Negro Digest and Black World

Exploring the Archive 1961-1975

By Chris Brancaccio

Publisher John H. Johnson introduced Negro Digest in Chicago in 1942 as a type of new Reader's Digest for the African American community. In its early days, the publication was mainly an assortment of reprinted articles collected from other sources and concerning African American interests. While early on sales reached up to 150,000 issues per month, the magazine's success was soon extinguished by Johnson's other magazine, Ebony, first published in autumn of 1945. Becoming an unprofitable venture, Negro Digest folded in 1951.

However, Negro Digest's early failure would not reflect its later success. As critic and poet Kaluma ya Salaam wrote, "for the publication of Black Arts creative literature, no magazine was more important than the Chicago based Johnson publication Negro Digest/Black World." When interest in black consciousness, writing, and art grew in the early 1960s, Johnson revived Negro Digest. In 1961 he appointed notable black intellectual Hoyt Fuller as editor and the first issue was published. The second incarnation of the magazine would be much different than the first, transforming it from a catalogue of stories that regarded black interests into a vanguard publication that acted as a leading forum and voice in the Black Arts movement. Under Hoyt Fuller's guidance, the magazine underwent many changes, reporting on controversial issues such as Black Power and giving voice to local Chicago poets such as Haki Madhubuti (don l. lee) and Carolyn Rodgers. The publication's eventual transformation into the more politicized and globally focused Black World marked its effort to provide a literary space for not only African Americans but Black people through out the world. In a rare editorial note dated May 1970, Fuller explained the magazine's purpose of "guarding against the opportunists and charlatans who would exploit Black Art and Literature for their own gain and the spiritual and artistic colonization of Black people" by "routinely [publishing] articles which will probe and report the conditions of peoples and their struggles throughout the Black World."

Engaging Negro Digest/Black World is much easier if one is familiar with the format throughout its years of publication. Often, the issues are built around a common theme; but regardless, they always concern themselves with some aspect of the black experience. There are annual poetry and theater issues, which highlight works by well-known artists and critics such as Amiri Baraka and Addison Gayle, as well as lesser-known participants in the movement. The general format of the issue is an editor's note, several stories, poems, or political essays pertaining to the general theme of the issue, and then the "regular features," which include "Perspectives (notes on books, writers, artists, and the arts)," Humor in Hue," (witty political comics about race by various black artists), and selected poetry.

Negro Digest/Black World is such a fascinating artifact because the content of each issue seems to evade rigid binaries like conservative/liberal or reactionary/radical. Instead it functions as a forum for different issues and ideas that were unavoidable realities of the black public sphere. For example, the June 1967 issue of Negro Digest (which cost 35 cents to purchase) contains an excerpt from Black Skin, White Masks by the extremely influential psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon entitled "Black Man, White Woman," while at the same time a piece by Martin Luther King Jr. called "Stand on War and Peace: Martin Luther King Jr. Explains." Issues of Negro Digest/Black World, such as the June 1967 issue, leave the magazine's political stance rather opaque, making it all the more interesting and useful for reconstructing a historical and ideological sketch of the period.

In addition to the exposition of various viewpoints, the magazine was also a very real space for the performance of public debate. For instance, the November 1966 issue entitled "Black Power Symposium" features 12 different opinions on Black Power, offered by a diverse group of black individuals ranging from Conrad Kent Rivers, founder of OBAC, to Anita Cornwell, a writer and former state employee, to Dudely Randall, founder of Broadside Press but also a librarian and poet. The sheer range of voices about this particular concept automatically indicates how useful this resource is for constructing a historiography from an African American perspective. Another way debates were manifested was in articles often preceded (but not always) with the label "Perspective." A fascinating example is June Jordan's "White English: The Politics of Language," part of the August 1973 issue's "Focus on Language" feature. In this essay Jordan makes an extremely cogent appeal to readers about the importance of "black" English. At the end of the article, the political implications are amplified by the postscript that reads "Both her (June Jordan) award-winning teen novel His Own Where and Dry Victories, a history book, were written entirely in "Black Language." "One consequence," she writes, "is that the novel has been banned from the public schools of Baltimore Md." As this example illustrates, the magazine both hosted literal debates and articulated more conceptual and long running problems such as the one addressed by Jordan.

Negro Digest/Black World also published original aesthetic theory and reproductions of rare artistic works. For example, October 1971 issue features the article, "AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists): '10 in Search of a Nation." by Africobra artist Jeff Donaldson. Not only does this article contain the group's credo in the words of one of its most prominent member, but it also features a variety of rare images, such as Africobra member Jae Jarrell modeling her "revolutionary suit." This fascinating image has fallen almost completely into obscurity, only existing in this periodical's yellowing pages.

Africobra, like OBAC, was based in Chicago and it is no coincidence that they and other Chicago collectives, organizations, and groups were frequently featured in Negro Digest/Black World. The magazine was published out of Chicago and therefore, whether intentionally or not, showcased local up-and-coming talent and political concerns of readers in the city. There is also special attention paid to local issues that would resonate with the national African American community as well such as the statement "Fred Hampton: Martyr" by William E. Hampton in the May 1970 issue. The best way to navigate Negro Digest/Black World is to either track down a particular article of interest (they are often cited but rarely republished) and explore the surrounding articles and issues or find a copy of compiled by. While Semmes book is a slightly clumsy compilation, it seems to be the only way to sift through the material and get a short annotation about each article without actually having to approach the issues individually.

Negro Digest/Black World is a massive archive. While the first issues of Negro Digest from the 1940s and early 1950s shouldn't be forgotten, the rebirth of the magazine in the early 1960s is of great use to those studying histories of activism, Black Aesthetics (both literary and artistic, local and national), and historical reflections of the period. While there is a wealth of phenomenal material, navigating this archive can be an extremely difficult task because of its breadth and the variety of material. Clovis E. Semmes has published a book Roots of Afrocentric Thought: A Reference Guide to Negro Digest/Black World 1961-1976 which contains a short annotation for each and every article published in the magazine's second run. Luckily this resource is still available at many libraries. So too is the magazine itself since it was so widely circulated and read during its lifetime. A renewed scholarly interest in these publications allows for a new perspective to be revealed and so could have a profound effect on the way we conceptualize the Black Arts movement and black activism during this period.