| Founded | 1967 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Haki R. Madhubuti, Carolyn Rodgers, and Johari Amini |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Chicago, Illinois |
| Distribution | Ingram Publisher Services [1] |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | thirdworldpressfoundation |
Third World Press (TWP) is the largest independent black-owned press in the United States, [2] founded in 1967 by Haki R. Madhubuti (then known as Don L. Lee), [3] with early support from Johari Amini and Carolyn Rodgers. [4] Since the 1960s, the company has focused on publishing culturally progressive and political books of fiction and non-fiction, poetry, and cross-genre work.
Madhubuti recalled a pivotal encounter that led him to publishing. In 1960, as a teenager traveling to sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door, he visited a home in Springfield, Illinois. The door was opened by "a very sophisticated African-American man" who invited him in, fed him, and offered him advice. "He said, 'Young man, the one thing no one can take away from you is an education,'" as Madhubuti recalled. The man encouraged him to enroll in college and gave him $20, about $160 today. Afterwards, Madhubuti said he returned to Chicago "determined to build something of his own". [5]
In Chicago, he became active in the Black Arts Movement, within which Gwendolyn Brooks became a literary mentor and model. [6] In December 1967, Madhubuti met with poet and activist Carolyn Rodgers [7] and Johari Amini in the basement of his South Side apartment in Chicago to launch Third World Press (TWP) as an outlet for African-American literature. With $400 earned from poetry readings, a mimeograph machine, and Dudley Randall's home-based Broadside Press as a business model, Madhubuti began operation. [8] By 2007, the company continued to thrive in a multimillion-dollar facility. It is the stated mission of TWP "to always honor Black writers and artists and to celebrate artists of all cultures". [9]
In May 2011, Third World Press developed and launched TWPBooks.com, which replaced the former ThirdWorldPressInc.com. TWPBooks.com leverages the heritage and technological spirit for which Third World Press has come to be known. Under the direction of Madhudbuti, Third World Press has embraced social media and the prevalence of eBooks, while upgrading its internal technologies to better serve customers of Third World Press.
In 2015, Madhubuti converted Third World Press into the non-profit Third World Press Foundation. Explaining the change, he told Publishers Weekly that the company "needed a new, more realistic business model for our authors". In addition to its publishing operation, the foundation runs a pair of charter schools and one private school using a curriculum that incorporates African thought and culture that serves children from preschool through eighth grade. [3]
Third World Press has published works by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as by Sonia Sanchez, Sterling Plumpp and Pearl Cleage. [10] The list of authors published by TWP also includes Amiri Baraka, [11] Margaret Walker, Sam Greenlee, Naomi Long Madgett, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Mari Evans, [12] Kalamu ya Salaam, Gloria Naylor, Gil Scott-Heron, Chancellor Williams, [13] George E. Kent [14] and many others.
In 2006, The Covenant with Black America , with an introduction by Tavis Smiley, reached No. 1 in the New York Times Best Seller list. [15]
The poet Parneshia Jones, director of Northwestern University Press, began her publishing career as an intern at Third World Press. [16]
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Margaret Walker was an American poet and writer. She was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago, known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. Her notable works include For My People (1942) which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, and the novel Jubilee (1966), set in the South during the American Civil War.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Tavis Smiley is an American talk show host and author. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew up in Bunker Hill, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles.
Dudley Randall was an African-American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan. He founded a pioneering publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African-American writers, among them Melvin Tolson, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Etheridge Knight, Margaret Walker, and others.
Haki R. Madhubuti is an African-American author, educator, and poet, as well as a publisher and operator of black-themed bookstore. He is particularly recognized in connection with the founding in 1967 of Third World Press, considered the oldest independent black publishing house in the United States.
Lorenzo Thomas was an American poet and critic. He was born in the Republic of Panama and grew up in New York City, where his family immigrated in 1948. In 1973, Thomas moved to Houston, Texas. Thomas had a two decade career as a professor at the University of Houston–Downtown.
Larry Neal or Lawrence Neal was an American writer, poet, critic and academic. He was a notable scholar of African-American theater, well known for his contributions to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He was a major influence in both New York and Chicago, pushing for black culture to focus less on integration with White culture, rather than celebrating its differences within an equally important and meaningful artistic and political field, thus celebrating Black heritage.
