Ebony Jr.!: The Rise and Demise of an African American Children's Magazine

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2006 by Henderson, Laretta

In addition to Ivy, Amelia E. Johnson (1858-1922), a minister's wife, founded Joy, an eightpage monthly magazine for Black children published by the American Baptist Association (Andrews, Foster & Harris, 2001). "Johnson was a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novelist, poet, editor, and teacher" (Houston, 1996, p. 337). Concerned about the "moral wellbeing of African Americans," Johnson wrote Joy to address a need for a "literary journal for young people that would also provide a forum for African American women writers" (Houston, 1996, p. 338). "Filled with short stories, poetry, and literary items of interest, the Joy was well received and praised" (Maryland State Archives, 1998).

Partially in response to similar issues in 1910, W. E. B. Du Bois began the monthly journal of the NAACP, The Crisis Magazine, for adults. Each year, from 1912-1921, he published A Children's Number in celebration of African American children. This issue was directed at parents and contained a small amount children's literature. But, the issue was so popular in the barren field of African American children's texts that it spawned The Brownies ' Book, a monthly journal for children that ran from January 1920 until December 1921 (Andrews, Foster & Harris, 2001; Sinnette, 1965). Advertisements for The Brownies ' Book in The Crisis noted,

It will be called, naturally, The Brownies ' Book .... It will be a thing of Joy and Beauty, dealing in Happiness, Laughter and Emulation, and designed for Kiddies from Six to Sixteen. It will seek to teach Universal Love and Brotherhood for all little folk-black and brown and yellow and white (Johnson-Feelings, 1996, p. 13).

The Brownies' Book was edited by Du Bois, while Jessie Redihan served as the associate editor (MacCann, 1988). Sinnette (1965) noted that The Brownies' Book followed the format and arrangement of The Crisis. It was 32-pages long and had advertisements for the "promotion of books, schools, courses and self improvement through education" (Du Bois, 1919, p. 286). While the images of Black children in White literature consisted mostly of unkempt "pickaninnies," The Brownies ' Book had photographs of clean, well-groomed, brown (not overtly mulatto) children throughout. Such a contrast was not unintentional, since the objectives of the magazine were to, among other things, "make 'colored' normalized," and "teach a code of honor and action in the black child's relations with white children" (Du Bois, 1919, p. 286). In each issue of The Brownies ' Book there were a variety of fictional and non-fictional materials with settings in the African Diaspora. Children were exposed to images of, and issues relevant to children of African descent around the world. They were also exposed to "Negro history through a series of biographies of black heroic figures. [And] [a]ds were limited to promotion of books, schools and courses in self-improvement" (Daniels, 1982, p. 107). The Brownies' Book also offered a counterperspective to the degradation of African Americans in the most popular juvenile periodical of its time: St. Nicholas Magazine, 1873-1939 (Erisman, 1984; Olson, 1999).