the accomplishments and suffering of children continued to be an integral part of the journal. Photographs of starving children in Mississippi reminded the readers that poverty was still one of the greatest struggles facing blacks in America. The Crisis continued its support for Lyndon Johnson and offered a careful comparison of the candidates in the October 1964 issue, reminding readers that Senator Goldwater claimed that there was no way to enforce civil rights. The magazine compared candidates on issues and urged readers to vote: “Failure to vote equals Criminal Neglect: You Must Vote!!”10 The same issue noted the deaths of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy almost a year before. The Crisis formed a special committee to cover concerns of violence and injustice to Mis- sissippi, and the report appeared in the November 1964 issue. “The consensus of local citizens was that federal intervention was essential. Negroes in Jackson were to be accorded physical security, freedom from intimidation and the opportunity to exercise their federal constitutional rights freely.”11 While The Crisis documented atrocities against Africans and highlighted their advances as decolonization commenced, overall during this decade the amount of international coverage paled in comparison to the global perspective Du Bois adopted as editor. Instead, the focus was on the home front. The year 1965 kicked off with an Anti-Poverty Crusade led by NAACP treasurer Alfred Baker Lewis and demands for better education and jobs. The journal energetically informed readers that a New York City company rejected a bid to build a plant in Mississippi due to the “treatment of Negro American citizens” in that state.12 The journal demanded equal treatment for delegates at the national political conventions, and noted that Mississippi and Alabama did not support such equal treatment. The journal also included information on black voting patterns. April 1965 brought coverage of the assassination of Malcolm X, calling his death two months earlier the end of a confused, embittered intellect. Readers were reminded in an editorial that the death of Malcolm X was “. . . a shocking and ghastly demonstration of the futility of violence as a means of settling differences.”13 Failing to appreciate the shifting contours of Malcolm X’s outlook by the end of his life, Editor Henry Lee Moon noted that his bit- Epilogue 245 ter racialized thinking never represented more than “a small minority” of black Americans, and that the leader was “divorced from the mainstream of Negro American thought.”14 Moon also condemned the violence in the Selma march, including the “Gestapo like brutality of Alabama state troopers.”15 Throughout the sixties, The Crisis continued to counsel on job attainment and how to file a job complaint, and to report on discrimination against black workers in the North and South alike. Discrimination and segregation in housing received top priority in the journal, as did advice to the Negro consumer, who often had to pay higher prices for substandard products, especially in urban communities. Crisis editorials warned readers that ghetto merchants charged a “Negro tax” to black consumers.16 The magazine also reported on police brutality since it remained a constant problem, and not just in the South. When New York mayor John Lindsay proposed a Civilian Police Complaint Review Board, The Crisis reported that he faced widespread opposition from whites in New York City. Violence against the black community was a headliner again in February 1966 with the death in Mississippi of Vernon Dahmer, a former NAACP branch president from Hattiesburg whose home was firebombed in the middle of the night. Dahmer had worked in voter registration and addressed the poll tax in Mississippi. The Crisis reported that no arrests had been made in his murder. “The battle is yet to be won, but Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer can rest in peace. Their fellow Freedom Fighters are not letting them down.”17 The freedom fight would rage on in Mississippi, as well as in Alabama and other states, for years to come. The second half of the decade included a renewed commitment on the pages of The Crisis to end poverty and unemployment and to provide fair housing. Passage of the Civil Rights Act did not cure the problems faced by black Ameri- cans; The Crisis reminded its readers of this fact. President Johnson’s own assessment of the challenges blacks faced to find adequate housing reminded readers of this issue: “Crowded miles of inadequate dwellings—poorly maintained and frequently overpriced is the lot of most Negro Americans in many of our cities. Their avenue of escape to a more attractive neighborhood is often closed because of their color. . . . where housing is poor, schools are generally poor . . . unemployment is widespread, family life is threatened . . . these are the links in the chain of racial discrimination.”18 The Crisis continued to advocate integration, not separation, and called black “neo-segregationists” a group of “misguided black advocates of apartheid.”19 The magazine continued to reject black separatism. An editorial in the June/July 1968 issue by Henry Lee Moon warned that the “strident voices of the minority black separatists have misrepresented the black community.”20 The murders of Medgar Evers earlier in the decade and of Martin Luther King received attention, as did the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Moon noted that the 246 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere leaders knew the peril of standing for equality and social justice for all Ameri- cans. In this regard, there were few victories to report when it came to racial terrorism in the South. But one such victory was the conviction of seven of eighteen white men tried in the lynching deaths of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The racial terrorism of Mississippi remained on the forefront of The Crisis, and the magazine covered poverty that some Mississippians faced. With the Fair Housing Act of 1968, there were hopes that all blacks would have a better chance at achieving the American dream of homeownership, including Missis- sippians. The turbulent 1960s closed on the pages of The Crisis with a reminder that violence was never the weapon of success for change. Contributing writer Jo- sephine Schuyler reminded black families that black children were performing lower on IQ tests, and although there was no reliable study as to why, diet and healthy eating were essential. Ahead of her time, she had written in The Crisis in 1942 on the problems of a poor diet in the black community. “Of all Ameri- cans, Negroes most need to know about food. They have the worst health, the highest death rates and the worst eating habits in the country.”21

