Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life

Last updated
Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life
FrequencyMonthly
Publisher National Urban League
Founded1923
Final issue1949
Country United States
LanguageEnglish

Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life was an academic journal published by the National Urban League (NUL). The journal acted as a sociological forum for the emerging topic of African-American studies and was known for fostering the literary culture during the Harlem Renaissance. It was published monthly from 1923 to 1942 and then quarterly through 1949.

Contents

History

The studies published in the early issues of Opportunity were conducted and funded by NUL and supported the social mission of an academic journal connected with the missions of NUL and Fisk University. Topics centered on the social challenges faced by black people at the time, including access to employment, housing, sanitation and education. The journal's motto "Opportunity not Alms" describes the editorial direction, as does the journal's manifesto:

"Opportunity is a venture inspired by a long insistent demand, both general and specific, for a journal of Negro life that would devote itself religiously to an interpretation of the social problems of the Negro population.... The policy of Opportunity will be definitely constructive. It will aim to present, objectively, facts of Negro life. It hopes, thru an analysis of these social questions, to provide a basis of understanding; encourage interracial co-operation in the working out of these problems." [1]

While the journal was published from 1923 to 1949, its main influence on African-American literature was from 1923 to 1928. The immediate objective of Opportunity was to publish dependable data concerning black life and race relations. Editor-in-chief Charles S. Johnson wrote in the first issue of Opportunity, "Accurate and dependable facts can correct inaccurate and slanderous assertions that have gone unchallenged… and what is most important, to inculcate a disposition to see enough of interest and beauty of their own lives to rid themselves of the inferior feeling of being Negro". [1]

Central to Opportunity's founding were two patrons: Mrs. Ruth Standish Baldwin, the white widow of a railroad magnate, and George Edmund Haynes. Haynes, a graduate of Fisk University, Yale University, and Columbia University, became the NUL's first executive secretary. The interracial character of the League's board was set from its first days; it was the template for Charles Johnson's approach to fostering interest, support, and occasion for African-American art and artists. Critics of the journal, as well as of the Harlem Renaissance, thought that Johnson's literary content may have been pandering to his white audience and patrons. Wallace Thurman said, "The results of the Renaissance have been sad rather than satisfactory, in that critical standards have been ignored and the measure of achievement has been racial rather than literary" [2]

Under Johnson's editorship the journal's circulation rose to 11,000 in 1928. [3] While not as widely read as The Crisis or The Messenger ,[ citation needed ] the journal was instrumental in providing breaks for new artists through its literary contests and literary parties.[ citation needed ] As the first editor-in-chief of Opportunity, Johnson immediately broadened the scope of the journal, from a purely sociological journal to a multi-faceted publication that included African-American arts. He published photographic essays, artworks, and poetry beside research studies. Powerful photojournalism illustrated the quality of life for working blacks across America.

Literary contests

Johnson is credited for organizing and promoting literary parties, which successfully brought together African-American artists and white patrons of money and letters. From 1924 to 1927, Johnson sponsored three literary contests. Eric Walrond, a regular contributor to the journal, introduced Johnson to Harlem's notorious gambling kingpin, Casper Holstein. Holstein became a major patron of Opportunity and the journal's literary contests, the first of which received 732 entries. The literary contest became essential to the promotion of the Harlem Renaissance's writers and artists. The May 1925 issue of Opportunity lists a number of prizewinners who went on to enjoy successful publishing careers: Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Sterling Brown, and Franklin Frazier. From 1925 to 1927 Johnson provided over three contest award dinners where on average almost 350 black artists and white patrons and publishers attended. According to Arna Bontemps, contributor to Opportunity, these events provided enthusiasm for African-American artists, increased white patronage, and provided exposure to the major New York City publishers (Knopf, MacMillan, and Harpers). [4]

After 1928, when Johnson accepted the presidency of Fisk University, chief editors of the journal included Elmer Anderson Carter (October 1928–January 1945), Madeline L. Aldridge (January 1945–June 1947), and Dutton Ferguson (July 1947–January 1949). Under Carter's editorship, the journal resumed its focus for publishing sociological studies of African Americans and continued with this purpose until it ceased publication in 1949.

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Weldon Johnson</span> American writer and activist (1871–1938)

James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Countee Cullen</span> American author (1903–1946)

Countee Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.

<i>The Crisis</i> Official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mary Dunlop Maclean. The Crisis has been in continuous print since 1910, and it is the oldest Black-oriented magazine in the world. Today, The Crisis is "a quarterly journal of civil rights, history, politics and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Douglas (artist)</span> American painter

Aaron Douglas was an American painter, illustrator, and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He developed his art career painting murals and creating illustrations that addressed social issues around race and segregation in the United States by utilizing African-centric imagery. Douglas set the stage for young, African-American artists to enter the public-arts realm through his involvement with the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1944, he concluded his art career by founding the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught visual art classes at Fisk University until his retirement in 1966. Douglas is known as a prominent leader in modern African-American art whose work influenced artists for years to come.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Van Vechten</span> American writer and photographer (1880–1964)

Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gwendolyn B. Bennett</span> American writer and journalist

Gwendolyn B. Bennett was an American artist, writer, and journalist who contributed to Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, which chronicled cultural advancements during the Harlem Renaissance. Though often overlooked, she herself made considerable accomplishments in art, poetry, and prose. She is perhaps best known for her short story "Wedding Day", which was published in the magazine Fire!! and explores how gender, race, and class dynamics shape an interracial relationship. Bennett was a dedicated and self-preserving woman, respectfully known for being a strong influencer of African-American women rights during the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout her dedication and perseverance, Bennett raised the bar when it came to women's literature and education. One of her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance was her literary acclaimed short novel Poets Evening; it helped the understanding within the African-American communities, resulting in many African Americans coming to terms with identifying and accepting themselves.

