African-American History – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

The 1964 Harlem Race Riot
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

James Baldwin remembered other Harlem riots he had witnessed… KEY WORDS: 1964 Harlem Race Riot newspaper article,1964 Harlem Race Riot […]

The Hampton Institute as it Stood in 1921
(The Independent, 1921)

Attached is a 1921 account of the Hampton Institute; it’s past, present and future is entirely outlined in this magazine article that was written by a celebrated journalist of the time, Mr. Talcott Williams (1849 – 1928).

Click here for the Ku Klux Klan Archive.

Agent is Held for Enticing Negroes
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

One of the seldom remembered casualties in the Northern migration history was the prosecution of those Whites who both encouraged and provided monetary favors to the African-American families seeking a better life in the North.

To learn how many African-Americans served in the W.W. I American Army, click here.

Racial Segregation in Truxton, Virginia
(Popular Mechanics, 1919)

A small notice appeared in POPULAR MECHANICS MAGAZINE that announced African Americans will be allowed to live in a new town located in Virginia intended to house the employees of the naval station in nearby Portsmouth. Due to small reports as this, Truxton proved to be a destination during the African-American migration period.

American Arts and the Black Contribution
(Literary Digest, 1917)

The attached column is an abstract of an article that first appeared in THE NEW YORK EVENING POST in 1917. The original article was penned by NAACP secretary James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938)

I believe the Negro possesses a valuable and much-needed gift that he will contribute to the future American democracy. I have tried to point out that the Negro is here not merely to be a beneficiary of American democracy, not merely to receive. He is here to give something to American democracy. Out of his wealth of artistic and emotional endowment he is going to give something that is wanting, something that is needed, something that no other element in all the nation has to give.

Johnson was quick to point out that American popular culture was enjoyed the world-over and these dance steps and catchy tunes were not simply the product of the Anglo-Saxon majority.

The First Elected African-American Judge
(Literary Digest, 1924)

An article about Albert B. George (1873 – ?) of Chicago, the first African-American to be elected as a municipal court judge:

An epochal scene will presently be enacted in one of the divisions of Chicago’s Municipal Court, pointed out several editors, when there will ascend to its bench Albert Baily George, the Negro just elected Municipal Judge on the Republican ticket by 470,000 votes. In the past a Negro here and there has been appointed judge, notably Robert H. Terrell (1857 – 1925) of Washington, we are told, but this is the first election of one to a regular judicial office.

Judge George’s ancestors were slaves in old Virginia. His success, says the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, ‘has sent a thrill of hope through the black belts – a new incentive to work and decent living.; It is considered ‘a milestone in the journey of the negro race out of the wilderness of slavery, an application of the principles of democracy which may point the way to better things for both races.’

An Interview with Dr. George Washington Carver
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

A profile of Dr. George Washington Carver (1864 – 1943):

One of the greatest agricultural chemists of our day was born a slave 80 years ago. He has given the world approximately 300 new by-products from the peanut…Today Dr. Carver is the South’s most distinguished scientist. He turned the peanut into a $60,000,000 industry.

I simply go to my laboratory, shut myself in and ask my Creator why He made the peanut. My Creator tells me to pull the peanut apart and examine the constituents. When this is done, I tell Him what I want to create, and He tells me I can make anything that contains the same constituents as a peanut. I go to work and keep working until I get what I want.

Racial Integration in the U.S. Army
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

Inasmuch as racial integration was the social goal for a vast majority of Americans in 1960, this article made it clear that racial harmony in the U.S. Armed Forces was not simply the goal, it was the reality. Written by a journalist who visited as many as ten U.S. Military establishments throughout Europe and North Africa in order to see how President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 had effected American military culture.

Read about racism in the U.S. Army of W.W. I

The Negro’s Northern Exodus
(The Literary Digest, 1931)

Click here to read a second article about the great migration.

Tolerance at the Polls
(Pageant Magazine, 1953)

Speaking of thawing ice:

In 1942 Roper Poll found only 42 per cent of Americans saying ‘yes‘ to the question ‘Are Negroes as intelligent as Whites and can they learn just as quickly if given education and training?‘ After W.W. II the number rose to 57 per cent.

‘The Tenth Man”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

This is a light history of the African-American people; weak in some spots, informative in others, it’s greatest value lies in telling the story of Blacks in the Thirties.

Because the colored race comprises almost a 10th of the population of the United States, sociologists sometimes refer to the Negro as ‘the Tenth Man.’ As such, he is little known to the other nine. Yet there are 12,500,000 colored persons in the nation – black, brown and some so white that 10,000 pass over the color line every year to take up life as whites.

Origin of the Term ”Jim Crow”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The first three paragraphs of this article explain the 19th Century origins of a moniker that represents the most hideous institution born on American shores. The term in question is Jim Crow – a sobriquet that came into use decades before the American Civil War but was refashioned into a synonym that meant institutional racism. The article goes on to recall one African-American Congressman and his fruitless efforts to clean up Jim Crow.

White Primaries in Georgia
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

On January 29, 1947, the Georgia House of Representatives approved the Democratic white primary law – which was intended to exclude any African American in that state from voting in state primary elections.

‘School Crises in Dixie”
(American Magazine, 1956)

Not since the Civil War has the nation faced such an explosive situation as it will when public schools in the South open their doors next month. In a plea for tolerance, sympathy and understanding in the South as well as the North, Pulitzer Prize award winning journalist Virginius Dabney (1901 – 1995) analyzes and interprets a problem serious to Americans in every section of the country.

Lynching Record For The Year 1918
(The Crises, 1918)

Attached is a two page account of the sixty-four lynchings that took place during 1918; the names of the victims, dates, locations, and their alleged violations. There is no mention made concerning how the data was collected.

According to THE CRISES records there were 64 Negroes, 5 of whom were Negro women, and four white men, lynched in the United States during the year 1918, as compared with 224 persons lynched and killed in mob violence during 1917, 44 of whom were lynchings of Negroes…

The Lynching Evil as Understood by Robert Moton
(Review of Reviews, 1919)

A digest concerning the thoughts of Tuskegee Institutes’s Robert R. Moton (1867 – 1940) and his reflections on the 1919 lynchings. Principal Moton pointed out that lynching served as the primary cause for the northerly migration of the African-Americans and was creating a labor shortage that would in no way benefit the economies of the Southern states. He stated that more and more Whites were recognizing the injustice of the crime and taking measures to actively oppose it. Seven influential Southern newspapers were named that had recently condemned lynching.

Lynching as an Extension of Chivalry?
(The New Republic, 1922)

This small column from the pages of THE NEW REPUBLIC reported that women from five Southern states had gathered together in 1922 intending to pass a set of resolutions that would remedy one aspect of the Negro question (an illusive phrase that meant lynching). The attached article remarked that these women

…feel a deep sense of appreciation for the chivalry of men who would give their lives for the purity and safety of the women of their own race, yet They wish to bring about a state of public opinion which will compel the protection and purity of both races.

The Klansman on the Supreme Court
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

When the U.S. Supreme Court gave their decision concerning the 1940 appeal of a lower court’s verdict to convict three African-Americans for murder, civil libertarians in Washington held their collective breath wondering how Justice Hugo Black approached the case. Black, confirmed in 1937 as FDR’s first court appointee, admitted to having once been made a ‘life member’ of the Ku Klux Klan. This column was one of any number of other articles from that era that reported on the Alabaman’s explanation behind his Klan associations:

I did join the Klan… I later resigned. I never rejoined.