1970s

The 1970s brought a change of style to The Crisis, with a larger, full-color magazine and an expansive roster of advertisers. The magazine covered campus violence across the nation in attacks on black students at Orangeburg, South Carolina, Jackson State College in Mississippi, and against white students at Kent State in Ohio. The journal continued to report violence by police and the National Guard. Just as in the 1960s, there was almost no mention of the Viet- nam War; the magazine kept a keen focus on domestic affairs. The Crisis continued to document the War on Poverty with graphic photographs of hungry black Americans, most notably in the Mississippi Delta—and encouraged donations to fight hunger. The magazine found that urban crime was particularly troubling and noted the crimes committed against poor black men and young black women (in the form of sexual assault). The journal called this the “bitter fruit of generations of deprivation, repression and racism.”22 November 1970 was a special issue devoted to the sixtieth anniversary of the journal, with pages of congratulatory letters from prominent supporters at home and around the world. Henry Lee Moon offered an essay on the history of the magazine, and the issue reprinted a quote by Du Bois, first published in 1915 and still relevant to modern readers: “For the accomplishment of all these ends we must organize. Organization among us already has gone far but it Epilogue 247 must go further and higher. Organization is sacrifice. It is sacrifice of opinions, of time, of work and of money, but it is, after all, the cheapest way of buying the most priceless gifts–freedom and efficiency.”23 The 1970s brought black feminism to the forefront. An essay by N. M. Guli recounted a story of a college graduate who had been offered a scholarship to attend graduate school, a school better than her boyfriend was attending. When she asked her male professor what she should do, if she should take the best scholarship to graduate school or go to a lesser school with her man, the professor told her not to surpass her man. He scolded that black men had struggled for years: “If you go beyond your man in education, you will strike another blow to his manhood.”24 Guli went on to observe, “it’s almost as if the black liberation movement was not meant to liberate black women . . . it is time for them to go home and bake cookies.” Guli questioned gender bias in the black liberation movement. Was it time for black women to go home and bake cookies? The author noted that both black men and women had been denied a good education, and that when given such a chance to attend a top graduate program, “It is outrageous for anyone to assert she must throw it away.”25 The magazine continued to advocate nonviolence in the 1970s and cau- tioned against extremist symbols, including the Black Liberation flag. It published story where a New Jersey public school system said it was acceptable to fly the Black Liberation flag in schools when some parents challenged the flag’s presence. The Crisis warned that although the flag was not like a Nazi flag or the Confederate flag, most blacks did not have such a flag and did not cherish it. The journal opined that it would be better for the New Jersey town governors to ban the flag, rather than to bring about further divisiveness. The year 1972 brought the reelection of Richard Nixon, which further im- periled black advancement. Black voters had supported McGovern, and the power of the black vote was growing. Just as in the Du Bois years, The Crisis delved into the right of parents to decide when to have children and how many, parenthood by choice, not chance. The magazine addressed Affirmative Action, including cases involving white students who claimed they were denied admis- sion into programs because of Affirmative Action. The Crisis continued to address problems in desegregation across the nation, including in Detroit and Boston. The magazine noted that thousands of whites in Boston would rather drop out of school than go to school with blacks.

1980s

Like in the 1970s, The Crisis of the 1980s continued to discuss economic issues, jobs, voter registration and voter education, and education of blacks 248 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere from elementary school through the college years. The Crisis noted an increase in subscriptions in 1983, topping 300,000 subscribers. The journal repeatedly covered the “devastating anti–Civil Rights reactions of the Reagan Adminis- tration,” which became “a fact of life.”26 It noted the Reagan administration’s devastating effect on the progress made in the preceding decades, observing, “the Reagan Administration and many politicians are trying to denigrate and eliminate Affirmative Action.”27 The Crisis essayed the Reagan years with dis- may. The journal noted little support for economic programs that would help black Americans and pointed out that the economic standing of the black community took a hit under Reagan, including increased hardships for the elderly, handicapped, and poor. The war on racial segregation and discrimination had not yet been won, and The Crisis urged voter education and voter registration to counteract discrimination. The magazine celebrated the registration of over 750,000 new voters in 1983.28 While the magazine routinely reported on the news of the now, it also occasionally made space for commemorating its history and place in American culture. A golden bust of Du Bois graced the cover in recognition of the seventieth anniversary of The Crisis in November 1980, and reprints of leading editorials over the magazine’s seven-decade history tracked the evolution of opinion on its pages. Articles also placed The Crisis in relation to civil rights and the politics of modern liberalism. Hazel James’s poetic tribute creatively captured the magazine’s impact. James recounted The Crisis’s early years:

When red-hot flames of Hell blazed high Belching vengeance against the sky; . . . You came! Born of souls, Undaunted souls Who braved the thread of certain death Who fought the flames with their last breath To give you birth.

James continued by chronicling the magazine’s maturation coupled with her hopes for future generations of readers who would encounter The Crisis. James pleaded:

Ring on, O Voice, ’til all men hear And heed your message, loud and clear; ’Til the final bastion of hatred falls And Justice reigns for one and all. Epilogue 249

’Till black And white Walk hand in hand In peace and love across this land. Although you’ve reached your 70th span Your impact on this Freedom land Has just begun! DuBois, Villard, Storey, all Expect to hear your clarion call Go on, And on Through Eternity! Offspring of monarchs, Son of Kings Proclaim Justice; Let Freedom ring!29

The second commemorative issue in 1980 of The Crisis’s seventy years featured a collage of the magazine’s editors through 1980: W. E. B. Du Bois (1910– 1934), Roy Wilkins (1934–1949), James W. Ivy (1949–1966), Henry Lee Moon (1967–1974), and Warren Marr (whose tenure would end in 1981). The issue also included a brief history of The Crisis’s editors along with reports about African American life related to issues such as justice, education, health care, economics, women, and culture. Of The Crisis’s continued relevance in 1980, publisher Benjamin Hooks wrote that the magazine’s historic commitment to offer “a candid and accurate record of the black struggle for equal treatment and opportunity” would continue with reporting reflective of “reasoned analysis, clear thinking and unbridled dialogue on the current modes of racism and discrimination.”30 The late 1980s included new monthly columns featuring the visual arts, film, computer, dance, and music. A continued focus on economics and the importance of the black family, and a careful observance of the Supreme Court decisions relating to black Americans, remained in Crisis through the decade.

