Negro Digest

In 1942, when John H. Johnson sought financial backing for his first magazine project, he was unable to find any backers—black or white. From white bank officers to the editor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) nonprofit publication, all agreed that a magazine aimed at a black audience had no chance for any kind of success. Johnson then worked at the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and had the idea of funding the Negro Digest by writing everyone on their mailing list and soliciting a two-dollar, prepaid subscription, calculating that even a 15 percent response would give him the amount needed to publish the first issue.

To obtain the five hundred dollars needed for postage to mail his letters, he had to use his mother's furniture as a security on a loan.[2] Johnson called the magazine the Negro Digest after the Reader's Digest and reprinted articles by and about African-American scholars from the African-American and Caucasian media. It was edited by Ben Burns. Although called the Negro Digest, it usually contained reproductions of whole articles instead of digests.[1] The letter generated three thousand responses, and the first issue of Negro Digest was published in November 1942.

However, there were still obstacles to be overcome. Distributors were unwilling to put the periodical on their newsstands, for they too believed that it would not sell. Johnson persuaded his friends to haunt their neighborhood newsstands, demanding copies of Negro Digest. Joseph Levy, a magazine distributor, was impressed and formed an alliance with Johnson. He provided valuable marketing ideas and opened the doors that allowed Negro Digest to hit the newsstands in other urban centers. The very first issue of The Negro Digest sold about 3,000 copies. Over the course of six months the magazine published close to 50,000 copies per month. One of the most interesting and well-known columns in the magazine was entitled "If I Were a Negro."[3]

This column concentrated strongly on the unsolicited advice that the African-American race had received, by asking prominent citizens mainly of the white race for resolution to unsolved black problems. As a result of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's contribution to the popular column "If I Were a Negro," the copies sold doubled overnight. Following the year of 1945, John H. Johnson created other African-American magazines including both Ebony and Jet. As a result of the publication of these two magazines, the circulation of The Negro Digest tended to decline. According to a New York Times article, it soon became unprofitable and ceased publication in 1951.[4]

Although Negro Digest/Black World gave way to other African-American magazines such as Ebony, Jet and Essence, it significantly impacted the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and early '70s, and as well as literary work showcased reproductions of artworks. In the words of Chris Brancaccio: "Negro Digest/Black World is a fascinating artifact because the content of each issue seems to evade rigid binaries like integrationist or nationalist, and therefore became a very real space for public debate. For instance, the November 1966 issue contains an article entitled Black Power Symposium [and] features 12 different opinions on Black Power, offered by a diverse group of black individuals ranging from Conrad Kent Rivers, founder of Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), to Anita Cornwell, a writer and former state employee, to Dudley Randall, founder of Broadside Press but also a librarian and poet. ... Negro Digest/Black World constitutes a massive archive. A renewed scholarly interest in these periodicals offers new perspectives and could profoundly change the way we consider the Black Arts Movement and Black activism during this period."[6]

• Magazine archive on Google Books
• FBI files on The Negro Digest