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Poems Published in "Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life," 1923-1928

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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, 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. 

Here, we have been in the process of digitizing the poems published in the 1920s in Opportunity based on facsimile copies available at Archive.org; those are collected below. We are also developing an Index of poems published in Opportunity during these years; that Index can be found here.

 

Contents of this tag:

  1. Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues" (1925)
  2. Langston Hughes, "Our Land (Poem for a Decorative Panel)" (1923)
  3. Langston Hughes, "To Midnight Nan at Leroy's" (1926)
  4. Angelina Weld Grimke, "Dusk" (1924)
  5. Angelina Weld Grimke, "I Weep" (1924)
  6. Helene Johnson, "The Road" (1926)
  7. Angelina Weld Grimke, "Death" (1925)
  8. Helene Johnson, "Fulfillment" (1926)
  9. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "To a Dark Girl" (1927)
  10. Angelina Weld Grimke, "The Black Finger" (1923)
  11. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Heritage" (1923)
  12. Countee Cullen, "Brown Boy to Brown Girl (Remembrance on a hill) (For Yolanda)" (1924)
  13. Langston Hughes, "The White Ones" (1924)
  14. Angelina Weld Grimke, "Little Grey Dreams" (1924)
  15. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Hatred" (1926)
  16. Countee Cullen, "Confession" (1926)
  17. Helene Johnson, "Magalu" (1926)
  18. Helene Johnson, "Trees at Night" (1925)
  19. Countee Cullen, "A Song of Praise (For one who praised his lady's being fair)" (1924)
  20. Langston Hughes, "Lincoln Monument" (1927)
  21. Arna Bontemps, "The Return" (1927)
  22. Lucy Ariel Williams, "Northboun'" (1926)
  23. Esther Popel, "Kinship" (1925)
  24. Donald Jeffrey Hayes, "Confession" (1927)
  25. Helene Johnson, "Fiat Lux" (1928)
  26. Gladys May Casey Hayford, "Rainy Season Love Song" (1927)
  27. Lewis Alexander, "Transformation" (1927)
  28. Richard Bruce (Bruce Nugent), "Shadow" (1925)
  29. Clarissa Scott Delany, "Solace" (1927)
  30. Eloise A. Bibb, "After Reading Bryant's Lines to a Waterfowl" (1924)
  31. Joseph S. Cotter, Sr., "The Way-Side Well" (or: "The Wayside Well") (1925)
  32. Arna Bontemps, "Golgotha Is a Mountain" (1926)
  33. Countee Cullen, "Lines to our Elders" (1926)
  34. Anne Spencer, "Rime For the Christmas Baby" (1927)
  35. Robert H. Bonner, Jr, "A New Day" (1928)
  36. J. Alpheus Butler, "A Traveller" (1928)
  37. Countee Cullen, "From Life to Love" (1925)
  38. Langston Hughes, "Passing Love" (1927)
  39. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Lines Written at the Grave of Alexandre Dumas" (1926)
  40. Jonathan H. Brooks, "The Resurrection" (1927)
  41. M.V. Cuthbert (Marion Cuthbert, Marion Vera Cuthbert), "Black Flute" (1928)
  42. Countee Cullen, "I Have a Rendezvous With Life" (1924)
  43. Jonathan H. Brooks, "Still I am Marveling" (1928)
  44. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Purgation" (1925)
  45. Langston Hughes, "Day" (1927)
  46. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Voyaging" (1923)
  47. Wallace Thurman, "God's Edict" (1926)
  48. Blanche Taylor Dickinson, "A Sonnet and a Rondeau" (1927)
  49. Earl Bigelow Brown, "A Bridge" (1928)
  50. George Leonard Allen, "The Negro Sings of Winds" (1928)
  51. Langston Hughes, "Troubled Women" (1925)
  52. Langston Hughes, "America" (1925)
  53. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Street Lamps in Early Spring" (1926)
  54. Joseph S. Cotter, "The Tragedy of Pete" (1926)
  55. Countee Cullen, "Black Majesty" (1928)
  56. George Little, "The Black Man's Burden" (1928)
  57. William H.A. Moore, "Sonnet" (1925)
  58. Anita Scott Coleman, "Wash Day" (1927)
  59. Langston Hughes, "Love Song for Lucinda" (1926)
  60. Harry Levette, "The Aster" (1927)
  61. Marie Brown Frazier, "In a Jar" (1928)
  62. Sterling A. Brown, "When De Saints Go Ma'ching Home" (1927)
  63. Langston Hughes, "Teacher" (1926)
  64. George Leonard Allen, "To a Negro Musician" (1927)
  65. Helene Johnson, "Metamorphism" (1926)
  66. Frank Horne, "To a Persistent Phantom" (1926)
  67. Mae V. Cowdery (Mae Cowdery), "The Wind Blows" (1927)
  68. Allison Davis, "Fighters" (1928)
  69. Arna Bontemps, "God Give to Men" (1925)
  70. Langston Hughes, "Liars" (1925)
  71. Langston Hughes, "Mona" (1927)
  72. Helene Johnson, "Night" (1926)
  73. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Lethe" (1926)
  74. Norma Hendricks, "The Mulatto" (1928)
  75. George Leonard Allen, "Portrait" (1927)
  76. Antonio Jarvis, "Bamboula Dance" (1928)
  77. Esther Popel, "Theft" (1925)
  78. Edward S. Silvera, "On the Death of a Young Friend" (1926)
  79. James Edward McCall, "The New Negro" (1927)
  80. Waring Cuney, "A Triviality" (1927)
  81. J. Alpheus Butler, "The City by the Sea" (1928)
  82. Lewis Alexander, "Africa" (1924)
  83. Blanche Taylor Dickinson, "Fortitude" (1927)
  84. Arna Bontemps, "Here Is the Sea" (1926)
  85. J. Taylor Stanley, "The Two Singers" (1928)
  86. Herschell Bek, "Moonlight" (1925)
  87. J. Alpheus Butler, "Dreamers" (1927)
  88. Angelina Weld Grimke, "For the Candle Light" (1925)
  89. Anita Scott Coleman, "Definition" (1927)
  90. Sterling A. Brown (Sterling Brown), "Thoughts of Death" (1928)
  91. Paul Laurence Dunbar, "The Right to Die" (1899)
  92. Wesley Curtright, "Negro Woman" (1927)
  93. Arna Bontemps, "Homing" (1926)
  94. Helene Johnson, "Ah My Race" (1925)
  95. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Wind" (1924)
  96. Langston Hughes, "I Thought it was Tangiers I Wanter" (1927)
  97. James Edward McCall (J.E. McCall), "The Conjure Man" (1928)
  98. J. Harvey L. Baxter, "Paint Me A God" (1927)
  99. Arna Bontemps, "The Day-Breakers" (1926)
  100. Helene Johnson, "Futility" (1926)
  101. Countee Cullen, "A Thorn Forever In the Breast" (1927)
  102. Edward S. Silvera, "Fantasy in Black" (1928)
  103. Esther Popel, "Credo" (1925)
  104. Langston Hughes, "For an Indian Screen" (1927)
  105. Arna Bontemps, "The Shattering" (March 1926)
  106. Waring Cuney, "Interior Decoration" (1927)

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