1990s

While the decade following the end of the Cold War dawned as a time of new beginnings, The Crisis continued to call the United States to live up to its democratic creed by carefully documenting an upsurge of pernicious and often subtle attempts to perpetuate inequality through areas such as jobs and education, while the era of globalization in the 1990s saw the magazine maintain a watchful eye on world affairs related particularly to people of African descent. 250 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

As class issues further divided black Americans, health care occupied important space in The Crisis during the 1990s. Writers addressed issues such as substance abuse, depression, and cancer.31 The magazine also covered the growing presence of black politicians serving in local and city governments, charting historic gains pertaining to public service. At the same time, The Crisis reported that urban areas grappled with the racialized intentions and outcomes of the War on Drugs while the prosperity of the predominantly white suburbs soared. Such irony was not lost on Crisis writers and readers. But The Crisis also reported that the NAACP board opposed Clarence Thomas’s 1991 nomination as Supreme Court justice. This same decade found The Crisis reporting on black religion, theatre, music, and fine arts with increasing frequency. Crisis covers occasionally presented original color artwork to visually connect to an issue’s main themes, but by and large color photographs—gripping visuals of urban areas, black celebrities, and professionals—greeted readers as they encountered each new issue. Cor- porate sponsors such as Coors and Du Pont used ad space to depict scenes of African American life. Outside of coverage about Rodney King’s beating, The Crisis also published numerous stories on African Americans in law enforcement. Foreign affairs eventually found its way into The Crisis again with more regularity, particularly regarding issues related to apartheid and its legacy in South Africa. In January 1991, for example, black studies scholar Charles Hen- ry compared the legacies of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela as they combated the color line that belted the world, while the April/May 1998 issue of The Crisis profiled United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. In July 1998, David Du Bois—W. E. B. Du Bois’s stepson—reflected on his stepfather’s commitment to justice across the globe. “Du Bois early understood the global dimensions of the struggle for democracy in America, the struggle against white superiority,” David Du Bois observed. “This was his genius and his threat to the enemies of democracy worldwide.32 To meet, assess, and plan for rapid changes in the journalism of the global age, essays by Herb Boyd, David Hatchett, and D. Pepper Johnson in the March 1991 issue of The Crisis took stock of the black press in general, and of the magazine’s own future in particular. Owing to these shifts, along with the increasing importance of identity and branding—not to mention cycling through six different editors in the 1990s—The Crisis began to bill itself as “The Most Progressive Voice of Black America,” while by the end of the decade The New Crisis (the magazine’s title from 1997 to 2003) with the hope to show an ever- changing, modern twenty-first-century journal, presented itself as a “Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas.” The final issue of the 1990s ironically harkened back to The Crisis of Du Bois’s years. It featured religious artwork on the cover by Allan Rohan Crite, Epilogue 251 a black artist whose heyday was during the 1930s and 1940s.33 “The Art of the Living God” was printed at the bottom of a painting that depicted Jesus, Jo- seph, and Mary as black. The final issue not only addressed the role of Christian churches in the Civil Rights movement but also gave considerable attention to religions of the world. Perhaps most interesting was a section of Du Bois’s previously published Crisis essays on religion titled “The Words and Wisdom of W. E. B. Du Bois.”34

2000s

Similar to the decision of NAACP board members in 2008 to elect the association’s youngest president and CEO, Benjamin Todd Jealous (b. 1973)—who served through 2013—during the first decade of the twenty-first century The Crisis continued to evolve with the times by addressing topics like immigra- tion, gender inequities, global terrorism, and the rank, racialized dimensions of the justice system and prison-industrial complex.35 In late 2001, for example, The Crisis pondered the complicated reality of black patriotism at times of national and global crisis in a country that often pledged to fight for freedom abroad while denying full freedom at home.36 The March/April 2004, March/ April 2007, and Spring 2009 issues of The Crisis tackled issues related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including health care for veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder, policy regarding military women in war zones, and veteran benefits and employment. For the magazine’s ninetieth anniversary in 2000, Crisis editor Ida Lewis included a substantial record of previously published and historic pieces such as Walter White’s 1918 report on lynching with its vivid photos of lynch victims along with a number of superb profiles of figures such as Jessie Fauset and W. E. B. Du Bois. Reprints of political cartoons from The Crisis’s early decades captured the striking visuals instrumental in communicating the messages of racial and economic equality. Congratulatory letters from President Bill Clin- ton and New York governor George Pataki added considerable currency to the magazine’s contemporary meaning. Jonathan Rosenberg’s article on the international dimensions of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crisis articles and essays befit a commemorative issue at the dawn of a new century. Just as The Crisis sought to assault the color line at the beginning of the twentieth century, Rosenberg reminded readers that “generation[s] of devoted Crisis subscribers would come to recognize that Du Bois viewed the crusade for racial justice in America to be one with the global struggle against imperial and racial oppression.”37 And while The Crisis recognized its own centennial as well as that of the NAACP during 2009 and 2010, the magazine also commemorated the lives of Mal- 252 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere colm X (January/February 2001), Langston Hughes (January/February 2002), Arna Bontemps (September/October 2002), Zora Neale Hurston (January/ February 2003), W. E. B. Du Bois and the centennial of The Souls of Black Folk (March/April 2003), Rosa Parks (November/December 2005), and Coretta Scott King (March/April 2006). Perhaps more than in any other decade to date, the magazine printed numerous stories and profiles of black CEOs, black politicians, African American athletes, and the historic elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. If the history of The Crisis is any indication of its future, then it will continue to play a decisive role in its second century, both in the United States and across the globe. For over a century the magazine has emphatically asserted the inherent dignity of persons of African descent. The journal has unfailingly critiqued white supremacy and a color line that continues to perplex and divide the world. And The Crisis’s solution-based reporting, pioneered through the efforts of its founder (and editors since), has not only made history but also set standards by which journalism is still measured. While many drastic social, political, and cultural changes have occurred since W. E. B. Du Bois began his work at the NAACP—many of them the result of his persistent efforts—the injustice that continues to plague humanity means that the world still needs The Crisis’s long tradition of protest and propaganda.38

