radicals in America. This classification led the
postmaster general to ban The Messenger. Signifi-
cantly, however, the coeditors of The Messenger
were equally critical of the extant black leadership,
including DuBois, R. R. Moton (who succeeded
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON at Tuskegee), and Gar-
vey, and satirized them and their organizations in
Messenger articles. Its circulation reached 26,000
at its height of success.
The Messenger’s editorial staff included the
well-known Renaissance writers WALLACE THUR-
MAN and GEORGE S. SCHUYLER and the less-known
drama critic Theophilus Lewis, who together pro-
moted the work of the younger Renaissance writ-
ers, including LANGSTON HUGHES, who published
his first short story in The Messenger. The editors
also published the poetry of ARNA BONTEMPS,
COUNTEE CULLEN, ANGELINA GRIMKE, GEORGIA
DOUGLASS JOHNSON, and CLAUDE MCKAY. They also
published the short stories of ZORA NEALE HUR-
STON, DOROTHY WEST, and ERIC WALROND.
The Messenger ceased publication in 1928, by
which time Owens had left the editorial board and
Randolph had become the leader of the Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters. It lacked an audi-
ence for its socialist message, and its treasury had
been exhausted. (In 1921 Randolph had run for
the office of New York’s secretary of state on the
Socialist ticket.) As Wilson concludes, “In spite of
its turbulent history, The Messenger proffered an
essential radical dimension of African American
social and political thought” (xxii).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Wilson, Kathryn Sondra, ed. The Messenger Reader.
New York: Random House, 2000.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Micheaux, Oscar (1884–1951)
In the comprehensive study of Oscar Micheaux’s
life and creative works, Writing Himself into His-
tory: Oscar Micheaux, authors Pearl Bowser and
Louise Spence provide an insightful assessment:
Oscar Micheaux used his life as a catalyst for his
imagination, dramatizing his experiences and
envisioning himself as a model for other Afri-
can Americans. His self-image as a pioneer, on
the land, in his novels, and in his filmmaking,
was a charmed space.... This space embod-
ied his dreams and ambitions as he struggled
within the limits he set for himself and in defi-
ance of those imposed by others. (222)A novelist, filmmaker, and entrepreneur, Mi-
cheaux was born in January 1884 near Metrop-
olis, Illinois, gaining a formal education in the
public schools before going to Chicago. Once
there, he worked shining shoes and then as a
Pullman car porter on the railroad. Working the
trains allowed him to travel and see the country,
and as he began to write about those travels he
gravitated to the form of the novel. Some scholars
consider Micheaux’s novels to be fictional repli-
cations of his life. One writes, “Micheaux’s first
novel, published in 1913, is a good guide to his
first three decades, because it is thinly disguised
biography.... [T]he biographical and historical
accuracy of the book should not be underempha-
sized.... Micheaux’s subsequent novels are also
rich in autobiographical material” (Green, xii).
Micheaux’s first novel, The Conquest, focuses
upon the black protagonist, named Oscar De-
vereaux, who works in the Chicago area as a Pull-
man car porter before pursuing life in the South
Dakota frontier.
The Conquest is a book written after Micheaux’s
efforts at farming as well as his short, troubled
marriage, failed. Micheaux published the novel
himself, traveling to promote and sell it in the
Midwest and the South. While traveling, he or-
ganized a network of contacts and developed his
second novel, The Forged Note, which continued
the exploits of the protagonist, Devereaux, as he
becomes a farmer and landowner. His third novel,
The Homesteader (1917), was completed during the
aftermath of the feature film The Birth of a Nation
(1915), whose negative depiction of black Ameri-
cans prompted the formation of numerous black
independent film companies. One of those compa-
nies, Lincoln Motion Picture, entered negotiations354 Micheaux, Oscar