#News messenger series#

Prayer is not one of our remedies it depends on what one is praying for. Loyalty is meaningless it depends on what one is loyal to. Party has no weight with us principle has.

Patriotism has no appeal to us justice has. 'Our aim is to appeal to reason, to lift our pens above the cringing demagogy of the times, and above the cheap peanut politics of the old reactionary Negro leaders. The first issue cost 15 cents (its price would never change) and ran the mission statement written by Randolph and Owen: With the patronage of Randolph's wife Lucille, they launched The Messenger. They moved into an office next door at 513 Lenox Avenue. But their exposé of union corruption (wherein the headwaiters were selling uniforms to sidewaiters at high prices and pocketing the kickbacks from uniform dealers) resulted in their immediate dismissal. He suggested they move into his society's headquarters and edit a monthly magazine for waiters.įrom January until August 1917, Randolph and Owen published the Hotel Messenger. When they walked into the office building at 486 Lenox Avenue, while looking for a meeting space for their Independent Political Council, they were recognized by William White, President of the Headwaiters and Sidewaiters Society of Greater New York. Their socialist and labor union propagandizing gained them celebrity in the area. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen dropped out of college, joined the Socialist Party, and gave soapbox orations on street corners around Harlem.

#News messenger series#

Through the 1920s it also noted the success of blacks who were reaching the middle class in business and the professions, publishing a series of essays known as 'These 'Colored' United States', submitted by writers across the country. It was notable for helping strengthen African-American intellectual and political identity in the age of Jim Crow. It became a kind of literary magazine (like The Little Review, the revived The Dial, and The Liberator), contributing to the Harlem Renaissance. Philip Randolph in August 1917.Īfter 1920, The Messenger featured more articles about black culture and began to publish rising black writers. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City by Chandler Owen and A. It was important to the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance and initially promoted a socialist political view. The Messenger was an early 20th-century political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the United States.