——————————— Notes

1. Following Du Bois, Crisis editors included Roy Wilkins (1934–1949), James W. Ivy (1949–1966), Henry Lee Moon (1967–1974), Warren Marr (1975–1981), Ches- ter Higgins (1981–1983), Maybell Ward (1984–1985), Fred Beauford (1985–1992), Garland Thompson (1992–1994), Denise Crittendon (1994–1995), Gentry Trotter (1995–1996), Paul Ruffins (1997–1998), Ida E. Lewis (1998–2000), Victoria Valen- tine (2001–2007), and Jabari Assim (2007–present). For a history of Crisis editors see Benjamin L. Hooks, “The Crisis: A Record of Our Seventy Years of Struggle for Racial Equality,” The Crisis, December 1980, 461–62; Zina Rodriguez, “Shaping The Crisis: 90 Years of Editorial Excellence,” The Crisis, July/August 2000, 72–74; NAACP: Celebrat- ing 100 Years in Pictures, Appendix B; and The Crisis Timeline available at http://www. thecrisismagazine.com/timeline.html. 2. For early analysis of The Crisis see Elliott M. Rudwick, “Du Bois in the Role of Crisis Editor,” Journal of Negro History 43, no. 3 (July 1958): 214–40; Rudwick, “Du Bois’s Last Year as Crisis Editor,” Journal of Negro Education 27, no. 4 (Autumn 1958): 526–33; and the selections in W. E. B. Du Bois, An ABC of Color (New York: Interna- tional Publishers, 1968). Anthologies published in the 1970s include W. E. B. Du Bois, The Emerging Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois: Essays and Editorials from The Crisis, ed. Henry Lee Moon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) and W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. B. Epilogue 253

Du Bois: The Crisis Writings, ed. Daniel Walden (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1972). Along with Amy Helene Kirschke’s Art in Crisis, additional contemporary published analysis of The Crisis includes Megan E. Williams, “The Crisis Cover Girl: Lena Horne, the NAACP, and Representations of African American Femininity, 1941–1945,” American Periodicals 16, no. 2 (2006): 200–218, reprinted in this volume, along with Abby Arthur Johnson and Ronald Maberry Johnson, Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Poli- tics of African-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century, with a new Introduction (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 31–48. As for theses and dissertations on The Crisis and its history, see Constance Margaret Cole, “Changing Self- Images of the Negro: A Cover Analysis of ‘The Crisis’ (NAACP), 1910–1968” (master’s thesis, American University, 1969); Murray Dennis Arndt, “The Crisis Years of W. E. B. Du Bois, 1910–1934” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1970); Helen Sanford Davis Lind- say, “W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis: Criticism and Commentary on the Condition of The Negro in the United States, 1910–1920” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1973); Marvin Gordon Kimbrough, “W. E. B. Du Bois as Editor of The Crisis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1974); Roseann Pope Bell, “The Crisis and Opportunity Magazines: Reflections of a Black Culture, 1920–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1974); Vin- cent R. Butler, “A Content Analysis of The Crisis Magazine” (master’s thesis, North- ern Illinois University, 1983); Brian A. Weiss, “Master Propagandist: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Crisis Years, 1910–1934” (master’s thesis, Wright State University, 2001); Susan Bragg, “Marketing the ‘Modern’ Negro: Race, Gender, and the Culture of Activism in the NAACP, 1909–1941” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2007), chap. 5; An- thony Todd Carlisle, “The Black Press and the Shaping of Protest in African American Literature, 1840–1935” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2009), chap. 4; Evan P. Barton, “The Messenger and The Crisis during World War I and The Red Scare, 1917–21” (master’s thesis, Ohio University, 2011). Scholarship related to The Brownies’ Book is also relevant; see Lenetta Raysha Lee, “Whose Images: An Africological Study of The Brownies’ Book Series” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 2000); The Best of The Brownies’ Book, ed. Dianne Johnson-Feelings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from The Brownies’ Book, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1980); and Christina Schäffer, The Brownies’ Book: In- spiring Racial Pride in African American Children (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012). 3. Deborah Zobel, “March on Washington,” The Crisis, January 1964, 11. 4. The Crisis, February 1964, 413. 5. Ibid., 415. 6. The Crisis, March 1964, 163. 7. The Crisis, May 1964, 311–12. 8. The Crisis, June/July 1964, 371. 9. Ibid., 374. 10. The Crisis, October 1964, 553. 11. The Crisis, November 1964, 573. 12. The Crisis, April 1965, 253. 13. Henry Lee Moon, The Crisis, April 1965, 227. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 247. 254 Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

16. The Crisis, March 1966, 157. 17. The Crisis, February 1966, 125. 18. Speech given to Congress by President Lyndon B. Johnson (January 26, 1966). Reprinted in The Crisis, October 1966, 422. 19. The Crisis, November 1967, 439. 20. Henry Lee Moon, The Crisis, June/July 1968, 186. 21. Josephine Schuyler, The Crisis, December 1942. Reprinted in The Crisis, May 1969, 210. 22. The Crisis, June/July 1970, 217. 23. W.E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, April 1915. Reprinted in The Crisis, November 1970, 338. 24. N. M. Guli, The Crisis, April/May 1971, 83. 25. Ibid. 26. The Crisis, January 1984, 44. 27. Ibid., 50. 28. Ibid., 24. 29. Hazel James, “A Tribute to The Crisis,” The Crisis, November 1980, 410. 30. Hooks, “The Crisis: A Record of Our Seventy Years of Struggle for Racial Equality.” 31. Trawick J. Lindsey, “Materialistic Depression and Our Black Youth: An Indict- ment of Mental Health,” The Crisis, February 1990, 42–44. 32. On the rise of black politicians and public servants, see the March 1990, May 1990, and November 1990 issues, for instance, and for African Americans and law enforcement see the August/September 1991 issue (the NAACP statement opposing Clarence Thomas in this issue) and December 1991 issue in particular. On King and Mandela, see Charles P. Henry, “King, Mandela and Moral Commitment,” The Crisis, January 1991, 12–14. See also David G. Du Bois, “Is the Color Line Going Global?” The Crisis, July 1998, 18. 33. Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007) was active until his death. He was known for his depictions of African American life and religious imagery. 34. “The Words and Wisdom of W. E. B. Du Bois,” The Crisis, November/December 1999, 25. 35. Krissah Thompson, “Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, to Leave the Orga- nization in January,” Washington Post (September 8, 2013); Jelani Cobb, “Ben Jealous and the Search for the Modern N.A.A.C.P.,” New Yorker (September 11, 2013); “Ben Jealous on Why He Is Leaving the NAACP, Future Plans,” Democracy Now (September 20, 2013). 36. In the November/December 2001 issue of The Crisis, see in particular the editorial statement “September 11 and Beyond” signed by Julian Bond, Kweisi Mfume, and Roger Wilkins (p. 3) and Marcia Davis’s poignant “Made in the U.S.A.: Black Patrio- tism Has Always Been a Matter of Balancing the Perils of Racism and the Promise of America” (pp. 28–34). 37. Jonathan Rosenberg, “The Global Editor: Du Bois and The Crisis,” The Crisis, July/August 2000, 17–18. 38. At present numerous back issues of The Crisis are available through Google Books. Also see numerous cover images of The Crisis in NAACP: Celebrating 100 Years in Pictures (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2009). Notes on the Contributors

Shawn Leigh Alexander is an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and the director of the Langston Hughes Center at the Uni- versity of Kansas. His area of research concentration is African American social and intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the author of An Army of Lions: The Struggle for Civil Rights before the NAACP (Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) as well as the editor of T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880–1928 (University Press of Florida, 2008) and a reprint of William Sinclair’s classic 1905 study, The After- math of Slavery: A Study of the Condition and Environment of the American Negro (University of South Carolina Press, 2012). Currently, he is completing a study of the violence of the Reconstruction period entitled, Reconstruction, Violence, and the Ku Klux Klan Hearings (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press) and W. E. B. Du Bois: An American Intellectual and Activist, for the Roman and Littlefield Library of Afri- can American Biography series.

Edward J. Blum is associate professor of history at San Diego State Universi- ty. A scholar of race and religion in the United States, his books include Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, and, most recently co-authored with Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America.

Charles H. Ford is a Professor of History at Norfolk State University (NSU), a medium-sized historically African American institution with Baptist roots. Ford also serves as the Director of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) at NSU and as Chair of its History Department. In this century, he has pursued and published—along with his colleagues, Cassandra Newby-Alexander of NSU and Jeffrey Littlejohn, once of NSU and now at Sam Houston State Uni- versity in Huntsville, Texas—a number of projects explicitly dealing with the desegregation of public schools in Norfolk, Virginia. Most significantly, Ford and Littlejohn’s Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk’s

255 256 Contributors

Public Schools has just been published by the University of Virginia Press. Giv- en his multiple roles as scholar, teacher, and administrator, Ford is keenly interested in making the discipline much more engaging and accessible to its stakeholders. By way of contributing to this volume, he hopes to achieve that important goal.

Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History & African-American Studies at the University of Houston, has published over thirty books, including Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (NYU Press, 2001).

Amy Helene Kirschke is a Professor of Art History and History at the Uni- versity of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the author of Art in Crisis: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory (Indiana, 2007), which was awarded the SECAC Book Prize for Excellence in Research and Writing, Aaron Douglas: Art, Race and the Harlem Renaissance (Mississip- pi, 1995) and is editor of the forthcoming volume Common Hope, Common Sorrow: Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance (Mississippi, 2014). Kirschke contributed essays to Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist (Yale, 2008) and Romare Bearden, American Modernist (National Gallery of Art, 2011). She is currently writing a book on the political cartoons of Romare Bearden, and researching South African contemporary political art.

Jeffrey L. Littlejohn is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the History Department at Sam Houston State University in Hunts- ville, Texas. His areas of research include civil liberties and civil rights. He is co-author with Charles H. Ford of Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegre- gation in Norfolk’s Public Schools (University of Virginia Press, 2012). Littlejohn has also written on the student movement and sit-in demonstrations in Tide- water, Virginia. He and Ford are currently writing a book on attorneys Joseph Jordan Jr., Edward Dawley Jr., and Len Holt Jr.

Barbara McCaskill is Associate Professor of English and Co-Director of the Civil Rights Digital Library at the University of Georgia. In 2012 she served as Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Society and Culture at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has co-edited two scholarly books: Post- Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877–1919 (New York University Press, 2006) and Multicultural Literature and Literacies: Making Space for Difference (SUNY Press, 1993). She has edited Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, the memoir of the abolitionist couple William and Ellen Craft (University of Georgia Press, 1999), and her study A Thousand Miles for Freedom: William and Ellen Craft in Transatlantic Literature and Culture is under contract with University of Georgia Press. Contributors 257

Garth E. Pauley is Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His publications about the struggle for racial justice in the United States include The Modern Presidency and Civil Rights and LBJ’s American Promise, both published by Texas A & M University Press.

Phillip Luke Sinitiere is Professor of History at the College of Biblical Studies, a multiethnic school located in Houston’s Mahatma Gandhi District. In conjunction with the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learn- ing at Rice University, in 2013 Sinitiere is Scholar in Residence at the African American Library at the Gregory School in Freedman’s Town, part of Hous- ton’s Fourth Ward. A scholar specializing in American religious history and African American studies, he is co-author of Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Inno- vators and the Spiritual Marketplace (NYU Press, 2009). He also co-edited and contributed to Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith (Oxford University Press, 2013). He is completing a book titled Salva- tion with a Smile: Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church and American Evangelicalism (NYU Press, 2014).

Katharine Capshaw Smith is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches children’s literature and Afri- can American literature. Her monograph, Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, won the 2006 Children’s Literature Association Award for Best Scholarly Book. Editor of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Smith is completing a project on children’s photo texts on civil rights.