Amiri Baraka, previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.
While African-American book publishers have been active in the United States since the second decade of the 19th century, the 1960s and 1970s saw a proliferation of publishing activity, with the establishment of many new publishing houses, an increase in the number of titles published, and significant growth in the number of African-American bookstores. African-American commercial book publishers released a total of 154 titles in the period 1970–74, a dramatic rise from the previous high of 21 titles published during the five-year spans of 1935–39 and 1940–44. Institutional and religious publishers also increased their title output, rising from 51 titles in the years 1960–64 to 240 titles in 1970–74. Concomitantly, there was a widening in the scope of publishing objectives on the part of African-American book publishers, who began to release titles that not only advanced their particular ideologies but dealt with topics unrelated to Black Americana or Africana. Such diversity is emblematic of the increasingly important role in American culture and society of African-American book publishers.
The National Black Writers Conference (NBWC) is presented by the Center for Black Literature (CBL) at Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York. Founded by Dr. Brenda M. Greene, the Center for Black Literature was officially approved by the College Council of Medgar Evers College and by the board of trustees in October 2002. Its mission is to expand, broaden, and enrich the public's knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of literature produced by people of the African diaspora. It accomplishes its mission through a variety of programs and partnerships and by serving as a forum for the discussion, reading, research, study, and critical analysis of Black literature. It is the only center devoted to this mission in the country.
Angela Jackson is an American poet, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jackson has been a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a community that fosters the intellectual development of Black creators, since 1970. She has held teaching positions at Kennedy-King College, Columbia College Chicago, Framingham State University, and Howard University. Jackson has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and became the fifth Illinois Poet Laureate in 2020.
Askia Muhammad Touré is an African-American poet, essayist, political editor, and leading voice of the Black Arts Movement. Toure helped to define a new generation of black consciousness by creating a triumphal identity for the purpose of uplifting the African heritage beyond the oppressive ideas that dominated the time.
Carolyn Marie Rodgers was a Chicago-based writer, particularly noted for her poetry. The youngest of four, Rodgers had two sisters and a brother, born to Clarence and Bazella Rodgers. Rodgers was also a founder of one of America's oldest and largest black presses, Third World Press. She got her start in the literary circuit as a young woman studying under Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks in the South Side of Chicago.
The Organization of Black American Culture (OBA-C) was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, community activists, and others. The group was originally known as Committee for the Arts (CFA), which formed in February 1967 in Southside Chicago, Illinois. By May 1967, the group became OBAC and included Black intellectuals Hoyt W. Fuller, the poet Conrad Kent Rivers, and Gerald McWorter. OBAC aimed to coordinate artistic support in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality of opportunity for African Americans. The organization had workshops for visual arts, drama, and writing, and produced two publications: a newsletter, Cumbaya, and the magazine Nommo.
Johari Amini (1935-2023) was an African American poet, author, and chiropractor.
Broadside Lotus Press is an independent press that was created as a result of the merging of Broadside Press, founded by Dudley Randall in 1965, in Detroit, and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press, founded in Detroit in 1972. At the time of the merger they were among the oldest black-owned presses in the United States. On March 31, 2015, it was announced that Lotus Press would be merging with Broadside Press, forming the new Broadside Lotus Press.
William Paul Coates is an American publisher, printer and community activist. In 1978 he founded the Black Classic Press (BCP), an imprint devoted to publishing obscure and significant works by and about individuals of African descent, particularly previously out-of-print books, and he also established the printing company BCP Digital Printing in 1995. He is the father of award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Parneshia Jones is an American publisher, poet, and editor.
Brenda M. Greene, is an American scholar, author, literary activist, and radio host at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. Greene is also the founder and executive director of the Center for Black Literature, the director of the National Black Writers Conference, and the former chair of the English department at Medgar Evers College. Prior to her work in the academy, Greene also worked as an educator in the New York City Public School system, and with civic and political organizations, to enrich and engage the community-at-large. Since 2004, she has served as a radio host on WNYE radio, connecting listeners to some of today's most accomplished writers. She is the former board chair of the Nkiru Center for Education and Culture, co-founded by hip hop icons Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli. Greene is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
