Title: 
The Voice of the Negro

Date of Publication:  
1904 (1:1) – 1907 (4:10)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Atlanta, Georgia (Jan. 1904 – July 1906)
Chicago, Illinois (Aug. 1906 – Oct. 1907)

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
J.L. Nichols and Company (Jan. 1904 – Apr. 1904)
Hertel, Jenkins, and Company (May 1904 – July 1906)
Voice Publishing Company (Aug. 1906 – Oct. 1907)

Physical Description: 
4 v. in 3. ill. 26 cm

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
J.W.E Bowen
Jesse Max Barber

Associate Editor(s): 
Emmet Jay Scott (Editorial Contributor)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
UNC-Chapel Hill

Reprint Editions: 
Johnson C. Smith, New York, Negro University Presses, 1969.  Wake Forest University, Duke University, Georgia State University, University of Georgia, University of Virginia

The Voice of the Negro was founded in January 1904, the first journal edited by African Americans for a general audience of readers (Walter 369). The four leading editors of the little magazine – John Wesley Edward Bowen, Emmett J. Scott, Booker T. Washington, and Jesse Max Barber – began this magazine in Atlanta, Georgia, the city with the largest number of black institutes at the time, in order to foster the black literary and political voice in the “New South” (369). J Max Barber, as he was formally known, soon took the reins of the magazine’s editing and produced what seemed to be a “split-personality” magazine (Harlan 47): African American contributors either accommodated white influence and policy on race issues, or radically supported an assertive Negro voice (371). The magazine published essays on education and race politics at state, national, and international levels (370). The Voice of the Negro also addressed issues such as the term “Negro,” black marginalization, and women’s rights through the mediums of poetry, essays, and short stories (45).

Over time, J Max Barber’s editing grew more passionate and radical, which caused contention between him and other black writers in the area. His passion for Negro rights escalated and eventually exploded following a slanderous letter he wrote anonymously to a local newspaper (374). Once discovered as the writer, Barber fled town to Chicago where he attempted to start the magazine again in October 1906 rebranding it as The Voice (374). Barber lost financial support following his relocation, his publisher Hertel and Johnson folded, and the magazine ceased publication the following year (56). Publication records indicated that the magazine ended with 12,000 subscribers (46). Overall, The Voice of the Negro attempted to elevate the Negro race in the south, in the hopes of giving future generations of African Americans  a voice in American and global affairs (370).

The Voice of the Negro published their manifesto in the January 1904 edition at the start of the magazine’s publication:

“The Voice of the Negro for 1904 will keep you posted on Current History, Educational Improvements, Art, Science, Race Issues, Sociological Movements and Religion. It is the herald of the Dawn of the Day. It is the first magazine ever edited in the South by Colored Men. It will prove to be a necessity in the cultured colored homes and a source of information on Negro inspirations and aspirations in the white homes” (Voice of the Negro 1:1).

“1904 will be a year of great things. The country is becoming altruistic and the Negro is emerging from his age of Fire and Blood. We shall study carefully the trends of the times…Our pictures and illustrations will be very interesting. Sparks from Editor J.W.E Bowen’s pen will illuminate many a pessimistic home” (Voice of the Negro 1:1).

John Wesley Edwards Bowen (Dec. 3, 1855 – Jul. 20, 1933)
Editor: Jan. 1904 – Aug. 1906

John Wesley Edwards Bowen was born in New Orleans in 1855 to former slaves in New Orleans. Bowen’s father Edward purchased his wife and son out of slavery in 1858. To ensure a better future for their son, the Bowens secured him the finest education. He received his undergraduate degree from New Orleans University, a bachelor’s degree from the School of Theology at Boston University, and doctorate degree from Boston University (the second African American to do so). Bowen led a life of teaching starting at Central Tennessee College (1878-82) then to Gammon Theological Seminary (’93-’32) where he eventually became president in 1910. While teaching, and before his years at  Gammon, Bowen served as pastor of Centennial Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore (Bowen, J.W.E [1855-1933]). His value for African American education, faith, and liberation of his race shaped his contributions and edits to the Voice of The Negro journal. Bowen remained a social activist especially in the church when he published An Appeal for Negro Bishops, But No Separation in 1912 (Bowen, J.W.E [1855-1933]).

