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"The Crisis": a Collection of Poems

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The Crisis was a monthly magazine published by the NAACP, which began publication in 1910. Throughout its early years, the magazine was edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. Between 1919-1926, Jessie Fauset served as its Literary Editor. During that period of time, many young writers who would later be mainstays of the Harlem Renaissance began publishing poetry and criticism in the pages of The Crisis, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, as well as Fauset herself. In addition to poetry, the newspaper frequently published criticism and reviews of poetry by Black poets. The most influential of these might be William Stanley Braithwaite's 1919 essay, "The Negro in American Literature" (a revised version of that essay was later reprinted in Alain Locke's The New Negro: an Interpretation). 

Between 1911 and 1926, the magazine published more than 150 poems by a wide range of authors. Below, you'll find the poems we have collected thus far that appeared in the magazine. 

Source: Many of the poems collected on this page were discovered via the digital repostiory of The Crisis at Modernist Journals Project. Others (mainly poems published after 1922) have been sourced from digital versions of The Crisis found on sites like Archive.org and HathiTrust. 

Acknowledgments: This page has benefited from the efforts of Christian Farrior, a Graduate Research Assistant who assisted in retyping and formatting poems from page image format in the summer of 2022. 

 

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  1. Welcome: African American Poetry--a Digital Anthology Amardeep Singh

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  1. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Certainty" (1914) Amardeep Singh

Contents of this tag:

  1. Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921)
  2. Carrie Williams Clifford, "The New Year" (1920)
  3. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "A Sonnet: to the Mantled" (1917/1922)
  4. A Sonnet in Memory of John Brown by Georgia Douglas Johnson
  5. Anne Spencer, "Dunbar" (1922)
  6. James D. Corrothers, "The Road to the Bow" (1913)
  7. Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., "A Sonnet to the Negro Soldiers" (1918)
  8. James Weldon Johnson, "Brothers" (1916)
  9. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Quadroon" (1911)
  10. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "The Teacher" (1911)
  11. The Hegira by Georgia Douglas Johnson
  12. William Pickens, "'The Crisis'" (1914)
  13. Virginia P. Jackson, "Africa" (1919)
  14. Langston Hughes, "Poem (To F.S.)" (1925)
  15. Jessie Fauset, "Song for a Lost Comrade (To O.B.J.)" (1922)
  16. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Gossamer" (1916)
  17. Countee Cullen, "Bread and Wine" (1923)
  18. Cora J. Ball Moten, "A Lullaby" (1914)
  19. Jessie Redmon Fauset, "Rondeau" (1912)
  20. Angelina W. Grimke, "To the Dunbar High School (A Sonnet)" (1917)
  21. J.W. Work, "It's Great to Be a Problem" (1920)
  22. Lucian B. Watkins, "Paul Laurence Dunbar--Poet" (1917)
  23. Otto Bohanan, "Villanelle" (1915)
  24. Countee Cullen, "Night Rain" (1925)
  25. Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "Sonnet" (1919)
  26. Benjamin Griffith Brawley, "The Freedom of the Free" (1913)
  27. Countee Cullen, "Three Hundred Years Ago" (1925)
  28. Benjamint Griffith Brawley, "Shakespeare" (1915)
  29. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Certainty" (1914)
  30. James D. Corrothers, "The Black Man's Soul" (1915)
  31. L.A. Proctor, "My Little Love Salome" (1911)
  32. Andrea Razafkeriefo, "In Flanders Fields..." (1920)
  33. C. Bertram Johnson, "Soul and Star" (1919)
  34. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Armageddon" (1915)
  35. Waverly T. Carmichael, "'Taint No Need O' Women Worrin' "(1918)
  36. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Shall I Say 'My Son, You Are Branded'?" (1919)
  37. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "The Final Strain" (1917)
  38. Angelina W. Grimke, "To Keep The Memory of Charlotte Forten Grimke" (1915)
  39. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Desert-Bound" (1918)
  40. William H.A. Moore, "That One Might Live in the Sunlight Glad" (1913)
  41. Carrie Williams Clifford, "An Easter Message" (1920)
  42. Otto Bohanan, "The Washer-Woman" (1916)
  43. James Weldon Johnson, "The Black Mammy" (1915)
  44. Rosalie Jonas, "The Octoroon Ball" (1911)
  45. Lucian Watkins, "Frederick Douglass-Orator" (1917)
  46. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Father Love" (1919)
  47. Anne Spencer, "Before the Feast of Shushan (Esther I)" (1920)
  48. Fenton Johnson, "War Profiles" (1918)
  49. James D. Corrothers, "A Song of May and June" (1914)
  50. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Joseph Pulitzer" (1911)
  51. Lucian Watkins, "Greatness" (1916)
  52. Carrie Williams Clifford, "Spring" (1915)
  53. Fenton Johnson, "Children of the Sun" (1913)
  54. Lucian Watkins, "Samuel Coleridge Taylor--Musician" (1917)
  55. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "In the Still Night" (1917)
  56. Arthur Tunnell, "On Segregation" (1914)
  57. James D. Corrothers, "Listen, O Isles!" (1914)
  58. Josephine T. Washington, "Cedar Hill Saved" (1919)
  59. Yetta Kay Stoddard, "For a Rose" (1922)
  60. Ida B. Luckie, "Retribution" (1916)
  61. Charles Bertram Johnson, "Rain-Mist" (1920)
  62. Jessie Fauset, "Again It is September" (1917)
  63. Amedee Brun, "The Pool" (translated by Jessie Fauset, 1921)
  64. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Vision of a Lyncher" (1912)
  65. Countee Cullen, "Threnody for a Brown Girl" (1925)
  66. William Stanley Braithwaite, "Scintilla" (1915)
  67. Lucian B. Watkins, "Ballade to Paul Laurence Dunbar" (1918)
  68. Jessie Fauset, "Douce Souvenance" (1920)
  69. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Fame" (1916)
  70. Charles Bertram Johnson, "Shadows" (1920)
  71. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Peace" (1916)
  72. James Weldon Johnson, "The White Witch" (1915)
  73. Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Black Samson of Brandywine"
  74. B.B. Church, "In This Hour" (1919)
  75. Lucian B. Watkins, "Star of Ethiopia" (1918)
  76. William Stanley Braithwaite, "Laughing it Out" (1915)
  77. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "The Passing of the Ex-Slave" (1918)
  78. Lucian B. Watkins, "To Our Friends" (1916)
  79. Charles Bertram Johnson, "Race Dreams" (1920
  80. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Tears and Kisses" (1917)
  81. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Calling Dreams" (1920)
  82. Roscoe C. Jamison, "Negro Soldiers" (1917
  83. Rosalie Jonas, "Brother Baptis' On Woman Suffrage" (1912)
  84. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Easter-Emancipation 1863-1913 (1913)
  85. B. Harrison Peyton, "Lo, the Dusk-Born Daughter!" (1916)
  86. Otto Bohanan, "God Gave Us Song" (1918)
  87. Otto Bohanan, "The Awakening" (1914)
  88. Katherine Gillard, "Just a Little Tired" (1916)
  89. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "My Little One" (1916)
  90. Charles Bertram Johnson, "Snow" (1920)
  91. Otto Bohanan, "Paean" (1915)
  92. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "My Boy" (1917)
  93. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Afterglow" (1920)
  94. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Heritage" (1917)
  95. Robert J. Laurence, "The Christmas Sermon" (1912)
  96. W.E.B. Du Bois, "A Hymn to the Peoples" (1911)
  97. Ethel Caution Davis, "A Man" (1916)
  98. Lucian B. Watkins, "The Black Madonna And Her Babe" (1918)
  99. Jasper Ross, "King Cotton and the Negro" (1914)
  100. Lottie Burrill Dixon, "A Rainy Day" (1916)
  101. Profiles of William Stanley Braithwaite in "The Crisis": "Resurrection" (1911)
  102. Esther A. Yates “Fettered Liberty” (1915)
  103. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Guardianship" (1917)
  104. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Again it is the Vibrant May" (1918)
  105. James Weldon Johnson, "To America" (1917)
  106. W.E.B. Du Bois, "In God's Gardens" (1912)
  107. Lucian Watkins, "Two Points of View" (1916)
  108. Effie Lee Newsome (Marry Effie Lee), "O Autumn, Autumn!" (1918)
  109. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Prejudice" (1919)
  110. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Mate" (1916)
  111. William Stanley Braithwaite, "The Vision" (1911)
  112. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Hope" (1917)
  113. Lucian B. Watkins, "These" (1917)
  114. William H.A. Moore “Here in the Time of the Winter Morn” (1912)
  115. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Burden of Black Women" (1914)
  116. Countee Cullen, "If Love be Staunch" (1925)
  117. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Essence" (1916)
  118. Bertha Johnston, "I Met A Little Blue-Eyed Girl" (1912)
  119. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Potency" (1919)
  120. Robert J. Laurence, "The Christmas Sermon" (1912)
  121. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Attar" (1920)
  122. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "The Mother" (1917)
  123. Will N. Johnson, "The Call" (1916)
  124. James Weldon Johnson, "Father, Father Abraham" (1913)
  125. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Christmas Prayers of God" (1914)
  126. Countee Cullen, "Lament" (1925)
  127. Kelsey Percival Kitchel, "Slave's Song" (1916)
  128. Robert W. Justice, "The Heart's Desire" (1911)
  129. James D. Corrothers, "At the Closed Gate of Justice" (1913)
  130. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Let Me Not Lose My Dream" (1917)
  131. Edwin J. Morgan, "Rhapsody" (1917)
  132. B.B. Church, "Maybe" (1923)
  133. Alston Burleigh, "The Brave Son" (1919)
  134. James D. Corrothers, "Up! Sing the Song" (1913)
  135. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Unrest" (1920)
  136. Anne Spencer, "White Things" (1923)
  137. Lucian Watkins “Song of the American Dove”   (1916)
  138. Carrie Williams Clifford, "An Easter Message" (1920)
  139. James D. Corrothers, "In the Matter of Two Men" (1915)