Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 306

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(PERIODICALS.) Issue of "The New Negro Magazine." Volume II, no. 2. 20 pages including printed wrappers. Quarto, 10½ x 8¼ inches; quite worn, leaves all detached and fragile with wear at edges, though with only minimal loss of text. New York: Clarion Advertising Agency, March 1918
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Additional Details

This magazine was founded as the Clarion in August 1917 by the Liberty League of Negro Americans, and the name was soon changed to "The New Negro." While the editor August Valentine Bernier is almost unknown to history, some well-known authors are featured.

The lead article "The Primacy of the African Race" was by John Edward Bruce, a.k.a. "Grit." He also contributed short profiles of Frederick Douglass and George Washington. The opening poem "Exultation" was by the son of a Madagascar nobleman, here credited as Andrea Razafkeriefo, and later known as Andy Razaf during a successful career as a songwriter of "Ain't Misbehavin" and other hits. Alexander Rahming, who contributed "The Chief Executive's Peace Aims" and an editorial advocating for the use of "Negro" rather than "colored," was an activist with the Universal Negro Improvement Association. An editorial on "The Cullud Press of Harlem" complains of the focus by the mainstream Black press on sensationalist negative news, which on the subway tended to "draw the anxious and scrutinizing gaze of the other race. . . . The press should be used as an educating medium--not as a toilet."

The only surviving issues we have been able to trace are at Columbia University from Volumes III and IV, some of them edited by Hubert H. Harrison. We may be offering the only surviving example of this ephemeral but significant pre-Garveyite magazine issue.

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