Jesse Max Barber ( July 5, 1878 – Sept. 20, 1949)
Editor: Jan. 1904 – Oct. 1907

Born in South Carolina, J. Max Barber worked in his early years – rather fittingly – as a barber. In pursuing a better life through education, Barber went on to study at the Virginia Union University in Richmond where his literary life commenced.  There he became the student editor of the University Journal and president of Literary Society. After graduating in 1903 he assumed the position of editor on The Voice of the Negro in 1904 and shaped the journal into a radical and progressive literary form. Abby Johnson, in her book Propaganda and Aesthetics, provides Barber’s vision for the Voice of the Negro: “We want it to be more than a mere magazine. We expect 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” (Johnson, 1).

Barber continued to support civil rights through his membership in the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. After The Voice of the Negro folded, Barber briefly edited for the Chicago Conservator. He turned to a career in dentistry while still remaining active in the social rights for African Americans. From 1919 to 1921 Barber served as president for the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP and then became president of the John Brown Memorial Association. He published regularly in Abbott’s Monthly from 1930 to 1933 ( Barber, J. Max [1878-1949]).

John H. Adams
“Rough Sketches”
“Easter”

Azalia E. Martin
“Spring”
“Phantoms”

J.W.E. Bowen
“Doing things at Tuskegee Institute”

William Pickens
“Southern Negro in Northern University”

Benjamin Griffith Brawley
“The Dawn -Poem”

Nannie H. Burroughs
“Not Color but Character”

James D. Corrothers 
“The Peace of God”
“Lincoln”
“A Face”

W.E.B. DuBois
“Debit and Credit – The American Negro in Account with the year of grace nineteen hundred and four”
“The Beginning of Slavery”
“Slavery in Greece and Rome”
“Serfdom”
“The Beginning of Emancipation”

Silas X. Floyd
“Wayside”
“October”
“Story: She Came at Christmas”
“The tried and the true”

T. Thomas Fortune
“The filipino”
“The Voteless Citizen”

J.R.E. Lee
“The National Association of Teachers of Colored Youths”
“The National Negro Business League”

Mrs. Josephine B. Bruce
“The Farmer and the City Folk”

Kelly Miller
“Roosevelt and the Negro”
“An Estimate of Frederick Douglass”

Daniel Murray
“Bibliographia- Africana”
“The Industrial Problem of the United States and the Negro’s Relation To It”
“Who Invented the Cotton Gin? Did a negro do the work and Eli Whitney get all the credit?”

W.S. Scarborough
“The Negro and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition”
“Roosevelt – The Man, The Patriot, The Statesman”
“The Emancipation of the Negro”

Emmett J. Scott
“Tuskegee Negro Conferences”
“The Louisiana Purchase Exposition”

Mrs. Mary Church Terrell
“The Berlin International Congress of Women”
“Christmas at the White House”

C.H. Turner
“Spontaneous Generation”
“Atoms are complex bodies”

Fannie Barrier Williams
“The Smaller Economies”
“The Women’s Part in a Man’s Business”
“The Timely Message of the Simple Life”

Mrs. Josephine Silone Yates
“The Equipment of the Teacher”
“The National Association of Colored Women”
“Thought Power in Education”

Blue, Christopher T. “Barber, J. Max (1878-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” Barber, J. Max (1878-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

Bowen, J.W.E; Barber J. Max. Voice of the Negro: The Black Experience in America- Negro Periodicals in the United States, 1840- 1960. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Print.

