The Brownies’ Book was one of the first periodicals created primarily for Black youth, or “children of the sun,” as the magazine referred to them. It was published monthly between January 1920 and December 1921, for a total of twenty-four issues, and is freely available online. Each issue opened with this statement:

The Brownie's Book opening page. Image courtesy of Jonda C. McNair.

Like The Horn Book Magazine, The Brownies’ Book was one of the first of its kind in various ways and recently celebrated its centennial. The magazine was spearheaded by Jessie Redmon Fauset, W. E. B. Du Bois, and ­Augustus Granville Dill.

Both magazines continue to be remarkable and relevant in the field of children’s literature, and although The Brownies’ Book ceased publication over a hundred years ago, its ideological underpinnings continue to undergird and shape the work of African American children’s book creators. The ­following is a conversation that took place on June 12, 2024, between Drs. Dianne Johnson-Feelings and Jonda C. McNair, coeditors of A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies’ Book (2022).

Jonda C. McNair: I was introduced to The Brownies’ Book while working on my doctorate at The Ohio State ­University in the early 2000s. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop was teaching a special topics course on the history and development of African American children’s literature, and one of the required texts was The Best of The Brownies’ Book (1996; edited by Dianne Johnson-Feelings). Dr. Bishop brought in original copies of the magazine, which she passed around so we could have a chance to touch and look at them. I wrote a paper about The Brownies’ Book that would later become my dissertation topic. I was interested in how the seven objectives that they laid out to accomplish — for example, wanting “colored children,” the term they used at the time, to recognize “that being colored is a normal, beautiful thing,” and wanting Black children to know about the accomplishments of their ancestors. Those objectives were — and still are — important to writers, so I conducted a ­comparative analysis of The ­Brownies’ Book and the work of author Patricia C. McKissack.

Dianne Johnson-Feelings: My study of children’s literature, Black children’s literature, also began with looking at the work of one person in particular, and that person was Lucille Clifton. My master’s thesis was actually on her children’s books, even though she was such a revered poet for general readers as well. That’s one of the things that really interests me about the history of Black children’s literature: I think a lot of our writers and creators have always understood that children are important readers and have not looked down upon them. What’s very evident from the beginning in The Brownies’ Book is that the editors — Fauset and Du Bois — I like to put her name first…

JCM: She doesn’t get the credit she deserves.

DJF: Right, women often don’t get that credit, and Fauset in particular. They took children very seriously as an audience, and that was reflected in so many ways in the design of the magazine. The ­Brownies’ Book nurtured many future writers, including Langston Hughes, who was still a teenager when he first contributed to it.

JCM: Let’s talk about our book, A Centennial­ ­Celebration of The ­Brownies’ Book.

In 2018, Dr. Bishop and I had published an article in The Horn Book Magazine (“'To Be Great, Heroic or Beautiful’: The Enduring Legacy of The Brownies’ Book”). You read the piece and reached out to me. You said the centennial was coming up and that you and I should do a book. I was thrilled!

DJF: I had been looking at the ­University Press of ­Mississippi ChLA [Children’s Literature Association] ­Centennial Studies Series. I thought The Brownies’ Book should be included, and who better to partner with than Jonda C. McNair? I hope that our work really does have an impact on other scholars and on the field of American children’s literature in a larger way, and I think it’s very important for people to honor the history of the world that they’re part of. It distresses me when younger creators talk as if they are inventing a canon as if such a canon does not exist at all. It angers me when, all too often, I hear, “Well, I didn’t see it there, so I decided to create it.” Whether you’re a musician or a ­professor or an engineer, you should educate yourself in the history of whatever body of work you are now adding to. Regarding this history that you and I are studying, there are thankfully many other scholars now who understand the richness of the history of Black children’s literature, and I’m just so honored to be part of recovering that history.

JCM: I agree. It is troubling to hear Black authors say that there were no books about them when they were growing up, that those books didn’t exist, so they had to write them. In some ways, I think it is disrespectful to the authors who have come before. It also makes me feel sad because what I want to say to them is that there were books in which they could have seen and read about themselves. But the questions should be: Why didn’t I know what was available? Why was I not around those books? Why didn’t more librarians know about them? They were there, just like The Brownies’ Book was alongside St. Nicholas Magazine. If only for two years — the magazine was there. People may not have known about it, but it was there.

DJF: What’s marvelous about The Brownies’ Book is that it is still as relevant as ever. In some ways, it’s regrettable that it is still relevant, but in other ways, it’s exciting. When we look at the mission of the magazine, it’s important to look at the objectives that the editors laid out. The first one is “to make colored children realize that being colored is a normal, beautiful thing,” and it hurts my heart that that had to be articulated. However, I think it still has to be articulated. “To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race” is still an objective, so the field of biography is a huge sector of the children’s book world. This is enormously important as we navigate the current era of book banning and censorship efforts.

JCM: Exactly. Many of the titles in the Coretta Scott King Book Award canon are biographies, and I don’t have a problem with it. If African American authors don’t write these stories about our history and our accomplishments, then they may not be written.

DJF: Well, on the other hand, there are a lot of authors who are not Black who write our stories. Perhaps I shouldn’t say “our stories,” because some would argue that stories can’t belong to any individual or group, but — and I know this is a sweeping statement — certain creators take different approaches to telling certain stories.

