Final issue of The Brownies Book

One hundred years ago today … The Brownies Book of December, 1921 would be the last issue of the monthly for Black youth that had started two years earlier by the N.A.A.C.P. under the editorship of W.E.B. Du Bois and Jessie Redmon Fauset. The issue’s first page read:

This is the last Brownies' Book. For twenty-four months we have brought Joy and Knowledge to four thousand Brownies stretched from Oregon to Florida. But there are two million Brownies in the United States, and unless we got at least one in every hundred to read our pages and help pay printing, we knew we must at last cease to be. And now the month has come to say goodbye. We are sorry---much sorrier than any of you, for it has all been such fun. After all --- who knows --- perhaps we shall meet again.

DuBois & Dill. The Brownie's book vol. 2 no. 12, December 1921, p.

Note: We feature the Brownies Book in posts for February 12, 1920 and February 22, 1921.

Included in the table of contents are pieces by Langston Hughes and Yolande Du Bois.

A “Valedictory” gave more detail about the magazine’s end:

 – Jonathan Goldman, Dec. 6, 2021

TAGS: African American literature, Black writing, journalism, media, periodical, civil rights, children, race