HISTORY

   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."

   Settled in a bare office at 20 Vesey Street, Dr. Du Bois tackled his new job with an abundance of enthusiasm and a paucity of financial resources. He had great plans for the magazine, knew just what he wanted to do, and worked hard and successfully to produce a new vital force in American life. The Crisis, he records in his Autobiography, published posthumously nearly 60 years later, "came at a psychological moment and its success was phenomenal. From the 1,000 which I first ventured to publish, it went up a thousand a month until by 1918 (due, of course, to special circumstances) we published and sold 100,000 copies."

   In the lead editorial of the first issue of the magazine, Dr. Du Bois defined the policy and indicated the goals of The Crisis. The text of that editorial follows:

   The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. Catholicity and tolerance, reason and forbearance can today make the world-old dream of human brotherhood approach realization; while bigotry and prejudice, emphasized race consciousness and force can repeat the awful history of the contact of nations and groups in the past. We strive for this higher and broader vision of Peace and Good Will.

   The policy of THE CRISIS will be simple and well defined:

   It will first and foremost be a newspaper: it will record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American.

   Secondly, it will be a review of opinion and literature, recording briefly books, articles, and important expressions of opinion in the white and colored press on the race problem.

   Thirdly, it will publish a few short articles.

   Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals. The magazine will be the organ of no clique or party and will avoid personal rancor of all sorts. In the absence of proof to the contrary it will assume honesty of purpose on the part of all men, North and South, white and black.

   When the magazine was founded the Negro press had not developed to its present state as a news medium and the non-Negro press paid scant attention to positive news about black people. In the six decades since 1910 there have been significant changes: the Negro press is a flourishing institution which must now compete with the major metropolitan newspapers in reporting on activities and achievements of the Negro community.

   Today The Crisis does not attempt the newspaper role. However, it continues to adhere to the other three planks laid down by the founder and particularly to the editorial commitment to "stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable and earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals."

   Dr. Du Bois recognized that the magazine had been established as the official organ of the NAACP, an arrangement which he never basically challenged. Yet, The Crisis, was a singularly personal journal. He wrote its brilliant editorials and except for the official NAACP documents and declarations, determined its content. He freely expressed himself in the pages of the magazine to the dismay, occasionally, of some of his fellow Board members. He became embroiled with Oswald Garrison Villard and certain other Board members who sought to exercise control over The Crisis which the editor regarded as his special domain. He successfully resisted these efforts.

   In the early years, the circulation of the magazine exceeded the NAACP membership. Du Bois utilized the pages of the periodical, particularly his editorials, to enlist more members. Month after month The Crisis expounded the NAACP program, reported the activities of the organization and appealed for membership. A January, 1914, editorial concluded with the exhortation:"Join the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE or be strangled to a slow and awful death by growing prejudice."

   Editing the official publication of an organization while insisting on expressing oneself presented a dilemma for a person as fiercely independent as Du Bois. "There was, " he says in his Autobiography, "the delicate matter of policy; of how far I should express my own ideas and reactions in The Crisis or the studied judgment of the organization." He asserted the right of the editor to express his opinion "so long as that opinion is in general agreement with that of the organization ....It was perhaps rather unusual that for two decades the two lines of thinking ran so largely together...It took on the part of the organization, a great deal of patience and faith to allow me the latitude that they did for so many years; and on the other hand I was enabled to lay down for the NAACP a clear, strong and distinct body of doctrine that could not have been stated by majority vote. It was probably inevitable that in the end a distinct and clear-cut difference of on major policies should lead to the dissolution of this interesting partnership."

   The end came in 1934 when Du Bois published a series of editorials over a six-month period in which he advocated "fighting segregation with segregation." This Du Bois opinion was not "in general agreement with that of the organization." His resignation was accepted by the NAACP Board "with deepest regret." The long resolution of acceptance reviewed Dr. Du Bois; many achievements and highly praised his editorship of The Crisis which "transformed the Negro world as well as a large portion of the liberal white world, so that the whole problem of the relation of black and white races has ever since had a completely new orientation...Without him the Association could never have been what it was and is."

   Starting with only an idea and practically no capital, Du Bois developed one of the most influential journals of opinion in the nation's history. Crisis editorials and articles were widely read, reprinted and quoted far beyond the magazine's subscribers. Du Bois opened pages of the magazine to young and unknown black writers as well as to long established authors of both races. Among the latter were James Weldon Johnson, Vachel Lindsay, Benjamin G. Brawley, Fenton Johnson, H. L. Mencken, Charles W. Chesnutt, Clement Wood, Leslie Pinckney Hill, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling, J. E. Spingarn, William Pickens and later to writers like Claude McKay, Walter White and E. Franklin Frazier.

