Although W.E.B. DuBois is known for his involvement with the NAACP and his periodical, The Crisis, along with being a big player in reconstructing the black visual image, he much preferred book publications rather than magazines. He claimed that our country was “magazine mad,” and that magazines/newspapers were a “festering abomination, hodgepodge of lie, gossip, twaddle, and caricature” (p.64) and heavily favored and encouraged buying books than renting them from a library and/or reading a magazine. He believed this as since the buyer was investing more money to buying a book than borrowing books from a library or snatching up a newspaper from a stand, there was a more serious commitment and thus a more personal, engaged reading from their audience.  I think also given the rate of publishing a magazine/periodical versus a book, (one week per magazine vs one year for a book), the perceived quality of work or effort is substantially different. One seems rushed and is constrained with meeting a sales quota and the other seems carefully worked upon and refined with a careful, artistic brush.

So knowing that he preferred people to buy books than renting or reading magazines, why go ahead and make The Crisis into a magazine instead of a book? Matter of fact, DuBois was not the only one to dislike the periodical newspaper. DuBois’ coeditor, F.H.M Murray, also dislikes magazines given their “rough materiality of journals” and their “undercooked intellectual work.” (also p.64) Wouldn’t he want his readers to read his work and cherish his ideas?  Given how trendy magazines are, they catch people up with current events, and a book simply isn’t used in that way. Books have a timeless element to them, and they are read for their stories. They are read for knowledge and are usually read to relax and zone out the world around them. Magazines are for people who want to keep up to speed with their place in the world. They are a form of news. They are generally read often before going to work and they are generally read while in a rush, or under time constraints to learn about new trends, new news, new stuff. That being said, I believe that The Crisis as a magazine was to show that admiring the black visual image at the time could be a new trend, new “news” for America, and accepting black history as American history. I guess also he was desperate to make his work reach as many people as possible, so what better way to reel the audience for magazines than with a stylish magazine cover? Perhaps given the time of creating the magazine, he figured that this could be an opportunity to change what the public (and also himself) thought about magazines and find a way to give the newspaper periodical another chance, while at the same time giving colored folk in the U.S. another chance at being an American. He was trying to kill two birds with one stone by showing people that magazines don’t have to be “undercooked intellectual work” (by using intellectual works from African American educators and activists and talking about civil rights versus gossip and less valuable information) and trying to show America that beauty can also be black.

Some examples of stylish The Crisis magazine covers