The Crisis was a unique publication for its time. This magazine showed the insight into the experiences and lives of a group of people who for most of American history were held down by a racial caste system. In America, people of African descent were outcasted by the society, seen as people who couldn’t become like the well-off. They worked menial jobs as housekeepers and janitors and weren’t expected to amount to a more affluent lifestyle. The Crisis shuts down these types of stereotypes by showing there could be a bright side to the black experience in America through their covers. The covers of this magazine have depicted the black experience in America as not how it was stereotypically expected to be but with an implication that there will be a new life for Black Americans in America. The covers were the face of this new Black America. These covers did marvels by defeating stereotypes of lower-class African Americans. People didn’t expect to see African Americans in graduation caps and being proud of and having their own culture. These covers were for two groups of people. The first group is the African Americans, so they could see themselves as more than what they were expected to be. An African American working a menial job, making not very much money, and not knowing much of their own history beyond slavery could see themselves as more than an underclassman and could see themselves prospering and living better lives. The second group of people that the Crisis magazine covers are for are the typical non-black American citizens. These groups of people expect not much from African Americans, rather than being people without any history, prosperity, or success. When people like this see the covers of the Crisis publication, they stop believing these types of negative stereotypes and see what the Black experience in America is really like.

For this publication, they had a few advantages that African Americans at the time didn’t have and that was owning the new and advanced printing technologies that were required to make this magazine very successful. For the Crisis and W.E.B. DuBois, advantages such as this gave the lower-class political insight and increased the professionalism of the magazine and made it more popular. According to Donal Harris, Dubois took advantage of the benefits new print technologies can have in creating a successful publication. With these characteristics, The Crisis was able to make implications of a new form of black representation and promote the image of “The New Negro” and destroy genre stereotypes. Dubois did however face some challenges while commanding this publication. Dubois had some solemn concerns.  Dolan Harris writes, “…he voiced his concern about the wide gap between the quantity and quality of magazines available, particularly regarding their ability to instill substantive intellectual discourse or political change.” Dubois was worried about several things, such as if the Crisis was reaching a serious and wide enough audience, and if the magazine provides intelligent and substantial information and will this information be strong enough to spark political change.