“Bowen, J. W. E. (1885-€“1933) – Educator, Minister, Writer, Lecturer, Chronology, Provides Shelter during Atlanta Riot.” Bowen, J. W. E.(1885-€“1933). N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

Daniel, Walter C. Black Journals of the United States. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982. Print.

Harlan, Louis R. “Booker T. Washington and the Voice of the Negro, 1904-1907.” Journal of Southern History. February (1979): 45-62. Print.

Johnson, Abby. Propaganda and aesthetics : the literary politics of African-American magazines in the twentieth century.Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Print.

Johnson, Charles S. “Rise of the Negro Magazine.” Journal of Negro History. October (1977): 325-38. Web.

Title:
VVV

Date of Publication:
Oct. 1942 (no. 1); Mar. 1943 (no. 2); Feb. 1944 (no. 3)

Place(s) of Publication:
Office of VVV Room 3308, 10 East 40^th Street, New York, N.Y

Frequency of Publication:
Annually (not necessarily intentionally, however, as the second issue was a merging of what would have been the second and third issues)

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher:
Published Independently by David Hare

Physical Description:
no. 1: 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 72 pages, colored ed. (Oct. 1942)
no. 2-3 (double issue): 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 143 pages, colored ed. (Mar. 1943)
no. 4: 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 87 pages, colored ed. (Feb. 1944)

Editor(s):
David Hare

Associate Editor(s):
André Breton (Editorial Advisor)
Marcel Duchamp (Editorial Advisor)
Max Ernst (Editorial Advisor)

Libraries/Databases with Complete Original Issues:
New York Public Library; Duke University’s Perkins Library; University of Virginia Library; National Gallery of Art Library; Library of Congress; Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Library; Johns Hopkins University’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library; Indiana University Library; Cleveland Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; University of Michigan Library; Museum of Modern Art; Cornell University Library

Reprint Editions:
None

Published from 1942 through 1944, VVV offered surrealist and expressionistic views of Western culture to Americans, specifically New York City youths seeking international perspectives and art. Surrealism, and VVV in particular, sought to redefine American avant-garde through irrational thought processes that required tapping into a deeper level of consciousness, often invoking revolutionary approaches and techniques to art and literature by challenging traditional forms. Each issue of VVV published photographs, sculptures, poetry, and prose; however, VVV’s avant garde presentation of these materials was highly experimental and radical.

Each issue’s cover art featured the magazine’s VVV logo along with colorful art. The first issue featured a drawing by Max Ernst; the second, an illustration by Marcel Duchamp; and the final, a design by Matta. The magazine was filled with lavish illustrations and poetry with cross-cultural influences. Readers might turn from a page written completely in French to English, only to switch back to French a few pages later. The final issue included many fold-out pages of varying size, adding to the creativity and depth of thought (Hoffman 24).

VVV, in all of its colorful, creative, and transformative beauty, worked to unite and bring together new artists and direct them towards a bountiful array of new thought. Expanding beyond art into the realms of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, VVV deepened the scope of intellectual thought through transformative exploration of the mind and forms of expression; pushing intellectualists and artists, alike, to attempt revolutionary new approaches to every day applications like architecture, writing, and art.  In this way, VVV, along with other abstract expressionist little magazines like View – a magazine that VVV commonly referenced and co-dominated the surrealist scene – authored a public critique of standard Western culture.

VVV’s intent was simple–to fill the streets of New York (youths, internationals, and abstract expressionists alike) with surrealism.  The following is an “editorial credo,” as Lucy R. Lippard would refer to it, that was included at the beginning of each of the magazine’s three published issues (Lippard 212).  VVV’s manifesto’s abstract form mimics the content, tone, and revolutionary material included in the magazine.

