History

History of The Crisis by Henry Lee Moon
The Crisis, November 1970

When W.E.B. Du Bois arrived in New York City in mid-summer of 1910 to assume his dual position as director of publicity and research of the recently organized National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and as editor of the new organization's proposed publication he was 42 years old, and already renowned as a scholar, teacher, historian and spokesman for the world's "darker races." He was also full of hope as he embarked upon what was to become the major project of his long and productive career.

The publication, upon which he was to imprint indelibly his name and personality, had been name The Crisis, seemingly in his absence. Writing in the August, 1914, issue of the magazine, Mary White Ovington, a prime mover in the founding of the NAACP, recalled how the name was chosen. "We were, " she wrote, "having an informal talk regarding the new magazine. We touched the subject of poetry.

"'There is a poem of Lowell's,' I said, 'that means more to me today than any other poem in the world - The Present Crisis.'

"Mr. [William English] Walling looked up. 'The Crisis,' he said. 'There's the name for your magazine, The Crisis.'"

 This informal talk, Charles Flint Kellogg asserts in his NAACP, the definitive history of the organization, "must have taken place some time between the middle of July and August 16, the date of Du Bois's first use of the title."

If Dr. Du Bois did not name the periodical, he conceived it, nurtured it and made it a powerful vehicle in the crusade for human freedom. He had edited two earlier publications - The Moon, a short-lived weekly published in Memphis, 1906, and Horizon, published in Washington, D.C., 1907-1910. From the beginning he had insisted that an outspoken, vigorous publication was essential to the success of the NAACP. At first he encountered resistance and reluctance among some members of the Association's governing board. Finally he prevailed and the first issue of the The Crisis was published November, 1910, as "a record of the darker races."

page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |