The Messenger Magazine

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The Messenger was a political and literary magazine created by and for African-American people during the early 1900s that was important in the Harlem Renaissance. The Messenger was co-founded in New York by Chandler Owen and A. Phillip Randolph in August 1917. Randolph also served as editor for the socialist magazine for the duration of its printing. The Messenger was a small independent magazine (like The Little Review, the revived magazine The Dial, and The Liberator) that, according to Adam McKible, strove to find an African-American identity in the age of Jim Crow.

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.” [1]

The Messenger set the stage for African-American political writing. Its writers were radical and not afraid to attack issues that other journals and magazines would not. It was The Messenger that spoke out against Marcus Garvey’s movement because the movement was seen as illogical and far-fetched. The Messenger was 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 and “in 1919, the magazine was described by the U.S. Justice Department as ‘the most able and the most dangerous of all Negro publications.’” [2].

The Messenger published as a serial a lost novel of the Harlem Renaissance, The Letters of Davy Carr: A True Story of Colored Vanity Fair, from January 1925 to June 1926. The author, Edward Christopher Williams (1871-1929), tells the story of a diplomat in the form of an epistolary novel. Williams was the first professionally trained black librarian in America. In 1902 with his marriage to Ethel Chesnutt, the daughter of renowned author Charles W. Chesnutt, Williams became linked to another literary family. The novel was reprinted in 2004 under the title When Washington Was in Vogue.

Contents

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Ashton, Susanna M. and Tom Lutz, eds. These "Colored" United States: African American Essays from the 1920s. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1996.

[edit] Citations

  1. ^ "The Messenger", Spartacus
  2. ^ A. Philip Randolph Messenger Awards

[edit] References

  • Adam McKible, The Space and Place of Modernism: The Little Magazine in New York, New York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-41-593980-1.
  • Edward Christopher Williams, When Washington Was in Vogue: A Lost Novel of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN 0-06-055546-7.

[edit] External links


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