Title: 
Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races

Date of Publication: 
Nov. 1910 (1.1) – Feb./Mar. 1996 (103:2)
Continued by the New Crisis, July 1997 (104:1) – Mar./Apr. 2003 (110:2)
Continued as The Crisis, May/June 2003 (110:3) – Present

Place(s) of Publication: 
New York, NY, (Nov. 1910 – Feb./Mar. 1996)
Baltimore, MD (July 1997 – Mar./Apr. 2003)

Frequency of Publication: 
Bimonthly

Circulation: 
Average monthly circulation: 10,500 (1934)

Publisher: 
NAACP: 1910 -1933
Crisis Publishing Company, Inc. (subsidiary of NAACP), New York: 1933 – 1996
Crisis Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, Maryland: 1997 – 2003

Physical Description:
15-35 pages of editorials, reviews of literature and theater, poetry, illustrations, photographs. Advertisements at front and back, many for universities. Frequently appearing sections include “The N. A. A. C. P.” “What to Read,” “Opinion,” “Along the Color Line.”

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
W. E. B. Du Bois (Nov. 1910 – July 1934)

Associate Editor(s):
None

Libraries with Original Issues: 
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Northwestern University; Tuskegee University; University of California, Los Angeles; Library of Congress; University of Delaware; University of Georgia; Harvard University; University of Texas, Austin; University of Virginia

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969
New York: Arno, 1969
Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International [microform]

Though The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races started as the official publication for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), it became a forum for expressing opinions on racial problem. Today it catalogues the extensive progress of African Americans while remaining a political vehicle for the civil rights of minorities.

The magazine addressed all aspects of the African American community, commentating on everything from churches, businesses, and schools, to literature and music. A notable feature of the magazine was Editor W.E.B. Du Bois’ editorial page, which stood “for the right of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempt to gain these rights and realize these ideals” (Du Bois).

The Crisis has undergone many challenges, from being cautioned by the United States Department of Justice for statements harmful to the war effort to being held up by the Post Office because of articles that “supposedly inspired Negro acts of violence.” Yet for more than 90 years, The Crisis has remained a journal of literary achievements, and serves as a record of the social and political history surrounding African Americans’ fight for civil rights.

W. E. B. Du Bois’ voice was ever-present when he served as editor of Crisis. Fittingly, he offered the opening issue’s editorial describing the mission of his magazine:

“The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. Catholicity and tolerance, reason and forbearance can today make the world-old dream of human brotherhood approach realization; while bigotry and prejudice, emphasized race consciousness and force can repeat the awful history of the contact of nations and groups in the past. We strive for this higher and broader vision of Peace and Good Will.

“The policy of THE CRISIS will be simple and well defined:

“It will first and foremost be a newspaper: it will record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American.

“Secondly, it will be a review of opinion and literature, recording briefly books, articles, and important expressions of opinion in the white and colored press on the race problem.

“Thirdly, it will publish a few short articles.

“Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals. The magazine will be the organ of no clique or party and will avoid personal rancor of all sorts. In the absence of proof to the contrary it will assume honesty of purpose on the part of all men, North and South, white and black.”

“Editorial.” 1:1 (Nov. 1910): 10.

W. E. B. Du Bois (Feb. 23, 1868 – Aug. 27 1963)
Editor: Nov. 1910 – July 1934

In his own words, William Edward Bughardt Du Bois was born “by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills” in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1968, the year when “the freedmen of the South were enfranchised and […] took part in government” (Du Bois 8). He graduated from Fisk College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1888 and became the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895. While teaching at Wilberforce College and Atlanta University, Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays expressing the conflicting anger and sadness of blacks in a supposedly modern America. Du Bois founded and edited two little magazines, The Moon and The Horizon, before becoming the founding editor of The Crisis, an NAACP-sponsored publication which he edited for twenty-five years. A prolific and persuasive writer, Du Bois was a caustic, active, and well-published figure during the nascent civil rights struggles in 20th century America.

Gwendolyn Bennett
“To Usward”
“Pipes of Pan.”

Otto Bohanan
“The Washer Woman”

Lyndel Bower
“The First Stone”

Charles Chesnutt
“The Doll”

Countee Cullen
“Mary Mother of Christ”

Langston Hughes
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
“Song for a Suicide”

Virginia Jackson
“Africa”

Roscoe Jamison
“Negro Soldiers”

Georgia Douglas Johnson
“A Sonnet: TO THE MANTLED!”
“Let Me Not Lose My Dream”
“Motherhood”
“Shall I Say, ‘My Son, You’re Branded?’”

Alfred Kreymborg
“Red Chant”

Vachel Lindsay
“The Golden-Faced People”

Claude McKay
“If We Must Die”
“The Void”
“Skeleton”

Jean Toomer
“Song of the Son”

Lew Wallace
“The Beginning of Sorrow”

Lucian Watkins
“Ebon Maid and Girl of Mine”

“About the Crisis.” The Crisis Online. NAACP. 13 July 2009.

“Du Bois: The Activist Life.” Special Collections and University Archives. 2004. W. E. B. Du Bois Library: University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 13 July 2009.

The Crisis. New York: Crisis Pub. Co, 1910 – 1966.

Marable, Manning. W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Moon, Henry Lee. “History of the Crisis.” The Crisis: Nov. 1970. Reprinted in The Crisis Online. NAACP. 23 July 2009.

Moore, Jack. W. E. B. Du Bois. Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1981.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois. Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1976.

Rudwick, Elliot. W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

“The Crisis” compiled by Alex Entrekin & Catherine Walker (Class of ’06, Davidson College)

Title:
Contempo: A Review of Ideas and Personalities
Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities (alternate)

Date of Publication: 
May 1931 (1.1) – Feb. 1934 (3.13)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Frequency of Publication: 
Semimonthly (May 1931 – Feb. 1932)
Every three weeks (Feb. 1932 – Feb. 1934)

Circulation: 
1000
William Faulkner Issue (1 Feb. 1932): 10,000

Publisher: 
Orange Printshop, Chapel Hill, NC.

Physical Description: 
Eight 11 7/16″ x 18 1/16″ pages, three wide columns: 31 May 1931 – 5 May 1932
Pamphlet sized pages, 5 1/2″ x 8″: 5 April 1933 – 15 May 1933
Eight 12″ x 9 1/2″ pages, three wide columns: 5 May 1932 – 15 Feb. 1934

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
Milton Avant “Ab” Abernethy (1931 – 1934)
Anthony J. Buttitta (1931 – March 1932)
Minna K. Abernethy (Fall 1932 – 1934)

Associate Editor(s):
None

Libraries with Significant Holdings of Original Issues: 
Duke University; Stanford University; Brown University

Reprint Editions: 
Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1969.

From the small southern town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina arose the “audaciously edited” and left-drifting Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities (Vickers 18). Communist Milton “Ab” Abernethy served as editor, but managed to keep the magazine’s socialist tendencies contained mostly to the advertisements, letters, and articles. The magazine itself focused on art, not on politics. One of Contempo‘s unique features was the “Authoreview,” where authors could review their own work or react to criticism. Authors interacted, conversed, and critiqued each other. Special issues allowed authors to work personally with Abernethy as guest editors; William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Bill Brown each seized the opportunity.

From the magazine’s beginning in 1931, Abernethy and Anthony J. Buttitta were listed as co-editors of Contempo. A quarrel in 1932, however, drove Buttitta to Durham, NC, where he began publishing a competing magazine under the same title. The matter was taken to court, and in March 1933 Abernethy was able to reassure readers that Contempo would continue to be published from Chapel Hill with his wife, Minna Krupsky Abernethy, joining him on the masthead.

Editor Milton Abernethy declared Contempo‘s goals in four points:

(1) Complete freedom from all cliques whatsoever
(2) Asylum for aggrieved authors
(3) Encouraging literary controversy
(4) The rapid reception of new ideas”Our Policy.” 2:1 (5 May 1932): 2.

