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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 42. The Negro Press - 1. An Organ for the Negro Protest
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Chapter 42. The Negro Press 909
organs of Negro religious denominations and labor organizations. Most of
the general newspapers have a circulation limited to the locality where
they are published. But ten to twenty Negro papers have large circulations
extending to whole regions and sometimes to all Negro America. In addi-
tion there are some 129 monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly magazines.^
Two of these have outstanding national importance: The Crisis
y
published
by the N.A.A.C.P., and Offortunityy published by the National Urban
League.® The others are almost all organs of Negro religious denom-
inations, fraternal orders, professional groups, colleges and schools. Only
four Negro magazines are pictorial or theatrical.® The weekly press alone
has a total circulation of around one and a half million.®
Practically all Negroes who can read are exposed to the influence of the
Negro press at least some of the time. Perhaps a third of the Negro families
in cities regularly subscribe to Negro newspapers,*^ but the proportion is
much smaller in rural areas. The readers of the Negro press are, however,
the most alert and articulate individuals who form Negro opinion. News-
papers are commonly passed from family to family, and they are sometimes
read out loud in informal gatherings. They are available in barbershops,
and sometimes in churches, lodges and pool parlors. Their contents are
passed by word of mouth among those who cannot read.® Indirectly, there-
fore, even aside from circulation figures, this press influences a large pro-
portion of the Negro population.
No unifying central agency directs the opinions expressed in the Negro
press. Like white newspapers, Negro newspapers are in keen competition
with one another for circulation. Without discounting either the idealistic
zeal and the strength of personal opinion of many editors, columnists, and
other Negro newspapersmen, or the influence of petty corruption in the
Negro papers, by and large the Negro press provides the news and the
opinions which its reading public wants. This inference has the corollary
Daily World is the only daily newspaper at the present time. In 1940 its daily circulation
was about 5>ooo, but it had a weekly edition with a larger circulation. {Ibid,^ Chapter IX,
pp. 8 ff.)
‘Among the magazines, The Interracial Reviezvy an organ for Catholic Action, comes
next perhaps in importance. Silhouette is a picture monthly, surviving Flash and Candida
which followed the Lije pattern. A high place is held by The Journal of Negro History
y
edited by Carter G. Woodson j
Journal of Negro Educationy edited by Charles Thompson
of Howard University} and Phylony The Atlanta University Revievo of Race and Culturey
edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. For some further notes on the publications or organizations
and on the earlier appearances and disappearances of Negro magazines, see Fleming, of, cit.y
Chapter XII. Also see: Sidney V. Reedy, “The Negro Magazine: A Critical Study of Its
Educational Significance,” Journal of Negro Education (October, 1934), pp. 598-604. In
this chapter we shall concentrate our attention on the regular Negro weeklies, which, at
least directly, are of greatest importance for the formation of Negro opinion. Most of what
w’e have to say is, mutatis mutandisy valid for the periodicals also.
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