<i>The New Negro</i> 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke

The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) is an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature edited by Alain Locke, who lived in Washington, DC, and taught at Howard University during the Harlem Renaissance. As a collection of the creative efforts coming out of the burgeoning New Negro Movement or Harlem Renaissance, the book is considered by literary scholars and critics to be the definitive text of the movement. Part 1 of The New Negro: An Interpretation, titled "The Negro Renaissance", includes Locke's title essay "The New Negro", as well as nonfiction essays, poetry, and fiction by writers including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Eric Walrond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wallace Thurman</span> American novelist

Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist and screenwriter active during the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote essays, worked as an editor, and was a publisher of short-lived newspapers and literary journals. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929), which explores discrimination within the black community based on skin color, with lighter skin being more highly valued.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles S. Johnson</span> American sociologist and university administrator

Charles Spurgeon Johnson was an American sociologist and college administrator, the first black president of historically black Fisk University, and a lifelong advocate for racial equality and the advancement of civil rights for African Americans and all ethnic minorities. He preferred to work collaboratively with liberal white groups in the South, quietly as a "sideline activist," to get practical results.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia Douglas Johnson</span> American poet and playwright (1880–1966)

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was a poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Negro</span> Term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance

"New Negro" is a term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance implying a more outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow racial segregation. The term "New Negro" was made popular by Alain LeRoy Locke in his anthology The New Negro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harlem Renaissance</span> African-American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke. The movement also included the new African American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by a renewed militancy in the general struggle for civil rights, combined with the Great Migration of African American workers fleeing the racist conditions of the Jim Crow Deep South, as Harlem was the final destination of the largest number of those who migrated north.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marita Bonner</span> American dramatist (1899–1971)

Marita Bonner, also known as Marieta Bonner, was an American writer, essayist, and playwright who is commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Other names she went by were Marita Occomy, Marita Odette Bonner, Marita Odette Bonner Occomy, Marita Bonner Occomy, and Joseph Maree Andrew. On December 29, 1921, along with 15 other women, she chartered the Iota chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric D. Walrond</span> Afro-Caribbean writer (1898–1966)

Eric Derwent Walrond was an Afro-Caribbean Harlem Renaissance writer and journalist. Born in Georgetown, British Guiana, the son of a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father, Walrond was well-travelled, moving early in life to live in Barbados, and then Panama, New York City, and eventually England. He made a lasting contribution to literature, his most famous book being Tropic Death, published in New York City in 1926 when he was 28; it remains in print today as a classic of its era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eulalie Spence</span> American dramatist

Eulalie Spence was a writer, teacher, director, actress and playwright from the British West Indies. She was an influential member of the Harlem Renaissance, writing fourteen plays, at least five of which were published. Spence, who described herself as a "folk dramatist" who made plays for fun and entertainment, was considered one of the most experienced female playwrights before the 1950s, and received more recognition than other black playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance period, winning several competitions. She presented several plays with W.E.B. Du Bois' Krigwa Players, of which she was a member from 1926 to 1928. Spence was also a mentor to theatrical producer Joseph Papp, founder of The Public Theater and the accompanying festival currently known as Shakespeare in the Park.

Lewis Grandison Alexander was an African American poet, actor, playwright, and costume designer who lived in Washington, D.C., and had strong ties to the Harlem Renaissance period in New York. Alexander focused most of his time and creativity on poetry, and it is for this that he is best known.

George Edmund Haynes was an American sociology scholar and federal civil servant, a co-founder and first executive director of the National Urban League, serving 1911 to 1918. A graduate of Fisk University, he earned a master's degree at Yale University, and was the first African American to earn a doctorate degree from Columbia University, where he completed one in sociology.

Marion Vera Cuthbert was an American writer and intellectual associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Eugene Gordon was a journalist, editor, fiction writer, World War I officer, and social activist. He cofounded and edited the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine Saturday Evening Quill and edited a magazine put out by the Boston John Reed Club. He wrote primarily on subjects related to racial discrimination and social justice. He published some fiction under pseudonyms, using Egor Don and Clark Hall and Frank Lynn.

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties: Anthology of Black Verse is a 1927 poetry anthology that was edited by Countee Cullen. It has been republished at least three times, in 1955, 1974, and 1995 and included works by thirty-eight African-American poets, including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude McKay. The anthology also includes biographical sketches of the poets whose work is included in the book.

References

  1. 1 2 Johnson, Charles, ed. Opportunity the Journal of Negro Life, January 1923: N. pag.
  2. Ikonne, Chidi. "Opportunity and Black Literature," Phylon. 40.1 (1979): 86-93. Print.
  3. N. W. Ayer And Son's American Newspaper Annual And Directory. Library of Congress, n.d. 29 Feb. 2012. N. W. Ayer & Son's Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals.
  4. Stroman, Carolyn A. "Charles S(purgeon) Johnson." American Magazine Journalists, 1900-1960: First Series 91 (1990): n.pag. Literature Resource Center. January 24, 2012.