JCM: We share certain experiences because of the color of our skin. So, I think because of that lived experience, even if it’s in a different era, that brings something to the writing that an outsider might not be able to bring, no matter how much research they do.

DJF: I agree, and I must reiterate here that part of the impetus for the creation of The Brownies’ Book was to give Black creators a voice. The editors made a point of publishing Negro writers and visual artists. Although many creators of color are now being published, access to the industry is still an issue that requires an entire discussion. In any case, The Brownies’ Book was an amazing­ publication in so many ways.

JCM: Yes, indeed. There were many parts of the magazine, such as biographies of people like Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, and Sojourner Truth. The “As the Crow Flies” section kept children informed about what was happening around the world. Poems were included. “April Rain Song” by Langston Hughes was first published in The Brownies’ Book.

My favorite section is probably “Little People of the Month,” which showcased photos of children and their accomplishments. One young man who I was really fascinated with was named Orin LeRoy Bracey. He was in the November 1921 issue because he had graduated as the class ­valedictorian from Belchertown High School in Massachusetts. He was fifteen years old and the first Black child who had gone to that high school. I was fortunate enough to track down his son, Orin LeRoy Bracey, Jr., meet him in person, and talk to him about his father’s life story. That’s something I’d like to do as a follow-up project: track down children who were featured in “Little People of the Month” to see what happened in their lives and if they accomplished their goals. Do you have a favorite section?

"Little People of the MOnth," November 1921. Images courtesy of Jonda C. McNair.

DJF: I love all of it! I particularly love the letters to the editor because we hear the voices of real young people from around the country. One of my favorites is from schoolgirl Alice Martin of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the June 1920 issue. Alice critiques her geography books, noting that the Africans “always look so ugly.” She confesses that she doesn’t claim to be pretty. However, she realizes that “not all colored people look like me. I see lots of ugly white people, too; but not all white people look like them, and they are not the ones they put in the geography.” The young readers of The Brownies’ Book were astute!

I also love “As the Crow Flies” because it shows this international consciousness and taught the young readers of The Brownies’ Book that, yes, they are citizens of the United States, but they are also citizens of the world. There were some letters from international readers, and I think that was really important. I also love that it was important to the creators of The Brownies’ Book to promote modern Negro art, so they cherished the opportunity to feature the art that our visual artists were creating.

December 1920 cover art.

JCM: I particularly enjoyed looking at the covers of The Brownies’ Book. The December 1920 cover is one of my favorites. It features an image of a Black Santa and was drawn by an artist named Albert Smith, who was living abroad in Paris, France. Additionally, an art educator named Hilda Wilkinson created a number of cover images for the magazine.

DJF: We’ve alluded to this already, but an important project would be to look carefully at the contributions of writers and artists that students of African American culture are familiar with in other contexts. I recently saw The Met’s exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and ­Transatlantic Modernism. I was thrilled that they included a copy of the NAACP’s October 1919 issue of The Crisis, the annual Children’s Number. (We borrowed that cover image for our book.) Children’s literature belongs alongside all of the other materials in the exhibition. In celebrating that show, The New York Times gave some attention to Laura Wheeler Waring in “With ‘Gems’ From Black Collections, the Harlem Renaissance Reappears,” but there was no mention that she was one of the artists often showcased in The ­Brownies’ Book. These connections need to be made and contextualized clearly.

I love photography, and I like how the photographs and visuals could also be used as a way to push back against stereotypes about African Americans. I enjoy looking at the magazine’s photographs of the young people that were sent in, whether they were tiny babies or high school graduates. Just thinking about that long history of Black intellectuals discussing our self-image and how we want to portray ourselves is so important.

JCM: Photographs can demonstrate our intelligence, humanity, and dignity. This medium was an important and useful tool for Du Bois and others, such as Frederick Douglass, who by the way was the most photographed man in the world in the nineteenth century. Du Bois and others had assembled a collection of photographs for the “American Negro Exhibit” that was displayed at the 1900 Paris Exposition, so it is in line with his previous work that there were many photographs in The Brownies’ Book.

DJF: Jonda, I know that you’ve given some thought to children’s magazines that came after The Brownies’ Book. Can you comment on those?

JCM: Sure. Another magazine for Black youth was Ebony Jr!, published by Johnson Publishing Company from May 1973 until October 1985. Dr. Laretta Henderson wrote a scholarly book called Ebony Jr!: The Rise, Fall and Return of a Black Children’s Magazine (2008). Also, there was a magazine that I subscribed to in the early 2000s. It was Footsteps: African American History and was published by Carus. It is no longer in print, but it was published every other month on a range of interesting topics related to the Black experience, such as churches, cowboys, movies, athletes, and inventors. I still have my copies. I loved that magazine!

DJF: I always say The Brownies’ Book was one of the first magazines for Black children, but there was a magazine titled Joy that was published before it. No copies exist now. I still think The Brownies’ Book is the strongest place to really focus when we’re talking about the beginnings of the history of Black children’s books.

JCM: I do, too, because basically it laid the foundation for what was to come. In the goals they outlined, Fauset, Du Bois, and Dill had the brilliance to articulate what we want to convey as African Americans.

DJF: Things have certainly improved around race relations in this country, but in so many ways, we’re going backward and forward at the same time. So, The Brownies’ Book is still relevant.

JCM: Yes, indeed. It certainly recognized the impact of race and racism in our society. Even after a hundred-plus years, the magazine is still standing strong and significant.

From the January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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