Megan E. Williams is a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she teaches courses that explore the intersections of ethnicity, race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and ability in classical Hollywood films, World War II home-front culture, jazz contexts, and the many adaptations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her scholarship has appeared in American Periodicals, American Studies, and The Journal of American Studies. At present, she is working on a book analyzing entertainer and activist Lena Horne’s self-fashioned performances of blackness-—on and off the stage and screen—during the long civil rights era.

Robert W. Williams received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Rut- gers University. In graduate school he specialized in political theory, especially modern, contemporary, and critical theories. He currently teaches at Bennett College in Greensboro, NC. Over the years Dr. Williams has published scholarly research on U.S. nuclear energy policy, environmental justice, and the spa- tiality of politics. His recent research efforts concentrate on the philosophical 258 Contributors dimensions of W. E. B. Du Bois’s thought, especially as they relate to social inquiry. His work on Du Bois has been published in the Du Bois Review, the Jour- nal of African American Studies, and the Mississippi Quarterly. He also created and regularly maintains a web site on Du Bois that provides links to primary and secondary sources; it is located at www.webdubois.org. Index

Abolitionist Movement, 135–55, 196 Barthe, Richmond, 72 Abyssinian Baptist Church (New York), Barton, Bruce, 173 195 Bearden, Romare, 69, 96 Adams, John Henry, 105 Bellows, George, 71–72 Addams, Jane, 135 Bend, Joseph, 192 Affirmative Action, 247–48 Benton, Thomas Hart, 71 Almond, Governor J. Lindsay, 236 Bieter, Lawrence, 65 A. M. E. Christian Recorder, 121 Black Christ, 204 American Equal Rights Association, 137, Black Feminism, 247 139–40 Black Jesus, 197 American Psychological Association, 233 Black Liberation, 247 Anderson, Sherwood, 71 Black Prometheus Bound, 62 Andrews, C. F., 195 Blackwelder, Julia Kirk, 213 Annan, Kofi, 250 Blackwell, Henry, 139, 141 Anthony, Susan B., 137, 141 Black World, 241 Anti-Communist, 226 Blätter, Lustige, 101 Anti-Poverty Campaign, 244 Boas, Franz, 74 Anti-Semitism, 168 Bogle, Donald, 216 Apartheid, 250 Bolden, John, 161 Aptheker, Bettina, 102 Bond, Horace Mann, 159, 161 Aptheker, Herbert, 202, 242 Bond, Julian, 160 Armistice, 118, 125 Bowen, J. W. C. (John), 4, 32–33 Art, and Africa, 73–87 Bowles, Bryan W., 227 Attebery, Brian, 163 Boyd, Herb, 250 Attucks, Crispus, 161 Brockman, W. L., 198 Aunt Jemima, 123 Brothers, Nicholas, 220 Brown v. Board of Education, 7, 160, 226, Baker, Ray Stannard, 54 229, 230–32, 235, 238, 242–43 Ball, Mary, 65 Brown, Anne Wiggins, 216 Baltimore Sun, 233 Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, 212 Barber, J. Max, 4, 9, 32–33 Brown, Minnejean, 236 Barksdale, Gaynelle W., 44 Buckley, Gail Lumet, 209, 219

259 260 Index

“Burden of Black Womanhood, The,” 80 Crump, M., 64 Burke, Kenneth, 136 Cuffee, Paul, 161 Burns, Lucy, 142 Cullen, Countee, 44, 201 Byrd, Senator Harry F., 232, 234 Curran, Pearl, 164 Current, Gloster P., 235 Cabin in the Sky, 220 Curry, John Steuart, 71 Caffee, E. D., 122 Caldwell, Erskine, 71 Daily Mirror, 236 Calloway, Cab, 220 Dahmer, Vernon, 245 Cameron, James, 66 Davis, Cynthia, 128 Carter, Aurelia, 211 Davis, Paulina, 139 Cash, L. B., 204 Debs, Eugene V., 174 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 150 Delany, Martin. P., 51 Cherry, F. S., 173 Douglas, Aaron, 77, 79–80, 95 Chicago Defender, 65, 67 Douglass, Frederick, 38, 138–39, 141 Chicago Globe, 44 Du Bois, Shirley Graham, x, 44, 242 “Christian Country, A,” 181–83 Du Bois, W. E. B. and: An ABC of Color, Civilian Police Complaint Review Board, 241; “As the Crow Flies,” 161; Atlanta 245 University, 2, 16, 18–19, 31–33, 74, Civil Rights Act of 1964, 242, 243, 245 177, 191, 196; Autobiography, 16–18, Civil War, 38, 121, 136 190; Black Reconstruction in America, Clark, Kenneth, 227 20–21, 36, 40, 191; Brownies’ Book, Clark, Mamie, 231 The, 7, 11, 104, 156–72; Commemora- Clay, Laura, 141, 177 tion by NAACP, 248–49, 252; Cri- Cleage, Albert, 182 sis editorship, ix–x, 2, 4–5, 7, 16–27, Clifford, Carrie W., 158–59, 170 28–48, 53, 87, 107, 118, 135, 176, 190, Clinton, Tennessee, 234 193–94, 241; “Criteria of Negro Art,” Clinton, William, 251 20, 191; “Crucifixion of God, The,” Cobham, Beryl, 211 177, 180; Darkwater: Voices from with- Cold War, ix, 232, 235, 249 in the Veil, 149, 177–78; Dark Prin- Cole, Jean Lee, 121 cess, 196; Dusk of Dawn, 75, 146; Fisk Coleman, Anita Scott, 119, 125 Herald, 32, 191; Fisk University, ix, 31, Collins, Patricia Hill, 211 42, 88; Gift of Black Folk, 204; Great Communist Party of the USA, 42, 65, Barrington, 3, 31–32; “Great Surgeon, 108, 177, 235 The,” 198; Harvard, ix, 21, 31, 51, 108, Cone, James, 182 176; Horizon, ix, 109, 191–93, 195; Congress of Racial Equality, 238 “Jesus Christ in Georgia,” 177; Moon Conwell, Russell, 195 Illustrated Weekly, The, 4, 19, 32–34, Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear, 212 109, 191, 192, 193; Negro Church, The, Costigan-Wagner Bill, 71 204; “No Room in the Inn,” 199; Phy- Council on African Affairs, 44 lon, 42–44; Philadelphia Negro, The, Craig, Maxine Leeds, 214 195, 204; “Prayers of God, The,” 175; Crawford, George W., 165 Quest of the Silver Fleece, 149; “Son Crite, Alan Rohan, 250 of God, The,” 177, 200; Souls of Black Crummell, Alexander, 23, 103 Folk, The, 39, 74–75, 108, 146, 152, Index 261

