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"Opportunity" and "Ebony and Topaz"

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Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life was active in its first instance between 1923-1941. It was published by the National Urban League, under the editorship initially of Charles S. Johnson. 

Opportunity was most influential in African American literary circles for its literary contests, which ran between 1924-1927, and helped to strengthen the reputations of important writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Arna Bontemps, and Countee Cullen. The contests were also accompanied by award dinners, which were often quite glamorous, and featured many writers, publishers, and patrons. Countee Cullen was closey involved as a literary editor during these years, and regularly published columns reviewing other poets' work. A fair amount of poetry white poets who were white was also published in these years.

In 1928, a special anthology appeared called Ebony and Topaz: A Collecteana, edited by Charles Johnson. Its title page indicates that it was "Published by Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life," and it seems appropriate to think of it as a special one-off literary issue of Opportunity. 

In 1928, Charles Johnson was appointed as President of Fisk University, a Historically Black university. At that time, the editorship shifted, as did the priorities of the journal. After 1928, the magazine was more narrowly focused on sociology and race, and the literary emphasis diminished. 

Contents of this tag:

  1. Mae V. Cowdery, "The Wind Blows" (1927)
  2. Angelina Grimke, "The Black Finger" (1923)
  3. Helene Johnson, "Fiat Lux" (1926)
  4. Helene Johnson, "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem" (1927)
  5. Helene Johnson, "Trees at Night" (1925)
  6. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Wind" (1924)
  7. Helene Johnson, "Ah My Race" (1925)
  8. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Purgation" (1925)
  9. Helene Johnson, "Fulfillment" (1926)
  10. Angelina Grimke, "Dusk" (1924)
  11. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Hatred" (1926)
  12. Helene Johnson, "The Road" (1926)
  13. Angelina Grimke, "I Weep" (1924)
  14. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas" (1926)
  15. Helene Johnson, "Futility" (1926)
  16. Angelina Grimke, "Little Grey Dreams" (1924)
  17. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Street Lamps in Early Spring" (1926)
  18. Helene Johnson, "Night" (1926)
  19. Angelina Grimke, "For the Candle Light" (1925)
  20. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "To a Dark Girl" (1927)
  21. Helene Johnson, "Metamorphism" (1926)
  22. Angelina Grimke, "Death" (1925)
  23. Lewis Alexander, "Effigy" (1927)
  24. Angelina W. Grimke, "To Clarissa Scott Delany" (1927)
  25. Jessie Fauset, "Divine Afflatus" (1927)
  26. Lewis Alexander, "Africa" (1924)
  27. Anne Spencer, "Sybil Warns Her Sister" (1927)
  28. Lewis Alexander, "Transformatin" (1927)
  29. Anne Spencer, "Rime For the Christmas Baby" (1927)
  30. Mae V. Cowdery, "Dusk" (1927)
  31. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Heritage" (1923)