VVV

That is, V + V + V. We say . . . –– . . . –– . . . ––

that is, not only

V               as a vow—and energy—to return to a habitable and conceivable world,

Victory over the forces of regression and of death unloosed at present on

The earth, but also V beyond this first Victory, for this world can no more,

And ought no more, be the same, V over that which tends to perpetuate the

Enslavement of man by man,

And beyond this

VV            of that double Victory, V again over all that is opposed to the emancipation

Of the spirit, of which the first indispensable condition is the liberation

Of man,

Whence,

VVV         towards the emancipation of the spirit, through these necessary stages: it

Is only in this that our activity can recognize its end

Or again:

One knows that to

V               which signifies the View around us, the eye turned towards the external

World, the conscious surface,

Some of us have not ceased to oppose

VV            the View inside us, the eye turned toward the interior world and the depths

Of the unconscious,

Whence

VVV         towards a synthesis in a third term, of these two Views, the first V with

Its axis on the EGO and the reality principle, the second VV on the SELF

And the pleasure principle—the resolution of their contradiction tending

Only to the continual, systematic enlargement of the field of consciousness

Towards a total view,

VVV

                  Which translates all the reactions of the eternal upon the actual, of the

Psychic upon the physical, and takes account of the myth in process of

Formation beneath the VEIL of happenings. (VVV 1:1)

David Hare (Mar. 10, 1917 – Dec. 21, 1992)
Editor: 1942 – 1944

David Hare, an American artist who was born in New York in 1917, was mainly known for his magnificent sculptures, though he was also a prominent painter and photographer. As he himself concluded, “I was good with my hands, but I chose art, too, for the independence of it” (Kimmelman). Hare attended the Fountain Valley School, a high school that his mother helped to found, before moving to Roxbury, Connecticut and working as a photographer. After working as a color photographer for some years, Hare was introduced to some of the world’s leading avant grade artists – Max Ernst, Andre Breton, and, renowned dadaist, Marcel Duchamp – with whom he would eventually begin publishing the revolutionary VVV magazine in New York. As its editor he would also frequently submit pieces of his own. After the magazine’s final issue was published in 1944, Hare continued submitting pieces to various magazines and museums around New York, including an exhibit in the Guggenheim that featured a decade-long collection of his work in 1977. Hare became a member of the early New York School Abstract Expressionists and helped to found The Subjects for Artist School in 1948.  Hare continued teaching, painting, and sculpturing into the 1970’s and 80’s before moving to Victor, Idaho in 1985.  Hare died in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on December 21, 1992.

Alain Bosquet
“Tu Tournes”
“Tu Te Precises”

André Breton
“Prolegomena to a Third Manifesto of Surrealism or Else”
“Froleuse”
“Passage a Niveau”
“Premiers Transparents”
“Guerre”
“Mot a Mante”
“Interieur”
“Situation Du Surréalisme Entre les Deux Guerres”

Leonora Carrington
“La Dame Ovale”
“Down below”

Aimé Césaire
“Batouque”
“Annonciation”
“Tam-Tam I”
“Tam-Tam II”

Charles Duits
“Le Jour Est Un Attentat”

Max Ernst
“Les Etats Généraux”
“Portrait of a Gypsy Rose Lee”
“First Memorable Conversation With the Chimera”

Wifredo Lam
“La Chanteuse Des Poissons”

Robert Allerton Parker
“Cannibal Designs”

William Seabrook
“The Door Swung Inward”

Kurt Seligmann
“Les Quatre Saisons”

Brooker, Peter, and Andrew Thacker. “Europe in America: Remapping Broken Cultural Lines: View (1940-7) and VVV (1942-4).” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Hadler, Mona. “David Hare, Surrealism, and the Comics.” The Space Between 2.1 (2011): 93-108. Web.

Hofman, Irene. “Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection.” Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL. 2001. Print.

Kimmelman, Michael. “David Hare, Sculptor and Photographer, Dies at 75.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Dec. 1992. Web. 06 Oct. 2015.

Lippard, Lucy R., ed. Surrealists on Art. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:1, 1942. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:2-3, 1943. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:4, 1944. Print.

“VVV” compiled by Nathan Thomas Argueta (Class of ’16, Davidson College)