   The Crisis consistently encouraged the development of the arts playing an important role in the Negro renaissance of the 1920s - the movement which nurtured such poets and writers as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Frank Horne, Rudolph Fisher, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Bennet, Arna Bontemps, Bruce Nugent, Jean Toomer, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Eric Walrond, and painters like Hale Woodruff and Aaron Douglas. Some of these found their first outlet for publication in The Crisis. Du Bois used works of well-known photographers like Battey and Scurlock and paintings and drawings of artists like William Edward Scott, John Henry Adams, Laura Wheeler, Albert A. Smith, Frank Walts, Woodruff and Douglas. Later the works of younger artists such as Charles Alston, E. Simms Campbell and Romare Bearden were published in the magazine. For several years the magazine conducted literary contests with prizes offered by Mrs. Amy Spingarn and others.

   Writing in the fortieth anniversary issue of the magazine (March, 1951), George S. Schuyler, the journalist, said: "Then came The Crisis, like a clear, strong breeze cutting through the miasma of Negrophobism. Here for the first time with brilliance, militancy, facts, photographs and persuasiveness, a well-edited magazine challenged the whole concept of white supremacy then nationally accepted....It is no exaggeration to say that the early Crisis created an intellectual revolution in the most out-of-way places....It became the bible of the militant Negro of the day and 'must' reading for the growing number of his white champions."

   Du Bois was a pioneer advocate of the black beauty concept and of black power although he refrained from attaching a color tag. In his "Immediate Program of the American Negro" (April, 1915) he asserted: "The Negro must have power; the power of men, the right to do, to know, to feel and express that knowledge, action and spiritual gift. He must not simply be free from the political tyranny of white folk, he must have the right to vote and rule over the citizens, white and black, to the extent of his proven foresight and ability."

   He early instituted special editions of The Crisis. Once a year an edition was devoted primarily to education and another to children. Occasionally other special issues were published. For years each issue carried a page of excellent verse, usually by black poets. The magazine was avidly read by the eager Negro youth of that period and had a profound impact upon their intellectual development.

   An historically notable yet grim feature of the early Crisis were the gruesome accounts - in words, photographs and drawings - of lynchings. During the ten-year period, 1909 through 1918 there was a total of 687 lynch h victims of whom 590 were Negroes, including 17 women. Hardly an issue of the magazine during that period or for many years thereafter failed to carry some report or editorial on what Du Bois came to call "The Lynching Industry."

   The first accounts published in the magazine were largely second-hand, consisting of summaries of newspaper stories. Later, NAACP investigators were dispatched to the scene to gather first-hand information. Originally these were friendly white persons. After Walter White joined the NAACP staff in 1918 as assistant executive secretary he undertook the task of making on-the-spot investigations of lynchings and race riots which were, in those days, mass lynchings of Negroes. His reports were regularly published in gory detail in The Crisis.

   As editor, Du bois was solely responsible for producing the magazine. However, from the beginning he had editorial and business advisors and assistance. The masthead of Volume 1, Number 1 carried the following listing: "Edited by W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, with the co-operation of Oswald Garrison Villard [editor and publisher of the New York Evening Post and of The Nation], J. Max Barber [editor of the Chicago Voice], Charles Edward Russell [well-known magazine writer], Kelly Miller [Howard University dean], W. S. Braithwaite [poet and literary critic of the famed Boston Transcript], and M. D. Maclean [a New York Times staff writer]." The June, 1911, issue listed Mrs. Maclean as managing editor, Frank M. Turner circulation manager, and Albon L. Holsey as advertising manager. Du Bois remained as editor and Villard, Barber, Russell, Braithwaite and Miller were listed as contributing editors. Augustus Granville Dill joined the staff as business manager with the September, 1913, issue. He remained in that position until February, 1928.

   In October, 1919, Miss Jessie Redmond Fauset, who had been a frequent contributor of verse and short stories, joined the staff as literary editor. Du Bois had not had this kind of staff assistance since the untimely passing of Mrs. Maclean in July, 1912. Aaron Douglas was, some years later, added to the staff as art critic.

   At the time of Du Bois resignation the Crisis masthead listed George W. Streator and Roy Wilkins as managing editors. Mr. Streator had joined the staff in November, 1933, as acting business manager. Since 1931, Mr. Wilkins, former editor of the Kansas (Mo.) Call, had been the Association's assistant executive secretary. Streator, who from his Fisk University days had been a protege of Dr. Du Bois, resigned the next month. Wilkins was designated acting editor and later editor while continuing his responsibilities as assistant executive secretary.

   During the 15 years of his editorship Wilkins sought to maintain the standards set by the founder of the magazine. The unique Du Bois savor, of course, was missing. Nevertheless, the Wilkins editorials, if less philosophical and acidulous than those of his predecessor, were no less forthright in the demand for full citizenship rights. The new editor continue to publish timely articles by well-known writers covering various aspects of the racial question. Some of the younger Negro leaders and writers began to appear more frequently in the pages of The Crisis. Among these were Robert C. Weaver, John P. Davis, Loren Miller, Ann Petry, Chester B. Himes, Allison Davis, Margaret Walker, Pauli Murray, Mercer Cook, William H. Hastie, Thurgood Marshall, Gloster B. Current and others.