Milton Avant “Ab” Abernethy (1911? – 1991)
Editor: May 1931 – Feb. 1934

As a sophomore at North Carolina State University Milton Abernethy published several controversial articles decrying administrative decisions and was expelled. He transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in January 1931, where he would meet Anthony Buttitta. The two students established the Intimate Bookshop as a meeting place for their new magazine, Contempo. Financial hardship led the “nonthreatening and generous Communist” to take a job with the US Department of Agriculture in 1932, where he met Minna Krupsky, a Russian emigrant (Vickers 28). Krupsky and Abernethy married, and after a fallout and legal scuffle between Abernethy and Buttitta, she took over as co-editor of the magazine. After the magazine dissolved, the couple “turned their Chapel Hill bookstore […] into a moneymaker” (Hutchisson 97). Later, they moved to New York where Abernethy became a successful stockbroker.

Anthony J. Buttitta (Jul. 26, 1907 – Aug. 11, 2004)
Co-Editor: May 1931 – Mar. 1932

Originally from Monroe, Louisiana, Anthony Buttitta was an English graduate student at Chapel Hill when he met Milton Abernethy, and the two established the Intimate Bookshop and Contempo magazine. Buttitta befriended William Faulkner during the famed author’s inebriated visit to Chapel Hill, and the numerous poems Buttita collected from him eventually become part of the Faulkner issue of Contempo (Buttitta). Within a year of the magazine’s run, tensions began to rise between Abernethy and Buttitta, and in 1932 Buttitta moved to Durham where he opened his own Intimate Bookshop and began publishing his own version of Contempo. A subsequent legal battle awarded Abernethy the rights to magazine. Buttitta moved to Asheville, where he befriended author F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Samuel Beckett
“Home Olga”

Bob Brown
“Party”
“Optical Balloon Juice”

Witter Bynner
White Gardens

Max Eastman
Swamp Maple

William Faulkner
Excerpts from A Light in August
“Twilight”
“I Will Not Weep for Youth”
“Once Aboard the Lugger”
“Knew I Love Once”

Langston Hughes
“Christ in Alabama”
“Desire”

Aldous Huxley
“Lawrence in Etruria”

James Joyce
“From ‘A Work in Progress’”

D. H. Lawrence
“The Ship of Death”

Robert McAlmon
“A Poetess”

Louigi Pirandello
“Old Man God”

Ezra Pound
“The Depression Has Just Begun”

Nathanael West
Excerpts from Miss Lonelyhearts

William Carlos Williams
“Sordid? Good God!”

Buttitta, Tony. After the Good Gay Times. New York: Viking, 1974.

Contempo. North Carolina: Orange Printing, 1931-34.

Hutchisson, James M. “Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Contempo Magazine.” Resources for American Literary Studies 24.1 (1998): 84-100.

Vickers, Jim. “A Week or Three Days in Chapel Hill: Faulkner, Contempo, and
Their Contemporaries.” North Carolina Literary Review 1.1 (1992):
17-29.

“Contempo” compiled by Theodore Emerson & Erica Bahls (Class of ’06, Davidson College)

Title: 
Contact
Contact: An American Quarterly Review (1932)

Date of Publication: 
Dec. 1920 (no. 1) – July 1923 (no. 5)
Feb. 1932 (1:1) – Oct.1932 (1:3)

Place(s) of Publication: 
New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Irregular (1920 – 1923)
Quarterly (1932)

Circulation: 
200 initial readers

Publisher: 
Robert McAlmon and William Carlos Williams: 1920 – 1923
Moss and Kamin Bookstore, New York: 1932

Physical Description: 
1920 – 1923: First two issues were mimeographed on standard letter paper. Last three issues were printed on standard letter paper.
1932: Bound, white paper. 23 cm. in length.

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
Robert McAlmon (1920 – 1923)
William Carlos Williams (1920 – 1923; 1932)

Associate Editor(s): 
Robert McAlmon (1932)
Nathanael West (1932)

Libraries with Complete Original Issues: 
Harvard University; Princeton University; Columbia University; Ohio State University

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1967.

William Carlos Williams and Robert McAlmon believed that in order for a distinctly American art form to take shape, they needed to initiate a break from European literary traditions and encourage artists to draw from personal experiences. Contact represented their attempt to do just that, as the title itself reflected McAlmon’s experience as a pilot: “Contact! was the command word used by pilots to denote the start of the engine and subsequent flight” (Tashjian 75). Williams hoped the magazine would expose promising American experimental writers both to the public and to one another, though the initial issue did encourage foreign contributions as well.