203, 204, 214; “Star of Ethiopia, The,” Goldwater, Senator Barry, 244 165; Talented Tenth, 88, 108, 148, 152, “Goodbye Christ,” 181 214; “White Christ, The,” 202, 203 Gordon, Kate M., 141 Du Bois, Yolande, 158, 161, 171 Great Depression, 41, 184, 200 Dudley, Guilford, 142 Great Migration, 11, 157, 173, 199 Dunham, Katherine, 216, 220 Greely, Horace, 138 Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, 62 Green, Nancy, 122 Griffing, Josephine Sophia, 138 East Palo Alto, California, 229–30 Grimke, Archibald H. p. 158 East St. Louis Riot, 161 Guli, N. M., 247 Ebony, 8, 241 Education and art, 88–93 Hall, Stuart, 216 Eisenhower, Dwight, 235 Hammond, Senator James Henry, 124 Ellis, Mark, 98 Harlem Hell Fighters, 369th Infantry Evers, Medgar, 243–45 Regiment, 124 Executive Order 8802, 209 Harlem Renaissance, 6, 10–12, 77, 84, 156–57, 159–60, 162, 166–67, 169–70, Fair Housing Act of 1968, 246 173–89, 199, 201 Faubus, Orville, 235 Harmon Foundation, 53 Fauset, Arthur Huff, 160, 173 Harris, Lorenzo, 58–60, 67, 91 Fauset, Jessie, 160–62, 251 Harrold, Edna May, 163–64 Fenn, William Wallace, 178 Hartzell, Reverend Joseph C., 192 Fifteenth Amendment, 135–36, 138, 151, Hatchett, David, 250 209 Henry, Charles, 250 Fisher, B. Harrison, 150 Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, 213 Fortune, T. Thomas, 32, 34 Hill, Leslie Pinckney, 44 Foster, Abby Kelley, 138 Hill, Oliver W., 236–37 Foster, Frances Smith, 122 Hooks, bell, 211 Foster, Pocahontas, 161 Hope, John, 42 Fourteenth Amendment, 135–37, 209 Horne, Lena, 208–25 Fox, Richard Wightman, 175 Howard University, 192, 212 Frank, Leo, 159 Howe, Julia Ward, 140 Franklin, John Hope, 44 Hughes, Langston, 5, 7, 12, 44, 160, 174– Frazee Theatre New York, 166 76, 181–86, 201, 251 Frazier, E. Franklin, 5, 8, 43, 209–10 Huntley, Chet, 237 Freedom Fighters, 245 Hurston, Zora Neale, 252 Freedom’s Journal, 3–4 Freedomways, 44, 241 International Labor Defense, 65 Freelon, Allan, 84 Ivy, James W., 8–9, 249

Gandhi, Mahatma, 196 Jackson, Esther, 44 Garvey, Marcus, 175, 181 Jackson, Wagner, 228 Geyer, Elizabeth, 232 Jackson State College, 246 Gilpin, Charles S., 161–62 James, Hazel, 248 Gillman, Susan, 165–66, 169 Jealous, Benjamin Todd, 251 262 Index

Jefferson, Alphine, 168 Little Rock, Arkansas, 12, 235–37 Jenkins, Dr. Martin D., 233 Los Angeles Watts Riots, 242 Jet, 6, 8, 241 Lowell, James Russell, 2, 34–35 Jim Crow, 122, 209, 213, 227 Lynching, 53–73 Johnson, Charles, 42 Johnson, D. Pepper, 250 Malcolm X, 251 Johnson, Georgia Douglas, 44, 160 Mandela, Nelson, 250 Johnson, James Weldon, 44, 51, 71, 160 Man Nobody Knows, The, 173 Johnson, Lyndon, 243–44 Marion, Indiana, 65 Johnson-Feelings, Diane, 160 Marion Chronicle-Tribune, 65–67 Jordan, William, 98 Marsh, Reginald, 71 Journal of Negro Education, 42 Marshall, Rachelle, 229 Journal of Negro History, 42 Marshall, Thurgood, 8, 231 Marr, Warren, 249 Kasper, John, 234 Marx, Karl, 84 Katz, Joel, 67 Massive resistance, 232, 234, 237 Keckley, Elizabeth, 120 McClung, Alfred P., 231 Kennedy, John F., 243–45 McGovern, George, 247 Kent State, 246 McGuire, Danielle, 123 King, Clemens, 234 McGurk, C.J., 233 King, Coretta Scott, 252 McKay, Claude, 159 King, Martin Luther Jr., 144, 245, 250 Meeropol, Abel, 66 King, Rodney, 250 Mellett, Lowell, 220 Kitch, Carolyn, 209 Messenger, The, 30, 190, 202 Klarman, Michael, 238 Mexican-American War, 126 Kornweibel, Theodore, 99 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 218 Kory, Fern, 162, 169 Mining, 95 Kraditor, Aileen, 137 Mitchell, Clarence, 228 Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre of Mitchell, Verner D., 128 Harlem, 79 Moon, Henry Lee, 242, 244–46, 249 Morgan State University, 233 Labor and art, 93–97 Moskowitz, Henry, 2 Lampkin, Daisy, 53 Larsen, Nella, 160 NAACP, ix, 1, 4, 99, 104, 107, 109, 118, L’Assiette au Beurre, 55 125, 146, 158, 190, 193, 204, 208–9, Lee, Alfred McClung, 227 213–15, 217, 226–27, 229, 231–32, Le Rire, 101 235, 237–38, 244, 250–51 Lewis, Alfred Baker, 244 Nashville American, 192 Lewis, David Levering, 7, 98, 99, 136, National American Woman Suffrage 158, 176 Association (NAWSA), 104, 135, 140, Lewis, Ida, 251 146, 150 Lewis, Mark, 100 National Association for the Advance- Liberalism, 38 ment of White People, 227 Liberia, 82–83 National Association of Colored Women, Lindsay, John, 245 213, 217 Index 263