   Like Du Bois, Wilkins had from the outset the guidance and assistance of a distinguished Advisory Board consisting of J. E. Spingarn, Dr. Louis T. Wright, James Weldon Johnson, Lewis Gannett and Walter White - a group later augmented to include Arthur B. Spingarn, Sterling A. Brown, William Allen Neilson, Carl Murphy and John Hammond. For a period, 1942-1944, George S. Schuyler served as business manager. In April, 1946, James W. Ivy joined the Crisis staff as managing editor.

   Under Wilkins there was an increase in the number of success stories and human interest articles published. Also, it was during this period that Arthur B. Spingarn, a distinguished collector of books by black authors and than a vice president of the NAACP, began his annual annotated listing of books published the previous year by Negro authors, American and foreign. The first of this annual series consisted of 63 listings and was published in the February, 1937, issue. In 1968, Mr. Spingarn, then 90 years old, compiled his 31st and last resume which was published in the March issue with 157 volumes listed. The series constitutes an invaluable bibliographic resource for anyone seriously concerned with black studies.

   In 1949, when Wilkins was named acting executive secretary while Walter White was on leave, Ivy was appointed acting editor of The Crisis and later, December, 1950 was made editor. A polylingual scholar, the new editor had a profound interest in the cultural development of colored peoples in foreign lands as well as in the United States. He translated certain pertinent writings by persons of African descent from the French, Spanish and Portuguese for republication in The Crisis.

   A reorganization plan adopted by the NAACP Board of Directors placed The Crisis under the supervision of the Association's public relations department as of January, 1965. Mr. Ivy remained as editor until his retirement in April, 1966. Henry Lee Moon succeeded him as editor while continuing his duties as NAACP director of public relations. Although no additional staff has been officially designated by The Crisis, the editor has been ably assisted in the production of the magazine by two associates in the public relations department - Warren Marr, II, and Miss Maybelle Ward. Mrs. Julia Gairy and Mrs. Lillian Lyttle continued their essential services in accounting and circulation, respectively.

   Until 1933 The Crisis was published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The February, 1933, issue was published under the imprimatur of Crisis Publishing Company, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NAACP. the magazine remained the official organ of the Association. Serving as officers of the new company were Dr. Louis T. Wright, president; Walter White, secretary; and Mrs. Lillian A. Alexander, treasurer. Other members of the publishing company board were the Rev. A. Clayton Powell, Sr., James Marshall, J. E. Spingarn and Dr. Du Bois. The company took over the responsibility for publication of the magazine.

   In December, 1958, a new board was elected consisting of Arthur B. Spingarn, president; John Hammond, vice president; Samuel A. Williams, secretary; Theodore Spaulding, treasurer; Roy Wilkins, assistant secretary, and Mrs. Daisy Lampkin. The present board, elected January 12, 1970, is headed by Stephen G. Spottswood, president, with Dr. Buell Gallagher, vice president; Samuel A. Williams, secretary; Kivie Kaplan, treasurer; Roy Wilkins, assistant secretary; and Miss Lucile Bluford and Henry Lee Moon, members.

   The Crisis has consistently sought to keep its subscription rate within reach of the least affluent persons interested in the civil rights struggle. In the 60 years there have been only two price increases during a period when rates for other magazines have gone up four-fold and more. The original annual subscription of $1.00 was raised in December, 1919, to $1.50. There was not another increase until January, 1970, when the subscription to NAACP members was raised to $2.00 and to other persons to $3.50. The magazine's subscribers have, for many years, come overwhelmingly from NAACP members.

   Circulation of The Crisis has fluctuated over the 60-year period dependent largely upon economic and social conditions and the size of the NAACP membership. There was a steady increase in the average annual net circulation per month from the first two issue, November and December, 1910, at 1,750 until 1919 when it reached 94,908 with some issues during the year topping 100,000. The following year, the average dropped to 62,417 and continued to decline to a low of 10,000 in 1932 during the Great Depression. When Dr. Du Bois resigned in 1934 the average monthly circulation of the magazine was 10,500.

   In the early years when circulation was zooming, The Crisis was financially self-sufficient. But the Depression cut into circulation and into NAACP membership. The Association had to underwrite the magazine. It was not until 1942 that circulation began to climb significantly from 20,000 that year to 59,950 in 1946. When the minimum annual NAACP membership was increased from $1.00 to $2.00 in 1949, Crisis circulation dropped to 22,000 in 1950. Thereafter it rose steadily to a peak of 122,289 in 1964, the year after NAACP membership reached a high of 534,710. The lowest circulation figure since 1964 was 100,000 in 1967. Last year, 1969, the average circulation per month was 111,302.