GUARDIAN OF
BLACK VOICES
By COURTLAND MILLOY
On a wall inside the Baltimore-based Black Classic Press , owner W . Paul Coates keeps a poster of the first out-of-print publication that was revived by his company . It is a sociological journal dated March 1925 , called Survey Graphic .
The publication is long defunct , but the contents are timeless .
On the cover of this issue is a portrait of Roland Hayes , an internationally acclaimed African American tenor from Fisk University who sang in four languages at venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl . His achievements , the journal said , “ symbolizes the promise of a younger generation .”
“ Harlem : Mecca of the New Negro ,” the cover proclaimed .
This issue of the Survey Graphic has 102 pages of photographs , drawings , copies of historical documents and artifacts , poetry and prose , depicting the striving for success and survival by a people a mere 60 years out of slavery . The journal contains no demeaning racial stereotypes like the ones that often appeared in white publications . Blacks are not portrayed as a “ problem people ,” to be “ kept down ” or “ helped up ,” as Howard University philosopher Alain Locke wrote in the lead essay of the March 1925 issue .
“ The day of ‘ aunties ,’ ‘ uncles ,’ and ‘ mammies ’ is equally gone ,” Locke wrote . Enter the New Negro , described by Locke as having a “ renewed self-respect and selfdependence ” that created a “ buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without .” The publication was , in essence , a literary manifesto for a burgeoning cultural transformation in Black America that was called the “ New Negro Movement ” at the dawn of the 20th century and later became known as “ the Harlem Renaissance .”
Coates purchased his copy of the Survey Graphic in 1971 for $ 12 from a Black antique shop in Baltimore . Seven years later , in 1978 , he founded Black Classic Press and began reproducing the journal .
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