Negro Digest (38 issues) / Black World (72 issues)
Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 1950-1976. A large run of 110 issues of this influential black cultural and literary magazine that began publication in November, 1942 and was first edited by Ben Burns and later by Hoyt W. Fuller. Modeled after Reader's Digest, publisher/editor John H. Johnson wanted to found a commercial publication that would summarize topical news about Black life and culture. Although he initially struggled to secure funding and distribution, the magazine quickly became popular with black and white readers making it the successful interracial magazine that Johnson intended it to be. As one scholar noted, one of the things that set Negro Digest apart from other black magazine and periodicals was a "more pluralistic editorial perspective that disrupted conventional Black press paradigms. The magazine ceased in 1951, although Johnson and editor Hoyt Fuller restarted it in 1961 renamed it Black World in 1970. It ceased for good in 1976. By the early 1970s the magazine had expanded its content to include international news covering all aspects of the black diaspora and became one of the prime mouthpieces for the Black Arts movement. Contributors included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Dudley Randall, Arna Bomtemps, John Hope Franklin, Nikki Giovanni, John Henrik Clarke, Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, Nathan Hare, and many others.
Digest format, various pagination, illustrated. Issues generally very good or better, most with the mailing label of influential African American scholar John H. Bracey, Jr. to the front cover. In our experience, runs this size rarely emerge in the market. Item #14832
Price: $2,500.00