National Guard, 246 Prince Hall Masons, 165, 231 National Guardian, 44 Profits of Religion, The, 202 National Urban League, 218 “Negro in Literature and Art,” 51 Quest for the Historical Jesus, The, 202 Negro’s Hour, 136–38 Negro Vote in the South: A Southern Rampersad, Arnold, 88, 176, 181 Woman’s Viewpoint, 142 Rankin, Anne, 204 Neshoba County, Mississippi, 246 Raper, Arthur A., 65 New Masses, 51 Reagan administration, 248 Newsome, Effie Lee (Mary Effie Lee), Reconstruction, ix, 3, 50, 132, 136, 204 160, 170 Revolution, The, 139–40 Newton, Arthur U., Galleries, 71 Richardson, William, 165–67, 169 New York Customs House, 76 Ries, Adeline F., 119, 123 New York Globe, 3, 32, 191 Ringwood’s Afro American Journal of New York Times, 152 Fashion, 210–11 New York Tribune, 138 Roberts, J. Deotis, 82 Niagara Movement, ix, 19, 31, 33–34, Robynson, Bernie, 94 191, 193 Rooks, Noliwe, 219 Nixon, Richard, 247 Rosenberg, Jonathan, 251 Noguchi, Isamu, 71 Rudwick, Elliott, 241 Norfolk, Virginia, 237 Russell, Richard, 232 Not without Laughter, 183 Satterlee, Henry Yates, 192 Office of War Information, 218, 220 Schools in Transition, 230 Opportunity, 86, 190, 202 Schuyler, George, 1 Orangeburg, South Carolina, 246 Schuyler, Josephine, 246 Outlook, 192 Schweitzer, Albert, 202 Ovington, Mary White, 2, 34 Scott, William Edward, 100 Scottsboro, 42 Palmer’s Skin Success Ointment, 212 Segregation, 40–41, 107 Pan-Africanism, ix, 6, 31, 73, 110 Seligman, Jacques Galleries, 71 Parks, Rosa, 252 Selma March, 245 Pataki, George, 251 “Shame of America,” 62 Peace Information Center, 44 Shaw, Anna Howard, 104, 143–44 People’s Voice, 44 Simmel, Georg, 182 Perelman, Chaim, 145 Simms, Hilda, 216 Philadelphia Emergency Conference, Sinclair, Upton, 202 228 Smith, Albert Alex, 60 Phillips, Wendell, 137 Smith, Ida Mae, 211 Picasso, Pablo, 110 Smith, Muriel Burrell, 216 Pioneer Press, p 193 Southern Commission on the Study of Pittsburgh Courier, 44 Lynching, 65 Plessy v. Ferguson, 226, 242 Southern Manifesto, 232 Poe, Peggy, 163 Southern States Woman Suffrage Powell, Adam Clayton, 195 Conference, 142 264 Index

Southern Problem, 142 Vendryes, Margaret, 72 Southern Strategy, 136 Vietnam War, 246 Southern Woman’s Magazine, 204 Voice of the Negro, 4, 9, 32–33 Spingarn, Amy, 166 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 242, 244 Spingarn, Joel, 41, 107 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 137, 140 Walden, Daniel, 242 Stone, Lucy, 139, 141 Walker, Madam C. J., 212–13 Storey, Moorfield, 62 Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly, 122 Stormy Weather, 220–21 Waller, Fats, 220 Stottard, Yetta Kay, 163 Walts, Frank, 52 “Strange Fruit,” 66 War, and art, 97–101 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Warren, Justice Earl, 231 Committee, 160, 238 Washington, Booker T., 63, 209, 214 Suffrage, and art, 103–4 Wells, Ida B., 2–3, 6, 135, 141 Wheeler, Laura, 10, 77, 82, 199 Tanner, Henry O., 50, 104, 129, 199 White, Deborah Gray, 213, 219 Terrell, Mary Church, 135 White, Walter, 5, 7–8, 12, 65–66, 71–72, Theobald, Reverend Stephen L., 193 208, 210, 218–19, 221, 251 Thirteenth Amendment, 1, 121 White Citizens’ Council, 229 Thomas, Clarence, 250 Wilkins, Roy, 7–8, 210, 231–32, 237, 249 Thomas, Ruth Marie, 162 Williams, Heather Andrea, 121 Thurmond, Strom, 232 Willkie, Wendell, 218, 220 Tilton, Theodore, 137 Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, 229 Too Heavy a Load, 219 Wilson, Woodrow, 58 Tougaloo College, 212 Wolcott, Victoria W., 221 Trotter, William Monroe, 2–3 Woman suffrage, 135–155 Truth, Sojourner, 104 World War I, 11, 87, 100, 118–19, 123– Tubman, Harriet, 161 24, 126, 130, 164, 202–203 Turner, Margaret, 162 World War II, 208, 211, 214, 216 Tuskegee Institute, 54, 215 Works Progress Administration (WPA), Tutankhamen’s tomb, 77 93 Two on the Road, 175, 184–85 Tyteca-Olbrechts, Lucie, 145 Zobel, Deborah, 242

United Nations, 232 U.S. News & World Report, 233