Between 1921 and 1923 five issues circulated. Though the initial readership of Contact included contributors to Broom and Others, it failed to reach a larger audience and the circulation only amounted to about two hundred. As Williams and McAlmon were privately funding the magazine (some speculate through McAlmon’s efforts posing nude and sleeping on a barge in New York City harbor), their failure to sell copies forced the magazine to fold in 1923, by which point McAlmon had moved to Paris. Williams restarted Contact in 1932 with Nathanael West joining the masthead and McAlmon remaining on as an associate editor from abroad. Under Williams’ editorship, the three 1932 issues placed a heavier emphasis on poetry and included a “Bibliography of Little Magazines,” which was one of the first attempts to catalogue contemporary Little Magazines.

Contact‘s manifesto appeared on the first page of the first issue of the magazine in 1921:

Contact. 1:1 (Dec. 1920): 1.

William Carlos Williams (Sept. 17, 1883 – Mar. 4, 1963)
Co-Editor: 1920 – 1923; Editor: 1932

William Carlos Williams contributed to many little magazines, yet readers found him to have an unclassifiable style; conformity never suited his poetry. He experimented with Imagism, but never fully embraced one school of thought, and expressed frustration with T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” In Williams’ Kora in Hell (1920) he attacked Eliot’s intellectual approach to poetry and insisted that poetry must put an emphasis on precision of language and description. He continued publishing into the 1960s, and many consider his poetry a large influence for the Beat movement. Williams’ personal life hardly resembles his bold artistic declarations: receiving his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1906, Williams practiced medicine in Rutherford, NJ throughout the duration of his writing career.

Robert McAlmon (Mar. 9, 1896 – Feb. 2, 1956)
Co-Editor: 1920 – 1923; Associate Editor: 1932

Robert McAlmon supposedly funded the first year of Contact by earning wages as a nude model while living on a barge in New York harbor (Tashjian 24). The writer’s fortune altered significantly when he married Bryher. The marriage was one of convenience: Bryher was in an open relationship with H. D., but needed a husband in order to receive her portion of a significant family wealth. Her father, wealthy British publisher Sir John Ellerman, funded Contact from 1921 – 1923. McAlmon moved to Paris in 1921 and lived there throughout the expatriate pilgrimage of the 1920s. He befriended James Joyce and established a publishing company, Contact Editions, to publish the works of American artists living abroad. The company released the first two novels of Hemingway, and works by Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Despite his influence on and importance to expatriate writers, McAlmon remained a little-known writer, and is most remembered for his editorial and publishing efforts.

Kay Boyle
“Shore”

e. e. cummings
“[‘let’s start a magazine]”
“[r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r]”
“[mouse) Won]”
“[ondumonde’]”

H. D.
“Prayer”
“Simeatha”

Wallace Gould
“Lithographs”

Marsden Hartley
“Chanticle for October”
“Return of the Native”

Mina Loy
“Oh Hell”
“Summer Night in a Florentine Slum”

Robert McAlmon
“The Blue Mandrill,” “Superwoman”

Marianne Moore
“In the Days of Prismatic Color”
“Those Various Scalpels”

David Moss
“Bibliography of the ‘Little Magazine’”

Wallace Stevens
“Invective Against Swans,” “Infanta Maria”

Nathanael West
Excerpts from Miss Lonelyhearts

William Carlos Williams
“New England”
“St. Francis Einstein of the Daffodils”
“Portrait of the Author”
“The Accident”
“The Canada Lily”

Yvor Winters
“Sonnet to the Moon”
“Chiron”

Chielens, Edward E., ed. American Literary Magazines: The Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Contact. 1920 – 1923. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1932.

McAlmon, Robert. Being Geniuses Together. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968.

Tashjian, Dickran. William Carlos Williams and the American Scene, 1920-1940. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978.

Tranter, Jon. “The United States Poet Laureate – Some Background Information.”Jacket Magazine. Feb. 2003. 21 Oct. 2004.

Williams, William Carlos. Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1951.

Williams, William Carlos et al. “Robert McAlmon’s Prose.” Transatlantic Review 1.5 (1924): 361-364.

