THE NEGRO WORLD NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, 1923-1925

Repository: Archives & Special Collections, Charles Evans Inniss Memorial Library of Medgar Evers
College, CUNY
Location: CEIML ASPC, Suite 0108
Identifier: CEIML.NW.003
Collection Title: The Negro World Newspaper Collection, 1923-1925
Name of Creator(s): Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
Inclusive Dates: 1923-1925
Language(s): English
Quantity: 3 annual sets of newspapers (bound)

SCOPE AND CONTENT

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The Negro World (1918–1933) was the organ of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA), the most massive African-American and Pan-African movement of all time.
Garvey's was a black nationalist movement organized around the principles of race first, self-reliance, and
nationhood. At its height in the mid-1920s, the UNIA comprised millions of members and close
supporters spread over more than forty countries in the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Australia. The
Negro World was a faithful reflexion of all the UNIA stood for. It educated African people everywhere on
the need for self-determination and racial uplift. With its international reach, it became a major recruiting
tool for the organization. Like the larger movement, however, the Negro World was viewed with hostility
and suspicion by European and other governments.

The Negro World began publication in 1918 in Harlem, New York, about two years after Garvey arrived
in the United States from his native Jamaica. Garvey had founded the UNIA in Jamaica in 1914, and he
conceived the idea of a major publication before leaving for the United States. He brought considerable
experience in journalism and printing to the paper. While still a teenager, he had been a foreman printer in
Jamaica, and he had published papers in Costa Rica and Panama. He had worked on possibly two papers
in Jamaica and for the important Africa Times and Orient Review in London in 1913. The earliest issues
of the paper were edited by Garvey and slipped free under people's doors in Harlem. Garvey's
responsibilities in building the UNIA did not permit him to do the hands-on day-to-day work of running
the paper for very long. Though he remained managing editor, he quickly initiated the paper's policy of
employing some of the best editorial brains in African America. Among these were Hubert H. Harrison
(1883–1927), one of Harlem's most respected intellectuals; W. A. Domingo, a Socialist and sometime
publisher of his own Emancipator; the veteran journalist John E. Bruce (known in the newspaper world as
"Bruce Grit"); William H. Ferris (1874–1941), an author and graduate of Yale and Harvard; T. Thomas
Fortune (1856–1928), the "dean" of African-American journalists; and the second Mrs. Garvey, Amy
Jacques Garvey (1885–1973).

Among the regular columnists, contributors, and book reviewers were important personalities in Pan-
African history. These included Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950), the "father of African-American
history"; the popular historian J. A. Rogers (1880–1966); and Duse Mohamed Ali (1866–1945), the editor
of the London-based Africa Times and Orient Review.
THE NEGRO WORLD NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, 1923-1925

The paper was forceful in tone. "Negroes get ready," it proclaimed from the masthead of early editions.
Garvey himself wrote a bold-typed, front page editorial for each issue. This formed the text for weekly
meetings of the UNIA all over the world. Coverage of Pan-African and anticolonial news was very broad.
Sections of the paper were for a time published in French and Spanish. Articles were well written and
sober; there was none of the sensationalism and frivolity of the popular press. Garvey credited himself
with having raised the quality of African-American journalism.

Despite its overwhelmingly political orientation, the paper also acted as a literary journal. Poems from
contributors around the world appeared every week for several years. The paper boasted African
America's first regular book review section. Short stories, plays, and literary and cultural criticism
appeared regularly. Major Harlem Renaissance figures such as Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) and Eric
Walrond (1898–1966) published in the Negro World.

At the same time, the paper did not neglect its role as organ of a great movement. Proceedings of public
meetings and conferences filled many pages. Weekly reports of branch meetings were faithfully recorded.
Among the authors of such organizational business was Louise Little, the mother of Malcolm X.

The Negro World's circulation is said to have reached 200,000 in the 1920s, making it one of the largest
newspapers in African America. It was undoubtedly also the most widely circulated African newspaper
internationally. People coming into contact with the paper's message in places as far apart as Dominica
and Nigeria were impelled to become Garveyites, sometimes founding their own local branches of the
UNIA in the process. Official circulation efforts were supplemented by itinerant seamen who, sometimes
acting entirely on their own, took the paper around the world.

The United States, as well as European and other governments, waged a protracted struggle to destroy the
paper. Within a year of its appearance in 1919, it was already banned in some British Caribbean
territories, Trinidad and British Guiana among them. An African in Southern Rhodesia was sentenced to
life in prison (the sentence later rescinded after representations to the British parliament) for importing a
few copies.

The Negro World survived Garvey's deportation from the United States in 1927 and subsequent schisms
in the UNIA, and the paper remained loyal to him until its demise in 1933. Garvey published two
newspapers in Jamaica, and a magazine in Jamaica and England, after his deportation from the United
States. The UNIA also briefly supplemented the weekly Negro World with a Daily Negro Times in the
early 1920s. However, none of Garvey's other journalistic endeavors ever matched the power and
influence of the Negro World. With its combination of wide circulation, international outreach, excellence
of editorship, and worldwide influence, the Negro World may have been the best African-American
newspaper of all time.
Martin, T. (2006). Negro World. In C. A. Palmer (Ed.), Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (2nd ed., Vol. 4, pp. 1639-1641).
Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3444700936&v=2.1&u=cuny_medgarevers&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=14c961e9d8f9444
b73daeff1a9ce6f94
THE NEGRO WORLD NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, 1923-1925

INDEX TERMS

Individual names

Bruce, John Edward, 1855(56)-1924

Domingo, W. A. (Wilfred Adolphus), 1889-1968

Duse Mohammad Ali, 1866–1945

Ferris, William Henry, 1873–1941

Fortune, Timothy Thomas, 1856–1928

Garvey, Amy Jacques, 1885–1973

Garvey, Marcus, 1887-1940

Harrison, Hubert H., 1883-1927

Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891–1960

Rogers, J. A. (Joel Augustus), 1880–1966

Walrond, Eric, 1898–1966

Woodson, Carter Godwin, 1875–1950

Institutions

Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Acquisition Information: This collection was donated to the Archives of the Charles Evans Inniss
Memorial Library, Medgar Evers College, CUNY in December 2013 by Mr. Brian Brown.

Processing Information: Finding aid, collection arrangement, and processing were completed by Yelena
Novitskaya, Archives and Special Collections librarian, in the summer of 2015.

Conditions on Access and Use: Access to the collection is unrestricted. It is available for research
purposes. Duplication of the collection may be governed by copyright and other restrictions.

Physical Access: Appointment is required for access.

Preferred Citation: The Negro World (Year, Month Day). The Negro World Newspaper Collection,
1923-1925. CEIML.NW.003, Archives and Special Collections, Charles Evans Inniss Memorial Library,
Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY.

COLLECTION ARRANGEMENT

COLLECTION INVENTORY AND DESCRIPTION