The Voice of the Negro began publication in Atlanta, Georgia, in January 1904. This journal began by trying to steer a compromise between accommodationists and radicals. The first issues included writing by Booker T. Washington; however, the magazine soon became the voice for a new generation of writers, including W. E. B. Du Bois, John Hope, Kelly Miller, Mary Church Terrell, and William Pickens. Confrontations with the city government in Atlanta after the race riots in September 1906 forced J. Max Barber, editor of the Voice of the Negro, to move the magazine to Chicago, where it ceased publication the next year.
The Voice of the Negro addressed many social issues, such as African American education, the labor movement, and religion. Although it became mainly associated with activist politics, it also kept the African American in the “New South” abreast of issues in art and culture. The Voice of the Negro published a number of respected African American poets, including James D. Corrothers, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Bibliography
- Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the Voice of the Negro, 1904–1907,” Journal of Southern History
45 (Feb. 1979): pp. 45–62. - Walter C. Daniel, Black Journals of the United States, 1982
Daniel J. Royer
The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
