The Messenger Reader Stories, Poetry, and Essays from The Messenger Magazine [Paperback]

The Messenger was the third most popular magazine of the Harlem Renaissance after The Crisis andOpportunity. Unlike the other two magazines, The Messenger was not tied to a civil rights organization. Labor activist A. Philip Randolph and economist Chandler Owen started the magazine in 1917 to advance the cause of socialism to the black masses. They believed that a socialist society was the only one that would be free from racism.

The socialist ideology of The Messenger "the only magazine of scientific radicalism in the world published by Negroes," was reflected in the pieces and authors published in its pages. The Messenger Reader contains poetry, stories, and essays from Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, and Dorothy West.

The Messenger Reader, will be a welcome addition to the critically acclaimed Modern Library Harlem Renaissance series.Sondra Katherine Wilson, Ph.D. is a researcher at Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute. She is the executor of the James Weldon Johnson estate and the editor of several volumes of his work. She is also the editor of the Modern Library's The Crisis Reader and The Opportunity Reader. She lives in New York City.Introduction


IF WE MUST DIE

If we must die--let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot If we must die, let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead.*

In his poem "If We Must Die," Claude McKay embodies the new spirit and new self-confidence that was flourishing among black intellectuals and writers shortly before the advent of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. This newfound intellectual and cultural freedom owed much to the eloquent editorials in The Messenger. Founded by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, the New York-based journal fla