The Colored American Magazine, by Pauline Hopkins
Text: The Colored American Magazine
Author: Pauline Hopkins, Fred R. Moore
Publication Year: 1900-1909
The Colored American Magazine was published between 1900-1909 and was one of the first magazines to highlight and share Black literature while also protesting and challenging injustices and racism. Founded by Walter Wallace, Jesse W. Watkins, Harper S. Fortune, and Walter Alexander Johnson, the magazine was part of the Colored Cooperative Publishing Company. Activists such as Pauline Hopkins, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington frequently contributed to the magazine, and Hopkins was once part of the editorial service. The magazine resisted stereotypes about Blackness, often celebrated individuals, and brought attention to issues that went unnoticed. The Colored American Magazine centered Black women’s issues from its genesis.
Fred R. Moore and Booker T. Washington bought the Colored Cooperative Publishing Company and the Colored American Magazine in 1904 and moved the company from Boston to New York. Because of Hopkins’s political beliefs, she was forced out as editor. As she left, the magazine became less concerned with literature as a means of change and stopped covering racial injustices.
Associated Exhibits
The Colored Cooperative Publishing Company (1900-1904) was an African-American-owned publishing company based in Boston, Massachusetts. This exhibit explores how the company played an integral role in the growth of an increasingly intellectual and politically active black readership during the Twentieth Century.
The Afric-American Female Intelligence Society members worked together to promote literacy in the streets of Boston and in addition to being a pillar of the society, this organization of Black women in Boston devoted itself to the preservation and cultivation of its community.
Works Cited
The Digital Colored American Magazine. “History,” October 17, 2015. https://coloredamerican.org/?page_id=70.
The Digital Colored American Magazine. “The Digital Colored American Magazine.”. https://coloredamerican.org/.