“Contact” compiled by Theodore Emerson (Class of ’06, Davidson College)

Title:
The Colored American Magazine

Date of Publication: 
1900-1909

Place(s) of Publication:
Boston, MA (1900-1904); New York, NY (1904-1909)

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
~ 17,000 at peak

Publisher: 
Colored Co-Operative Publishing Company (1900-1904); The Moore Publishing and Printing Company (1904-1909)

Physical Description: 
26 cm.

Editor(s): 
Walter Wallace, Pauline Hopkins, Fred R. Moore

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Original Issues: 
Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Reprint Editions: 
Negro Universities Press 1969

The Colored American Magazine was founded in Boston by Walter M. Wallace in 1900. It was published by the Colored Co-Operative Publishing Company until 1904 when it was purchased by Fred R. Moore and moved to New York City. The magazine highlights prominent black intellectuals in the northern United States. The magazine aimed to create an outlet for artists, scientists, and thinkers who were excluded and marginalized by white publications. It combined a celebration of Black business success with promotion of African American literary achievement. The advertising section of the magazine aided in pushing its political agenda, so much so that The Colored American was criticized for being too radical during its final years in Boston.  

Editors Pauline Hopkins and Fred R. Moore disagreed about the direction the magazine should take. Hopkins pushed for a more middle-class intellectual agenda designed to express the pain of black America’s past, while Moore and Booker T. Washington leaned towards a “more conciliatory politics, shifting its focus away from racial injustices of the past and present toward positive coverage of African American achievements, particularly in the business world” (Sweeney). Ultimately, Hopkins was pushed out of her position, as the magazine’s content grew to differ from her political and literary interests. 

No official manifesto exists, but a May 1900 “Announcement” identifies the magazine’s aims:

This magazine shall be devoted to the higher culture of Religion, Literature, Science, Music, and Art of the Negro, universally.  Acting as a stimulus to old and young, the old to higher achievements, the young to emulate their example.

(qtd by Dahn and Sweeny, “A Brief History”).

Pauline Hopkins (1859 – Aug. 13, 1930)
Editor: 1901 – 1903

Pauline Hopkins was born in Portland, Maine and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She was a prolific contributor to Colored American and became editor of the women’s section in 1901 and literary editor in 1903. Hopkins published three serialized novels in the magazine: Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Caste Prejudiced (1901), Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest (1902), and Of One Blood; or The Hidden Self (1902-1903). Heavily influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois, Hopkins’ writings were often centered on the black female experience (Cordell). Hopkins was considered outspoken and radical; so much so she was forcibly removed from her post as editor by Fred Randolph Moore, who purchased the magazine and moved production to New York in 1904 (Knight).

Frederick Randolph Moore (Jun. 16, 1857 – Mar. 1, 1943)
Editor: 1904 – 1909

Fred R. Moore was born in Virginia and moved to Washington, D.C.. Before Colored American, Moore worked at the U.S. Treasury Department as an assistant and a delivery clerk at a bank. In 1904, Moore worked with Booker T. Washington to form the National Negro Business League to further the endeavors of black entrepreneurs. The two bought Colored American the same year and moved it to New York. Moore collaborated with the New York Age as a journalist starting in 1905 and purchased the paper in 1907 with the financial backing of Washington. Moore’s vision for Colored American emphasized the business ventures of black Americans, as opposed to Hopkins’ more intellectual and literary leanings (Sweeney).

Cyrus Field Adams
Some Interesting Facts
The Afro-American Council 
John C. Danty: Editor, Author, Orator

William Stanley Braithwaite
The Returning Road of Dreams 

Robert W. Carter 
In Defense of the Race
The Tyranny of the South
Shall the Fifteenth Amendment be Repealed?

James D. Corrothers
The Psalm of a Race
To — (A Sonnet)

T. Thomas Fortune
Here and There: Timothy Thomas Fortune 
Cyrus Field Adams

Pauline Hopkins
Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice
Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest 
Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self 

Booker T. Washington
“Up From Slavery”
“Working With The Hands”
“Character Building”
“The National Negro Business League”

Complete index on The Digital Colored American Magazine.

