The Crisis - NAACP Magazine (1910 - 1923)

On November 1, 1910, the first issue of "Crisis" was published by editor W.E.B. Du Bois. From the article:


"7,800 pages of The Crisis magazine, every issue published from its first issue, November 1910, through October 1923..

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) established The Crisis magazine in 1910 to provide a magazine for its members. Under the editorship of W.E.B. Du Bois. The Crisis, which Du Bois edited for nearly 25 years, became the premier outlet for black writers and artists.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was a noted scholar, editor, and African-American activist. Du Bois was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest and oldest civil rights organization in America. A brilliant writer and speaker, Du Bois is considered by many to be the outstanding African-American intellectual of his time. His "The Philadelphia Negro" (1899) was the first sociological study of African-Americans. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois took a forceful stand against Booker T. Washington's policy of accommodation, calling instead for "ceaseless agitation and insistent demand for equality," and the "use of force of every sort: moral persuasion, propaganda, and where possible even physical resistance."

In his first editorial written for the magazine Du Bois wrote, "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. …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 issues included in this "The Crisis" archive includes articles on current events, editorial commentary, essays on culture and history, short stories and poems, reviews, art work, and reports on the achievements of people of color worldwide.

Throughout the years in which Du Bois was the editor of The Crisis, the magazine published the work of many young African-American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Its greatest era as a literary journal was between 1919 and 1926, when Jessie Redmon Fauset was literary editor. Fauset recognized and published the talents of writers such as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer.

The period of time this collection covers coincides with the beginning of an era referred to as the "New Negro Movement." At this time a mass physical movement of African-Americans from the South to the North and West began in the early twentieth century. Later World War I contributed two effects. The increase in industrial activity generated by the war effort caused many northern businesses to recruit African-Americans living in the South to meet labor demands. Outside the South these workers experienced a measurable increase in wages, working and social conditions. Also, approximately 370,000 African-American men served in the armed forces during World War I. After returning home, many of these men sought the freedoms they were told World War I was fought to preserve.

A political shift was occurring among African-Americans, away from the "accommodationist" approach favored by Booker T. Washington, which was giving way to the more "militant" advocacy of W.E.B. Du Bois.

These forces converged to help create the "New Negro Movement" of the 1920s, which promoted a renewed sense of racial pride, economic independence, and progressive politics. Not only politically but culturally and artistically, as shown by the "Negro Renaissance," centered in New York City's Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance, the cultural component of the New Negro Movement, provided the first mass display of African-American cultural self-expression."