After leaving Atlanta University, Du Bois used The Crisis as a regular outlet for NAACP news, political argument, and cultural commentary. The magazine helped unify reporting on lynching, segregation, and voting rights with discussions of education, religion, and the arts. Over time, this mix made the magazine influential far beyond NAACP membership.
The NAACP launched The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races with W. E. B. Du Bois as editor. In the first issue, Du Bois set a clear purpose: to report and argue against race prejudice and to document Black life and achievements. This created a national platform that could combine civil-rights reporting with cultural and literary work.
In July 1917, thousands of African Americans marched silently down Fifth Avenue in New York City to protest lynching and mass racial violence, including the East St. Louis massacre. The Crisis covered the parade and helped circulate its messages and images to readers nationwide. This showed how the magazine could amplify public protest through print journalism.
During World War I, Du Bois wrote the controversial editorial “Close Ranks,” urging Black Americans to support the U.S. war effort despite discrimination at home. The piece drew criticism because it seemed to ask readers to set aside urgent civil-rights demands. The episode revealed tensions inside the Black freedom struggle about strategy and timing.
Beginning in 1919, Jessie Redmon Fauset served as The Crisis’s literary editor, a role that shaped the magazine’s Harlem Renaissance-era publishing. She sought out and encouraged new Black writers, helping connect literature to the broader struggle for dignity and equal rights. Under her guidance, The Crisis became a major venue for emerging talent.
In May 1919, Du Bois published “Returning Soldiers,” responding to the harsh treatment and violence faced by Black veterans after the war. The editorial urged readers to fight for democracy at home with the same determination shown abroad. It marked a sharp turn from earlier wartime compromise toward more direct confrontation of U.S. racism.
By the end of its first decade, The Crisis had become a widely read magazine with circulation reaching about 100,000. That scale mattered: it meant civil-rights arguments, news, and literary work could spread quickly across local communities. The magazine’s reach helped make Harlem Renaissance writing and Black political critique part of a shared national conversation.
In January 1920, Du Bois, Fauset, and Augustus Granville Dill launched The Brownies’ Book, a magazine for African American children and youth connected to The Crisis circle. It aimed to support Black children’s self-respect and learning at a time of intense racism and violence. The project showed how The Crisis network extended cultural work into education and youth publishing.
In June 1921, The Crisis published Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Publication in a major NAACP magazine introduced Hughes to a broad audience and helped launch his literary career. This is a clear example of how The Crisis linked political readership with new Harlem Renaissance literature.
From 1919 to 1926, Fauset’s literary editorship helped make The Crisis a leading publisher of young Black authors. After she left, the magazine struggled to maintain the same literary momentum and consistency. This change illustrates how editorial leadership directly shaped what Harlem Renaissance readers saw in print.
In the January 1934 issue, Du Bois published an editorial proposing voluntary segregation as an economic strategy for Black workers and farmers. NAACP leaders strongly criticized the position, seeing it as conflicting with the organization’s integration-focused goals. The dispute showed how The Crisis could become a battleground over the movement’s direction, not just a record of events.
In July 1934, Du Bois resigned as editor of The Crisis and left the NAACP board after escalating conflict with NAACP leadership and financial strain at the magazine. His resignation ended the founding editorial era that had shaped the magazine’s voice from 1910 onward. The transition marked a major turning point in how the publication would balance political strategy, institutional goals, and cultural work.
The Crisis under W. E. B. Du Bois (1910–1934)
