The Messenger Magazine
Encyclopedia
The Messenger was a political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the early 20th century that was important in the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance
. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City
by Chandler Owen
and A. Philip Randolph
in August 1917.
After 1920, The Messenger featured more articles about black culture and began to publish rising black writers. It became a kind of literary magazine (like The Little Review
, the revived The Dial
, and The Liberator.) It was notable for helping strengthen African-American intellectual and political identity in the age of Jim Crow
.
in the United States. Randolph and his wife Lucille ran for secretary of state and the state legislature on the Socialist ticket in 1917. The January issue of 1918 supported Bolshevism in Russia
after its revolution.
In addition to providing a platform for African-American literature, The Messenger published much political writing. Randolph also served as editor for The Socialist magazine. Writers published in The Messenger tackled issues which other journals and magazines avoided. The Messenger was notable for its critical perspective during the Harlem Renaissance. It was described as "The most feared black publication" during its reigning era from 1917 till 1928. For instance, its articles criticized Marcus Garvey
’s movement because the editors thought "repatriating" native-born American citizens to Africa was illogical and far-fetched.
The Messenger became a voice for those who were oppressed socially and economically. Many people would have suffered injustice for a longer period of time had it not been for The Messenger. For eleven years, it paved the way for social justice
and equality. It was respected by many. Its influence was also described in 1919 by the U.S. Justice Department: "the most able and the most dangerous of all Negro publications." .
The Messenger opposed United States' entry into World War I. The newly created Bureau of Investigation
(now the FBI) took an interest in The Messenger as its officials were concerned with social unrest. Upon his arrival in Cleveland on a speaking tour during the summer of 1918, Randolph was taken into custody by the FBI for interrogation. Agents were most interested in the fact that The Messenger was funded by the Socialist Party, and worried about activities that would go against US interests and ability to wage war.
Randolph and Owen did not believe that blacks should participate in the war because they did not have political equality in the United States. Randolph reacted to his questioning by an article which he described as "satirical and sarcastic."
He wrote
. Garvey’s call was to have [blacks] "go back to Africa, and more basically, back to their own blackness.” Garvey's goal of re-populating the African continent solely with blacks and his promotion of the idea in the United States was criticized by Randolph and Owen. “Even the Senegalese French Deputy, Blaise Diagne
, agreed that Africa was too diverse and fragmented for Garvey’s black Zionism to be realized.” The editors wanted to present “the possibilities of an American future devoid of lynching and Jim Crow, discrimination
and prejudice.”
They criticized Garvey’s ideas because considering a "return to Africa" diverted African Americans from working on current racial issues and change in the United States. Randolph and Owen started the “Garvey Must Go” campaign in 1922 with the goal of getting Garvey deported. This appeared to contradict their original mission statement. “Chandler Owen explained that historically radicals had opposed deportation only in cases of expression of political or class war opinions.”
Garvey and the editors of The Messenger represented competing strains of thought among African-American leaders in Harlem
and the United States. In the small world of Harlem, Garvey rented offices for his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the same building as those of The Messenger.
Randolph and Owen continued to criticize Garvey. In the September 1922 issue, they described Garvey as a tool of the recently revived Ku Klux Klan
(KKK), saying he was “the chief hat-in-hand, me-too-boss ‘good nigger’ puppet of the Ku Klux Klan Kleagle
, Edward Young Clarke of Georgia
.” After the Messenger debunked Garvey in these terms, many African-American racial organizations denounced Garvey and his philosophies.
(1871–1929). He sets the story of a diplomat during the Harlem Renaissance
and gave it the form of an epistolary novel
. Williams was the first professionally trained black librarian
in the United States. In 1902 with his marriage to Ethel Chesnutt, the daughter of renowned author Charles W. Chesnutt
, Williams became linked to another literary family. In 2004 the novel was reprinted and issued under the title When Washington Was in Vogue.
The Messenger often published the first works for writers who achieved lasting notability. Langston Hughes
published his first short stories in The Messenger. The journal also published Zora Neale Hurston
’s “Eatonville Anthology.” Other contributors included Arna Bontemps
, Claude McKay
, and Wallace Thurman
.
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
by Chandler Owen
Chandler Owen
Chandler Owen was an African-American writer, editor and early member of the Socialist Party of America. Born in North Carolina, he studied and worked in New York, then moved to Chicago for much of his career. He established his own public relations company in Chicago and wrote speeches for...
and A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph was a leader in the African American civil-rights movement and the American labor movement. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly Negro labor union. In the early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the March on Washington...
in August 1917.
After 1920, The Messenger featured more articles about black culture and began to publish rising black writers. It became a kind of literary magazine (like The Little Review
The Little Review
The Little Review, an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson, published literary and art work from 1914 to 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a magazine that featured a wide variety of transatlantic modernists and cultivated many early examples of...
, the revived The Dial
The Dial
The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...
, and The Liberator.) It was notable for helping strengthen African-American intellectual and political identity in the age of Jim Crow
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
.
History
The mission of The Messenger:- “Our aim is to appeal to reason, to lift our pens above the cringing demagogy of the times, and above the cheap peanut politics of the old reactionary Negro leaders. Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has. Party has no weight with us; principle has. Loyalty is meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to. Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.”
Social influence
The magazine's editor Randolph was only twenty-eight when he began publication. The magazine had been affiliated with the Socialist PartySocialist Party
Socialist Party is the name of several different political parties around the world that are explicitly called Socialist. All of these parties claim to uphold socialism, though they might belong to different branches of the socialist movement and might therefore have different interpretations of...
in the United States. Randolph and his wife Lucille ran for secretary of state and the state legislature on the Socialist ticket in 1917. The January issue of 1918 supported Bolshevism in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
after its revolution.
