Abbott’s Monthly
A CHICAGO-based magazine founded by ROBERT
SENGSTACKEABBOTT, founder and editor of the
CHICAGODEFENDER,in September 1929, just one
month before the devastating stock-market crash.
Despite the timing of its debut, Abbott sold 50,
copies of the first issues and quickly became the
best-selling African-American magazine to date.
The monthly magazine, which, according to
the Detroit Independent,“outstripped the imagina-
tion of all,” published a variety of Harlem Renais-
sance-era writers and artists, including LANGSTON
HUGHESand Robert Hayden. Widespread African-
American unemployment and poverty during the
depression contributed to the magazine’s demise
in 1933.
Bibliography
Johnson, Abby Arthur, and Ronald Maberry Johnson.
Propaganda & Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of
African American Magazines in the Twentieth Century.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1979.
Ottley, Roi. The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of
Robert S. Abbott.Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1955.
Abyssinian Baptist Church
Founded in 1808 by the Reverend Thomas Paul,
the pioneering minister of BOSTON’s African Bap-
tist Church, the Abyssinian Baptist Church was
the first African-American Baptist church in New
York State. In 1920 the congregation purchased
land on 138th Street, between LENOXAVENUE
and Seventh Avenue. Intense tithing by its
members resulted in the construction of an im-
pressive structure with Gothic and Tudor features,
a pulpit of Italian marble, and gorgeous stained
glass windows.
The pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church
during the 1920s was ADAMCLAYTONPOWELL,
SR. He was succeeded by his son Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr., who went on to become a popular city
councilman in 1941 and a congressman whose
New York constituency elected him to serve in the
U.S. House of Representatives for 14 terms.
Bibliography
Abyssinian Baptist Church website. Available online
URL: http://www.abyssinian.org.
Gore, Bob. We’ve Come This Far: The Abyssinian Baptist
Church—A Photographic Journal.New York: Tabori
& Chang, 2001.Advancing South, The: Stories of Progress
and Reaction Edward Mims(1926)
A social science volume by Edward Mims on eco-
nomic, educational, and social conditions in the
South. In this volume, Mims proposed that the
African-American press was the “greatest single
power in the Negro race” (268). ALAINLOCKEre-
viewed the book in the December 1926 issue of
OPPORTUNITY.Bibliography
Locke, Alain. Opportunity(December 1926).
Mims, Edward. The Advancing South: Stones of Progress
and Reaction.New York: Doubleday, Page, 1926.Africa
The continent of Africa figures prominently in the
literary, political, artistic, and social imagination of
Harlem Renaissance writers and artists. ALAIN
LOCKEurged writers to consider ways in which
African history and traditions might shape their
work. CARTERG. WOODSONcrafted an impressive
argument about the greatness of Africa in The
African Background Outlined, or Handbook for the
Study of the Negro,his respected 1936 history and
bibliographic review of materials relating to Africa.
MARCUSGARVEYadvocated that African Ameri-
cans establish themselves there. Poets such as
COUNTEECULLENconjured up haunting images of
black people’s empowering past in a mythic Africa.
W. E. B. DUBOIStreated issues relating to Euro-
pean colonialism in Africa and to PAN-AFRICANISM.
Other writers, such as LANGSTONHUGHESand
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON, did not focus on
African and primitive subjects, however; they pre-
ferred to concentrate on black American issues
and encourage sustained attention to, and analysis
of, black issues and African-American contexts.Bibliography
Jones, Norma Ramsay. “Africa, as Imaged by Cullen &
Co.” Negro American Literature Forum8, no. 4 (win-
ter 1974): 263–267.2 Abbott’s Monthly