By Stacey Patton

Late last month my mentor, the great Pulitzer-prize winning historian David Levering-Lewis, invited me to be his special guest at the 100th anniversary celebration of the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine. A rapt audience gathered inside the New York Hilton Hotel’s Trianon Ballroom to hear Lewis and current Crisis editor Jabari Asim have a conversation about the magazine’s early years and its first intrepid editor-in-chief, W.E.B. Du Bois.

That evening, I had before me a room full of veteran civil rights stalwarts, including outgoing NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, Crisis Chairman Roger Wilkins, and Myrlie Evers-Williams, the former widow of slain activist Medgar Evers. These pioneers embody black America’s trek into a more egalitarian society. And we have 100 years of Crisis issues that brilliantly chronicle that struggle. But while the institutional memory of the NAACP and the nation’s first premiere black journal was ever present and lucid that evening, the baton and the next generation to pass it to were conspicuously missing from the room.

It is wonderful and indeed necessary to mark historic milestones and to pay homage to those who paved the way for our present opportunities. But to continue this great legacy and the work of our traditional organizations, we must cultivate the next generation of leaders, attorneys, writers, and activists. Du Bois was astutely aware of this a century ago when he launched the Crisis.

‘A Psychological Moment’

The Crisis came in November 1910, at what Du Bois aptly described as a psychological moment.” Arriving a little more than four decades after Emancipation, its first issues reveal the stifling strictures of segregation and a black America under siege. Its mission, as articulated in its introductory issue, was “to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people.”

A product of the early 20th century communications revolution, the monthly magazine provided the black bourgeois space to openly challenge racist regimes and depictions of “the darker races” and debate civil rights strategies. It also gave black Americans an outlet to craft thoughtful commentaries on issues of the day as well as class-conscious narratives about their history, culture, and identity.

The first 1,000 sold-out copies of the Crisis carried a cover with an amateur sketch of a young black child drawn by Du Bois. Holding a thin iron hoop gird in one hand and a metal cleek in the other, the child (gender unknown) appears to be headed to a competition. It is significant that Du Bois debuted his civil rights journal with an image of a young person in possession of a popular racing toy. The gird and cleek required skillful use of a small rod to quickly push forth the large barrel hoop around corners, past obstacles, and over uneven terrain without losing speed or falling down.

Read symbolically, this image conveys that Du Bois and many of his contemporaries believed that the future hopes and dreams of African Americans depended upon the black child’s ability to compete, navigate and survive in a society full of racial dangers. The launch cover also indicates that in its early years as the official and politically radical communications hub of the NAACP, The Crisis used black childhood as a vehicle to push for racial equality, to chart black progress and to vigilantly expose the dangerous reach of white supremacy at all levels of society.†

A Child-Centered Civil Rights Agenda

Most people might not think of the Crisis as a significantly child-centered publication. But at its inception, editor Du Bois intended to promote the importance of nurturing and encouraging children and pressed leaders of the day to become gatekeepers of the experiences of young people. Comb through the first four decades worth of Crisis issues and what emerges are examples of holistic colored-coded class-conscious approaches on how best to raise youth in a segregated society, and striking portraits of cute, bright-eyed, well-dressed youngsters—a stark contrast to the widely-circulated racist images of black youth. Readers can find notes on black children’s educational achievements and instances when youngsters protested racism by staging boycotts and protests.

In addition, there is an extensive record of Progressive era reform efforts designed to improve young black lives, as well as celebratory children’s stories and poems written by literary greats of the Harlem Renaissance such as Jessie Fauset and Langston Hughes, to name a few. Black children were central to the racial uplift ideologies espoused by the black elite and were expected to bear the mantle of change even in the face of persistent devaluation.

Du Bois, himself a roving investigative journalist, sprinkled pages of The Crisis with rich sociological evidence of the mean-spiritedness of mainstream life to black children. Working together with an interracial coalition of reformers and stringers from local newspapers embedded in black communities, Du Bois used his media outlet and other writings to document dramatic and mundane incidents, the slights and hurts, and the insidious attempts to deprive black children of a promising future by erasing the idea of possibility early in their childhood.

By 1914, as an institutional response to the widespread racism against children, the NAACP established a Children’s Department. Du Bois announced in the October edition of the Crisis that a committee had been formed to organize a juvenile auxiliary to be headquartered in Washington, D.C. He wrote: “In its struggle for equality of opportunity for colored people, the Association has interested itself in a number of cases affecting children and young people.”

The Children’s Department worked together with state and federal agencies such as the U.S. Children’s Bureau to investigate crimes and other problems affecting black youth. Six years later, in 1920-1921, Du Bois launched a children’s magazine called The Brownies’ Books. It was designed to teach black children race pride and to build their self-esteem. But it also had a radical political function which was to “create refined colored youngsters” who would become physically and intellectually fit to challenge the status quo and overthrow America’s ever-evolving racist regimes.

A New Youth Movement

So what can civil rights leaders and organizations of the 21st century learn from the early years of the Crisis?

This was a question I grappled with as I listened to David Levering-Lewis reflect on Du Bois’s journalistic advocacy before an audience predominantly comprised of 50-something year-olds and up. I asked myself, where are the young people? How will we make a space at the table for them? How can we, once again, make them central to the business of civil rights?

One of the things we can do is to drawn on the Du Boisian model. We can begin to use new technologies to highlight their experiences and struggles. And we can teach them how to become citizen journalists and activists just like Du Bois did during the early years of the Crisis. We have to build a coalition integrating all of our civil rights organizations, state agencies and media networks to focus on issues like school re-segregation, juvenile justice, access to health care and jobs, foster care and child abuse, to name a few.

We must embrace what Du Bois knew over 100 years ago. Without children there is no civil rights agenda, and our beloved organizations will cease to remain relevant. They will continue to be targets of acerbic criticism launched by media and political pundits that question our missions and assert that we have lost our way in an American landscape of shifting politics and attitudes on race.

Those of us in the business of civil rights know that the moment is ripe with opportunities as we face ever-widening racial disparities in all areas of American life. It is time for a new youth movement and to achieve a balance between the wisdom of our veterans and fresh ideas and energy of the new generation as we forge ahead. Without children there is no future.

Stacey Patton is Senior Editor of The Defenders Online and writer for The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.