In addition to providing a platform for African-American literature, The Messenger published much political writing. Randolph also served as editor for The Socialist magazine. Writers published in The Messenger tackled issues which other journals and magazines avoided. The Messenger was notable for its critical perspective during the Harlem Renaissance. It was described as "The most feared black publication" during its reigning era from 1917 till 1928. For instance, its articles criticized Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
’s movement because the editors thought "repatriating" native-born American citizens to Africa was illogical and far-fetched.
The Messenger became a voice for those who were oppressed socially and economically. Many people would have suffered injustice for a longer period of time had it not been for The Messenger. For eleven years, it paved the way for social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
and equality. It was respected by many. Its influence was also described in 1919 by the U.S. Justice Department: "the most able and the most dangerous of all Negro publications." .
The Messenger opposed United States' entry into World War I. The newly created Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(now the FBI) took an interest in The Messenger as its officials were concerned with social unrest. Upon his arrival in Cleveland on a speaking tour during the summer of 1918, Randolph was taken into custody by the FBI for interrogation. Agents were most interested in the fact that The Messenger was funded by the Socialist Party, and worried about activities that would go against US interests and ability to wage war.
Randolph and Owen did not believe that blacks should participate in the war because they did not have political equality in the United States. Randolph reacted to his questioning by an article which he described as "satirical and sarcastic."
He wrote
"the Negro may be choosing between being burnt by Tennessee, Georgia or Texas mobs or being shot by Germans in Belgium. We don't know about this pro-Germanism among Negroes. It may be only their anti-Americanism -meaning anti-lynchingLynchingLynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
."
“Garvey Must Go” campaign
The Messenger openly critiqued Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s theory of Black NationalismBlack nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
. Garvey’s call was to have [blacks] "go back to Africa, and more basically, back to their own blackness.” Garvey's goal of re-populating the African continent solely with blacks and his promotion of the idea in the United States was criticized by Randolph and Owen. “Even the Senegalese French Deputy, Blaise Diagne
Blaise Diagne
Blaise Diagne was a French political leader, the first black African elected to the French National Assembly, and mayor of Dakar.- Background :...
, agreed that Africa was too diverse and fragmented for Garvey’s black Zionism to be realized.” The editors wanted to present “the possibilities of an American future devoid of lynching and Jim Crow, discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
and prejudice.”
They criticized Garvey’s ideas because considering a "return to Africa" diverted African Americans from working on current racial issues and change in the United States. Randolph and Owen started the “Garvey Must Go” campaign in 1922 with the goal of getting Garvey deported. This appeared to contradict their original mission statement. “Chandler Owen explained that historically radicals had opposed deportation only in cases of expression of political or class war opinions.”
Garvey and the editors of The Messenger represented competing strains of thought among African-American leaders in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
and the United States. In the small world of Harlem, Garvey rented offices for his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the same building as those of The Messenger.
Randolph and Owen continued to criticize Garvey. In the September 1922 issue, they described Garvey as a tool of the recently revived Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
(KKK), saying he was “the chief hat-in-hand, me-too-boss ‘good nigger’ puppet of the Ku Klux Klan Kleagle
Kleagle
A Kleagle is an officer of the Ku Klux Klan whose main role is to recruit new members.-Kleagles:*Edgar Ray Killen, a Mississippi Klansman long suspected of involvement in a notorious civil rights movement murder that were the subject of the movie Mississippi Burning...
, Edward Young Clarke of Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
.” After the Messenger debunked Garvey in these terms, many African-American racial organizations denounced Garvey and his philosophies.
Literary emphasis
After 1920 the magazine featured more articles about black culture. From January 1925 to June 1926, The Messenger published as a serial the novel The Letters of Davy Carr: A True Story of Colored Vanity Fair by Edward Christopher WilliamsEdward Christopher Williams
Edward Christopher Williams was the first African-American professional librarian in the United States of America. His sudden death in 1929 ended his career the year he was expected to receive the first Ph.D. in librarianship. Williams was born on February 11, 1871, in Cleveland, Ohio, to an...
(1871–1929). He sets the story of a diplomat during the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
and gave it the form of an epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...
. Williams was the first professionally trained black librarian
Librarian
A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...
in the United States. In 1902 with his marriage to Ethel Chesnutt, the daughter of renowned author Charles W. Chesnutt
Charles W. Chesnutt
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South, where the legacy of slavery and interracial relations had resulted in many free...
, Williams became linked to another literary family. In 2004 the novel was reprinted and issued under the title When Washington Was in Vogue.
The Messenger often published the first works for writers who achieved lasting notability. Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
published his first short stories in The Messenger. The journal also published Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
’s “Eatonville Anthology.” Other contributors included Arna Bontemps
Arna Bontemps
Arnaud "Arna" Wendell Bontemps was an American poet and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.- Life and career :...
, Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
, and Wallace Thurman
Wallace Thurman
Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.-Early life:...
.
Further reading
- Ashton, Susanna M. and Tom Lutz, eds. These "Colored" United States: African American Essays from the 1920s, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
Further reading
- Edward Christopher Williams, When Washington Was in Vogue: A Lost Novel of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN 0-06-055546-7.
- Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., "The ‘Garvey Must Go’ Campaign", in No Crystal Stair: Black Life and the Messenger, 1917-1928, Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1975. pp. 132–75.
- Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., Seeing Red, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-253-21354-1
External links
- http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/randolph.cfm American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Unions website
- http://nnpa.org/news/media/pdfs/769.pdf "A. Philip Randolph Award", National Newspapers Publishers Association,
- http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACmessenger.htm "Messenger Magazine", Spartacus Schoolnet
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_randolph.html "Marcus Garvey", Public Broadcasting Service, Boston