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Learn about African American history with these old magazine articles. Find information on Black Civil Rights violations in the 1920s.
By citing numerous examples of American jurisprudence spanning the early to mid-Fifties, this uncredited journalist illustrates that the era of Jim Crow was being disassembled brick-by-bigoted-brick:
All across the South, the segregation wall is cracking. The hammer is being wielded by the courts… The executive branch is also moving into the civil rights field.
This article recalls the story behind the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs. the Board of Education.
Like the article posted above, this essay serves as further evidence that the immediate post-war years in America were ones in which the foundations for the civil rights movement were established; foundations on which the civil rights leaders of the Sixties and Seventies would rely upon to guarantee the forward momentum of the movement.
The attached article pertains to the necessary work that was being done by the National Urban League.
Upon reading this piece, we’re sure you’ll recognize that the author knew full well that the article should have been titled, The Answer to the White Problem.
The subject addressed in this article pertains to the greatest act of cruelty that was ever thrust upon African-Americans by the white hegemony – for it was the one scheme designed to guarantee their continuing poverty.
Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) was a multi-talented man and this article lays it all out.
Paul Robeson thinks of himself as conclusive proof that there is no such thing as a backward race. Given a few generations of equal opportunities, he believes, any people – Eskimos, Malayans, Fijians or the Untouchables of India – can produce as talented statesmen, scientists, educators, inventors and artists as the whites.
From time to time, certain young politicians suddenly capture the attention of their fellow Americans. One such individual is 30-year-old Julian Bond (1940 – 2015), a Negro legislator in the state of Georgia House of Representatives.
A profile of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887 – 1940), Jr.; National Hero of Jamaica. During his lifetime Garvey worked as a publisher, a journalist, and an entrepreneur. A devoted Black nationalist and a black separatist, Marcus Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He rubbed a good many white folk the wrong way and this article from The Literary Digest covers much of his activities leading up to 1922.
This short notice from a 1917 Georgia newspaper documented the heavy numbers involved in what has come to be known as the Great migration as more and more African-Americans abandoned their homes in the Southern states preferring life in the North. It is believed that between the years 1910 through 1940, some 1.6 million African Americans participated in this exodus. The Southern journalist who penned these three paragraphs clearly felt a sense of personal rejection:
The worthless ones are remaining here to be cared for… The departure of these Negroes is not spasmodic. It is a steady drain of the best class of laborers that the South now has. Just what remedy is to prevent it we do not know.
Another article about the great migration can be read here.
With the passing of the Ives-Quinn Bill in 1945, the state of New York was empowered to bring the full weight of the law down upon all employers who practiced any sort of discrimination in the workplace:
During the first eight months of the law’s operation, the Commission received 240 formal complaints charging some form of discrimination in employment… The charges varied greatly. Fifty-nine complained because of alleged prejudice against their religion. Another 113 charged color bias: 105 Negroes and eight Whites. Still another 48 charged prejudice against their race or national origin: 8 Germans, 5 Spaniards…
A similar article from 1941 can be read here…
By the time this small paragraph appeared in the 1922 pages of Confederate Veteran Magazine the vast majority of their readership was living on their Confederate pensions. This article serves to remind the subscribers that there were numerous faithful Negroes who were also deserving of same. The author recounts a few stories of the devotion he witnessed.
The varying degrees of color found among American Blacks has been, and still is, a sensitive topic and it was addressed in 1922 with some wit by an African-American journalist whose work is attached. Its a good read and speaks of a social structure that, we like to think, is gone with the wind; words appear in this article that seem queer in our era – there is much talk of
yellow gals
golden-skinned slave girls
tawny-skinned maids
midnight
stove-pipe
-all originating from African-American verse and popular song.
During the Second World War, hair dye was not simply used by women;
click here to read about the men who needed it, too.
Click here to read about black women who pass for white.
Click here to read a history of African-Americans between the years 1619 through 1939.
The history of the African American baggage handlers called Red Caps is a sad story in American social history. The Red Caps had been around since the 1890s and they were assigned the task of carrying luggage to and from trains and taxis; this article points out that in the Thirties, one of every three of them had a college degree:
Red Caps did not go to college to learn how to be Red Caps. Their problem is a racial one. To the white, a job toting luggage is a poor way to eke out an existence. To the black, red capping is one of the ‘big’ fields open. The white man who works as a porter can do nothing else, as a rule; the Negro almost invariably can do something else but can’t get it to do.
Dorie Miller was an African-American hero during the Second World War, click here if you would like to read about him.
Those sensitive beta-males in the editorial offices of Confederate Veteran were teary-eyed and waxing winsome that day in 1918 when they saw fit to recall one particular long-standing Southern institution that was gone with the wind:
The most unique character connected with the days of slavery was the old black mammy, who held a position of and confidence in nearly every white family of importance in the South… She was an important member of the household, and for her faithfulness and devotion she has been immortalized in the literature of the South.
Writer Margaret Halsey (1910 – 1997) was a patriotic lass who did her bit for Uncle Sam by managing a soldier’s canteen in New York City during the Second World War – you should know that throughout the course of that war there were thousands of canteens throughout America where Allied soldiers, sailors airmen and Marines could enjoy a free meal and have a dance or two with the local girls. Similar to most other canteens in the country, her doors were open to all servicemen regardless of color and as a result, the same policy had to be followed by the local girls who came to dance: they, too, could not discriminate.
Her observations in this integrated environment led to believe that a national policy of racial assimilation will not be as difficult as many people at the time tended to believe.
Illustrated with nine pictures, this article briefly tells the story of baseball legend Willie Mays (b. 1931) and the Summer of 1954 when sportswriters credited him alone for having raised the athletic standards of his team, The New York Giants (the team won the World Series that year):
A 23-year-old Alabaman with a laugh as explosive as his bat, Willie has electrified N.Y. Giants fans as no man has done since Mel Ott (1909 – 1958)… Statistics don’t begin to give a real picture of Willie’s value. He adds drama to baseball in a way that defies fiction.
An anonymous scribe at PEOPLE TODAY wrote this well-illustrated piece to mark the occasion that heralded the end of the Negro Baseball League – and the integration of major league baseball in America.
Click here to read a 1954 article about Willie Mays.
The African-American comedian Bert Williams (1874 – 1922) was a funny fellow who ascended to great heights in his life; he performed in the great theaters of Europe and was adored by many of the foreign potentates of his time. Yet despite all his international glory, he never received acceptance in his own country. Like many African-Americans at the time, Williams simply came to accept the myopic views of race as it was understood by the majority of his countrymen, and learned to do without the appreciation he so craved. Bert Williams died in 1922. One of his more memorable lines:
Being a Negro is not a bad thing, it’s just terribly inconvenient.
The attached file is a digital facsimile of a classified ad that was once posted in a Georgia newspaper long after the Emancipation Proclamation was passed into law. The editors at THE NATION saw fit to title the notice as an interesting little advertisement when they reproduced it six months later on their pages. Yet, for the Southerners who set the type-face, applied the ink, delivered the paper and subscribed, the ad was typical of so many other classifieds that had appeared during the past one hundred and fifty years, and it was not, as the Yankees put it:
…the request of someone who never heard of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