Brian Sweeney, and Eurie Dahn. The Digital Colored American Magazine, Web. 14 Sept. 2018.

Cordell, Sigrid Anderson. “‘The Case Was Very Black Against’ Her: Pauline Hopkins and the Politics of Racial Ambiguity at the ‘Colored American Magazine.’” American Periodicals, vol. 16, no. 1, 2006, pp. 52–73.

Knight, Alisha R. “Furnace Blasts for the Tuskegee Wizard: Revisiting Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Booker T. Washington and the ‘Colored American Magazine.’” American Periodicals, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp. 41–64.

Compiled by Haley Fullerton (Davidson College, Class of ’20) and Teagan Monaco (Davidson College, Class of ’19)

Title:
Challenge/New Challenge

Date of Publication: 
Mar. 1934 – Fall 1937

Place(s) of Publication:
Boston, MA; New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Quarterly (somewhat irregularly)

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
The Boston Chronicle

Physical Description: 
Approx. 50 pages (New Challenge is 94). Cover with single-color print on colored paper (changing by the issue). The cover design is minimalistic, emphasizing the title and contributors. Common segments include short stories, songs, and a “Dear Reader” section.

Price:
15 Cents (later raised to 25 cents)

Editor(s): 
Dorothy West

Associate Editor(s):
Marian Minus (Associate Editor)
Richard Wright (Associate Editor)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
Harvard University, New York Public Library, Library of Congress

Reprint Editions: 
University of North Carolina, Smithsonian Libraries, University of Michigan, Library of Congress

Challenge, founded by Dorothy West in 1934, began with the goal of giving “younger negro writers” a platform to share their voices, writings, and perspectives. As James Weldon Johnson wrote in the first issue’s foreword, “[Young black artists] can bring to bear a tremendous force for breaking down and wearing away the stereotyped ideas about the negro” (Johnson 2). And to do this, Johnson added that writers need not be propagandists, but sincere artists. With this plan for the platform, early issues of Challenge included works by Harlem Renaissance poets like Langston Hughes, Lucia Mae Pitts, and Countee Cullen. The January 1936 “Dear Reader” section (penned by editor Dorothy West) elaborated on her vision for the magazine. On the topic of pieces submitted for publication, West shared that she was looking for well-written pieces with strong style. These pieces were supposed to depict scenes of protest and be written by promising young black authors.

Despite gaining momentum, the submissions Challenge received did not meet West’s standards, so she sought to recenter her efforts. West published the 1937 Fall issue as the New Challenge, bringing in associate editors Marian Minus and Richard Wright to help her curate a magazine that for writers devoted to the “realistic depiction of life through the sharp focus of social consciousness” (Daniel 499). To remain authentic and unbiased in that regard, she disavowed any politically-motivated funding and refused excessive contributions from any individual, even going as far to pour her own savings into New Challenge as she had done for its earlier iteration. These practices, along with the editorial disputes between West and the vocally communist Wright, led to the premature demise of the rebranded publication after its first issue.

While Challenge never published an explicit manifesto, the March 1934 issue’s foreword by James Weldon Johnson included insights into the magazine’s purpose and outlook:

It is a good thing that Dorothy West is doing in instituting a magazine through which the voices of younger negro writers may be heard…They can bring to bear a tremendous force for breaking down and wearing away the stereotyped ideas about the Negro, and for creating a higher and more enlightened opinion about the race. (Vol. 1., No. 1: 2)

Additionally, the May 1935 “Dear Reader” section by Dorothy West reasserts this commitment to supporting new, young writers:

We are rather pleased with this issue, for most of the names are new to us, and we are glad to note that not all of the voices are Negro. Most of them are young too, really young, which means that as good as they are now, think how much better they will be one fine day. So that for all we know we may be raising a crop of young geniuses. And we are glad they are cutting their talent on our papers. (Vol. 1., No. 3: 45)

