Davan Maharaj is the Editor of the Los Angeles Times.
During a recent exchange regarding Digital Du Bois, Maharaj pointed out as relevant this essay from 1950 by William Gorman.
Maharaj cited the following excerpt from the piece as being of particular interest:
“Yet even in this unpropitious environment Du Bois found a means of expression. The sponsors of the NAACP had limited their plans mainly to legal action and enlisting the big names of liberalism. Du Bois, almost completely on his own, emphasized the need for a Negro magazine. The Crisis proved to be a great success, reaching over a hundred thousand circulation in less than ten years. Monroe Trotter’s Boston Guardian had by its militant policy prepared the Negro public years in advance for their protests against Booker T. Washington’s Boston speech in 1905. J. Max Barber’s militant Voice of the Negro, published in the South, had reached a phenomenal 17,000 circulation when the Atlanta riot drove the editor out of town. The Negro migrations North provided a ready-made audience, while the revolutionary implications of the Negro struggle were an immediate stimulus to bold and effective propaganda. At the height of The Crisis’ success, the government tried to ban it from the mails.”
Photo via Los Angeles Times