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NAACP Publications
The Brownies' Book (1921-1922)
This children's magazine was produced by the NAACP under the auspices
of W.E.B. DuBois, Jessie Redmond Fauset, literary editor, and Augustus
Granville Dill, business manager. The magazine was 15 cents a copy and
was produced monthly. Its focus was African-American children. It contained
short stories, poems and news items. Five issues had contributions by
Langston Hughes, and interviews were conducted by young reporters who
had their works published. Among the items published was an interview
with Charles Gilpin by Ruth Marie Thomas, a
17-year-old aspiring writer, and a photo
of the children who participated in the Silent
Protest Parade of 1917. The cover illustrations, like those for The
Crisis, were by African-American artists. The one picture is by Marcellus
Hawkins, a relatively unknown artist from the era. The Brownies' Book
did not receive the public support needed to sustain it, and after
only two years it was canceled. The last issue was released in December
1921.
The Crisis: A Record
of the Darker Races (1910-present)
The Crisis is the official monthly publication of the NAACP. It began in 1910 with William Edward Burghardt DuBois as editor, and became a leading periodical for African Americans. It was known for its radical position against lynching and racial prejudice and reflected the ideology of Dr. DuBois. Until 1919 it sold for 10 cents a copy and boasted a monthly circulation of 80,000 copies. In the 1920s, literary contributions to the magazine increased in keeping with the cultural explosion known as the Harlem Renaissance. The magazine began to sponsor a literary contest and the works of poets Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay, among others, began to appear. The cover was also illustrated by leading African-American visual artists such as Aaron Douglas , John Henry Adams and Laura Wheeler Waring, a portrait painter whose illustration appears on the cover above. The magazine continues to emphasize cultural, social and economic matters. It is still being published monthly by the NAACP.