The
National Association for the Advancement of
Coloured People (NAACP) was established in February, 1909. The
NAACP started its own magazine, Crisis
in November, 1910. It was named after a popular poem, The
Present Crisis
by James Russell Lowell. The magazine was edited by William
Du Bois and the first edition had sixteen page magazine and cost
10 cents a copy.
In his first editorial William
Du Bois said that Crisis would
"be first and foremost a newspaper", and secondly, it would
serve as a review of opinion and literature. Finally it would 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."
Early contributors to early issues included Oswald
Garrison Villard, Jane Addams, Adela
Hunt Logan, Mary Church Terrell,
Ida Wells and Charles
Edward Russell. The magazine soon built up a large readership
amongst black people and white sympathizers. In January, 1911, it
sold 3,000, February 4,000 and March 6,000. Circulation reached 50,000
by 1917 and peaked at 100,000 in 1919. This made it more popular than
established journals such as the New
Republic and The Nation.
In the journal
William Du Bois campaigned
against lynching, Jim
Crow laws, sexual inequality. He
told his readers in October, 1911, that "every
argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage."
In 1912 he supported Eugene Debs, the Socialist
Party candidate for president. He particularly admired the way
that Debs refused to address segregated audiences in the South.
William Du Bois supported United States
involvement in the First World War. This
caused him to break with the editors of other African American journals
such as Chandler Owen and Philip
Randolph (The
Messenger) and Hubert
Harrison (The Voice).
Harrison was particularly upset by an article in The
Crisis where he argued that: "Let, us, while
this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks."
The circulation of The
Crisis continued to grow. The average monthly sales
reached 30,000 in 1915. Sometimes members of the NAACP
board questioned the methods that William
Du Bois used to promote the magazine. The use of a light-skinned
beautiful woman on the front-cover caused a great deal of controversy
and Oswald Garrison Villard was one of
the many members of the organisation who complained.
The Crisis continued to
grow and in September 1916 circulation almost reached 50,000. The
magazine finally reached its editor's objective when the December,
1918 edition sold 53,750 copies. The following year it was selling
100,000 copies a month making it more popular than established journals
such as the New Republic and
The Nation.
Although Du Bois had originally been sympathetic to Black Nationalism,
after the First World War he became highly
critical of Marcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
Du Bois described the leader of the UNIA as "a lunatic
or traitor" and Garvey retaliated by calling him a "white
man's nigger".
William Du Bois became increasingly militant
and by the 1930s he was accused of being a Marxist.
After a controversial editorial in January, 1934, the NAACP
board demanded that unless he reflected the views of the organization
he should resign. This he agreed to do and was replaced by the more
moderate Roy Wilkins.
(1) William
Du Bois, The Crisis
(October, 1911)
Every
argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage; every
argument for women's suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage; both
are great moments in democracy. There should be on the part of Negroes
absolutely no hesitation whenever and wherever responsible human beings
are without voice in their government. The man of Negro blood who
hesitates to do them justice is false to his race, his ideals and
his country.
(2) William
Du Bois, The Crisis
(August, 1912)
The Progressive Party recognizes
that distinctions of race or class in political life have no place
in a democracy. Especially does the party realize that a group of
10,000,000 people who have in a generation changed from a slave to
a free labour system, re-established family, life, accumulated $1,000,000,000
in property, including 20,000,000 acres of land, and reduced their
illiteracy from 80 to 30 per cent, deserve and must have justice,
opportunity and a voice in their own government. The party, therefore,
demands for the American of Negro descent the repeal of unfair discriminatory
laws and the right to vote on the same terms on which other citizens
vote.
(3)
When Booker
T. Washington
died, William
Du Bois
wrote an article about him in The Crisis (14th November, 1915)
Booker T. Washington was the greatest Negro leader since Frederick
Douglass, and the most distinguished man, white or black who has come
out of the South since the Civil War. On the other hand, in stern
justice, we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility
for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement, the decline of the
Negro college and the firmer establishment of color caste in this
land.
(4)
Hubert Harrison, The Voice (25th
July, 1918)
The
essence of the present situation lies in the fact that the people
whom our white masters have "recognized" as our leaders
(without taking the trouble to consult us) and those who, by our own
selection, has actually attained to leadership among us are being
revaluated and, in most cases, rejected. The most striking instance
from the latter class is Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis.
Du Bois's case is the more significant because his former services
to his race have been undoubtedly of a high and courageous sort.
Dr. Du Bois first palpably sinned in his editorial, "Close Ranks".
But this offense lies in a single sentence: "Let, us, while this
war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks."
It is felt by all his critics that Du Bois, of all Negroes, knows
best that our "special grievances", which the War Department
Bulletin describes as justifiable, consists of lynching, segregation
and disfranchisement and that the Negroes of America cannot preserve
either their lives, their manhood or their vote (which is their political
lives and liberties) with these things in existence.
(5)
Roy
Wilkins interviewed Huey
P. Long for The
Crisis in February, 1935.
"How about lynching,
Senator? About the Costigan-Wagner bill in congress and that lynching
down there yesterday in Franklinton..."
He ducked the Costigan-Wagner
bill, but of course, everyone knows he is against it. He cut me off
on the Franklinton lynching and hastened in with his "pat"
explanation:
"You mean down in
Washington parish (county)? Oh, that? That one slipped up on us. Too
bad, but those slips will happen. You know while I was governor there
were no lynchings and since this man (Governor Allen) has been in
he hasn't had any. (There have been 7 lynchings in Louisiana in the
last two years.) This one slipped up. I can't do nothing about it.
No sir. Can't do the dead nigra no good. Why, if I tried to go after
those lynchers it might cause a hundred more niggers to be killed.
You wouldn't want that,
would you?"
"But you control
Louisiana," I persisted, "you could..."
"Yeah, but it's not
that simple. I told you there are some things even Huey
Long can't get away with. We'll just have to watch out for the next
one. Anyway that nigger was guilty of coldblooded murder."
"But your own supreme
court had just granted him a new trial."
"Sure we got a law
which allows a reversal on technical points. This nigger
got hold of a smart lawyer somewhere and proved a technicality. He
was guilty as hell. But we'll catch the next lynching."
(4)
William Patterson, The Man Who
Cried Genocide (1971)
One day, as I walked to the hotel from the university,
I was attracted by a copy of the Crisis, on display in the window
of a
bookstore. This was the official organ of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, and what particularly struck
me was the headline "Close Ranks." It turned out to be the
title of an editorial written by W. E. B. Du Bois, the magazine's
editor. His injunction that colored people should support the U.S.
war effort did not correspond with my own thoughts on the subject.
But I wanted to examine the arguments in support of the opposite viewpoint.
Walking into that store was like walking into a new life. Emanuel
Levine, a short, stocky man of about 30, with a shock of black hair
and a muscular body that made me think of a wrestler, greeted me cordially.
It was not surprising
that a discontented Black law student should find pleasure in a place
where he could engage in
friendly and informative discussions. At school they were teaching
me to accommodate to the racist society in which I
lived, while in the bookstore I began to learn some fundamentals about
the nature of that society and how to go about
changing it.
I became acquainted with
the Masses, a militant magazine that published lively social criticism
of the entire American
scene. I was introduced to Marxist literature and books; I read the
Messenger, a magazine published in New York by two
young Black radicals - A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen. I was
stirred by its analyses of the source of Black oppression and the
attempt to identify it with the international revolution against working-class
oppression and colonialism. This was an enriching and exhilarating
experience.
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