Dorothy West (Jun. 02, 1907 – August. 16, 1998)
Editor: 1934 – 1937

One of the youngest writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance—she published her first story at age 14—Dorothy West was the primary editor of Challenge and New Challenge. In 1907, West was born to a middle-class family in Boston, Massachusetts where she attended Girls’ Latin School before moving to New York City in 1926 (“Dorothy West” 1). There, she enrolled in writing classes at Columbia University while continuing her work in short fiction. Her short story “The Typewriter” went on to tie with a piece by Zora Neale Hurston for 2nd place in Opportunity magazine’s short story contest (Garman 1). The resulting celebration banquet introduced West to the likes of Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, and Langston Hughes, all of whom she would befriend soon afterward (Garman 1). Her time spent with these influential thinkers inspired her to found her own literary magazine, Challenge, with an initial investment of $40 in 1934. Shortly after, following six issues and one attempted relaunch, West’s magazine-editing days ended when Richard Wright took over her New Challenge to transform the magazine into a communist-oriented publication in 1937 (Scutts 1). Six years later, West returned to Massachusetts, moving away from the city to Martha’s Vineyard where she could focus on her writing (“Dorothy West” 1). There, she published her first novel, The Living is Easy, which satirized West’s own experience growing up as a member of the black bourgeois of Massachusetts. She then went on to publish her second novel, The Wedding, nearly fifty years later in 1995 before her death in 1998.

James Weldon Johnson
“Foreword”

Langston Hughes
“Little Dog”

Arna Bontemps
“Barrel Staves”
“Saturday Night: Alabama Town”
“Dang Little Squirt”

Jane Isaac
“Cook”

Mary Christopher
“Room in Red Square”

Harry Burleigh
“On Spirituals”

Grace Walker
“To a Tree in November”

Pauli Murray
“Song”
“Inquietude”

Countee Cullen
“Two Sonnets”
“Magnets”

Lucia Mae Pitts
“The First Kiss”
“Challenge”

Helene Johnson
“Widow With a Moral Obligation”
“Let Me Sing My Song”

Blanche Colton Williams
“Guest Editorial”

Alfred H. Mendes
“Juan’s Cocoa”
“Twelve Cents”
“On the Seventh Day”

Zora Neale Hurston
“The Fire and The Cloud”

Mary Christopher
“Russian Correspondence”

Walter Everett Hawkins
“Debunking the Spirituals”

Louis G. Sutherland
“Cudjoe”

Frank G. Yerby
“Miracles”
“Brevity”
“To A Seagull”
“Drought”
“Three Sonnets”

Claude McKay
“For a Leader”
“Honeymoon”

Carl Van Vechten
“Carl Van Vechten Comments”

Morton Elliot Freedgood
“Under the Tree”
“Sleep”

Myron A. Mahler
“Alabama Welcomes You”

Hughes Allison
“Miss Hood Is Shocked”

Russel Garner
“Cell Phantasm”

Roy de Coverly
“Beauty, Beer and Beechwoods”

Mae Cowdery
“I Sit and Wait For Beauty”

Grace Walker
“A Longing”

James O. Wilson
“What Bronze”

Waring Cuney
“Song of a Song”

Juanita C. DeShield
“All for Art”

Gary George
“Scheme”

Eslanda Goode Robeson
“Black Paris”

Derek Patmore
“Portrait of Richard Aldington”

Louis Emanuel Martin
“Naughty Antillean Queen”

Jerome B. Peterson
“Black Reconstruction”

Andrews, William L., et al. The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2001, pp. 428-429. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/davidson/detail.action?docID=430299.

Daniel, Walter C. “Challenge Magazine: An Experiment That Failed.” CLA Journal, vol. 19, no. 4, 1976, pp. 494–503.

Garman, Emma.“Feminize Your Canon: Dorothy West.” The Paris Review, 11 July 2018, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/07/11/feminize-your-canon-dorothy-west/.

Johnson, James Weldon. “Foreword.” Challenge, Mar. 1934, pp. 2.

The President and Fellows of Harvard College. “Schlesinger Library Dorothy West Digital Collection.” Schlesinger Library Online Digital Collections, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Harvard University), 2018, schlesinger.radcliffe.harvard.edu/onlinecollections/west/.

West, Dorothy. “Dear Reader.” Challenge, May 1935, p. 45.

West, Dorothy. “Dear Reader.” Challenge, Jan. 1936, p. 38.

Compiled by Matthew Days (Class of 2019, Davidson College) and collaborators