Just Published: Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American History

I am pleased to announce the publication of Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American History, an essay collection I co-edited with UNC Wilmington art historian Amy Helene Kirschke.

As I indicated in a previous post, the book began as a conference panel at the American Historical Association annual meeting in San Diego in 2010, and evolved into the first ever volume that looks at the history of NAACP's The Crisis magazine and its relationship to W. E. B. Du Bois and 20th century American history. 

The Crisis is one of the most important virtually untapped archives of twentieth century American history. As this project unfolded, more of The Crisis became available online, so I would anticipate even more scholarship on the magazine and its 100+ year history in the years to come. 

Selected back issues of The Crisis are available through Google Books. Every issue from the first dozen years or so (1910-1922) are available as downloadable pdfs through the Modernist Journals Project, jointly sponsored by Brown University and the University of Tulsa. Also, volumes 25 and 26, spanning November 1922 through October 1923, are available through the University of Pennsylvania.


Here's a description of the volume from the University of Missouri Press book page:

In looking back on his editorship of Crisis magazine, W. E. B. Du Bois said, “We condensed more news about Negroes and their problems in a month than most colored papers before this had published in a year.” Since its founding by Du Bois in 1910, Crisis has been the primary published voice of the NAACP. Born in an age of Jim Crow racism, often strapped for funds, the magazine struggled and endured, all the while providing a forum for people of color to document their inherent dignity and proclaim their definitive worth as human beings.

As the magazine’s editor from 1910 until 1934, Du Bois guided the content and the aim of Crisis with a decisive hand. He ensured that each issue argued for civil rights, economic justice, and social equality, always framing America’s intractable color line in an international perspective. Du Bois benefited from a deep pool of black literary and artistic genius, whether by commissioning the visual creativity of Harlem Renaissance artists for Crisis covers or by publishing poems and short stories from New Negro writers. From North to South, from East to West, and even reaching across the globe, Crisis circulated its ideas and marshaled its impact far and wide. 

Building on the solid foundation Du Bois laid, subsequent editors and contributors covered issues vital to communities of color, such as access to resources during the New Deal era, educational opportunities related to the historic Brown decision, the realization of basic civil rights at midcentury, American aid to Africa and Caribbean nations, and the persistent economic inequalities of today’s global era.

Despite its importance, little has been written about the historical and cultural significance of this seminal magazine. By exploring how Crisis responded to critical issues, the essays in Protest and Propaganda provide the first well-rounded, in-depth look at the magazine's role and influence. The authors show how the essays, columns, and visuals published in Crisis changed conversations, perceptions, and even laws in the United States, thereby calling a fractured nation to more fully live up to its democratic creed. They explain how the magazine survived tremendous odds, document how the voices of justice rose above the clamor of injustice, and demonstrate how relevant such literary, journalistic, and artistic postures remain in a twenty-first-century world still in crisis.

Amy and I are very pleased to have collaborated with some noted scholars, including the University of Houston's Gerald Horne, a former prof of mine, historian of African American culture Shawn Leigh Alexander, and political scientist Bob Williams, who runs the fantastic WEBDuBois.org web site.

Here's the table of contents:

Preface, Gerald Horne

The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races: An Introduction, Shawn Leigh Alexander

Chapter 1: W. E. B. Du Bois and Positive Propaganda: A Philosophical Prelude to His Editorship of The Crisis, Robert W. Williams

Chapter 2: W. E. B. Du Bois as Print Propagandist, Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Chapter 3: Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years, Amy Helene Kirschke

Chapter 4: “We Return Fighting”: The Great War and African American Women’s Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920, Barbara McCaskill

Chapter 5: W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage, Garth E. Pauley

Chapter 6: The Crisis Children’s Page, The Brownies’ Book, and the Fantastic, Katharine Capshaw Smith

Chapter 7: God in Crisis: Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance, Edward J. Blum

Chapter 8: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Prophetic Propaganda: Religion and The Crisis, 1910-1934, Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Chapter 9: The Crisis Cover Girl: Lena Horne, Walter White, and the NAACP’s Representation of African American Femininity, Megan E. Williams

Chapter 10: The Crisis Responds to Public School Desegregation, Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn

Epilogue, Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere 

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Thanks for reading! Place your orders here and here.