"No Crystal Stair: Black Life and the Messenger, 1917-1928" interviews

1970-1972

Theodore Kornweibel is a retired professor of African American history at San Diego State University, and an author and editor of six monographs. His works include Investigate Everything: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I, Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925, and "No Crystal Stair: Black Life and the "Messenger", 1917-1928".

The Messenger was a monthly political magazine published by and for African Americans between 1917 and 1928. It was co-founded in New York City by economist Chandler Owen and labor activist A. Philip Randolph to promote socialist ideology and New Negro strategies for racial progress. The magazine included articles on many of the issues important to African Americans during World War I and the postwar period, and thus helped to strengthen African American intellectual and political identity in the age of Jim Crow. It also played a critical role in the development of the Harlem Renaissance; after 1920, The Messenger featured a greater number of articles about Black culture and began to publish rising Black writers, featuring poetry, fiction, and literary criticism.