Four Publications of the Harlem Renaissance Pt. 2

This is part two of Harlem Renaissance publications. This week features the work of the Negro World Newspaper (UNIA / Marcus Garvey - Editor) and Opportunity (Magazine): A Journal of Negro Life published by the Urban League.

In this two part series we’ve covered four notable publications—The Messenger (A. Philip Randolph & Chandler Owen), The Crisis (NAACP), Opportunity (Urban League), and Marcus Garvey’s Negro World printed the work of many African-American artists and writers-helping the Harlem Renaissance become the artistic movement that made it possible for African-Americans to develop an authentic voice in American society.

Negro World Newspaper - Marcus Garvey, Editor

In March 1916, Garvey moved to Harlem, New York in the United States. He started speaking on street corners at night and lecturing at various halls and churches, spreading his powerful message of unity, social freedom, political freedom and economic freedom for Black people.

The Negro World was founded in 1917 as a weekly newspaper to express the ideas of the organization. It ran until 1933. Garvey contributed a front-page editorial each week in which he developed the organization’s position on different issues related to people of African ancestry around the world, in general, and the UNIA, in particular.

Eventually with a circulation of five hundred thousand, the newspaper was printed in several languages. It contained a page specifically for women readers, documented international events related to people of African ancestry, and was distributed throughout the African Diaspora. It would become such an asset to the uplift of the race that the British and French colonial authorities would ban the Negro World from its colonies.

During its entire existence, therefore, the paper was engaged in a running battle with the British, French, United States and other governments, all of which assiduously sought to engineer its demise, or failing that, to restrict or prevent its circulation, especially in Africa, Central America and the West Indies.

Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life - Urban League

The journal Opportunity was first produced as an academic publication for Black Americans and published monthly from 1923 to 1942, before moving to quarterly runs until it ceased publication in 1949. Opportunity reached its peak influence in the Harlem Renaissance years of 1923–28, during which time it published information discussing the lives of Black communities and race relations.

In the first issue of Opportunity, the editor-in-chief Charles S. Johnson articulated the context for and objective of the journal: “Accurate and dependable facts can correct inaccurate and slanderous assertions that have gone unchallenged… and what is most important, to inculcate a disposition to see enough of interest and beauty of their own lives to rid themselves of the inferior feeling of being Negro.”

In the 1920s, the height of the Harlem Renaissance, the journal cultivated Black literary culture, including, among many others, art by Aaron Douglass, essays and reviews by E. Franklin Frazier, and fiction and poetry by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Many of the writers included in the journal faced censorship in later years. For example, in 2016, Langston Hughes’s collection of poetry was banned in Texas prisons, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was challenged in Virginia in 1997. Journals like Opportunity were crucial in amplifying the voices of communities often targeted by censors.

Sources:

https://www.thoughtco.com/four-publications-of-the-harlem-renaissance-45158

www.garveynation.com/garvey 

www.unia-aclgovernment.com/history/the-negro-world/

sw