The Messenger Magazine

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.

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 Party 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

"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-lynching."

“Garvey Must Go” campaign

The Messenger openly critiqued Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s theory of Black Nationalism. 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 Williams (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.

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