New Worldbut became The World Tomorrowsome
six months after it began. Its editors and major
contributors included Socialist Party leader Nor-
man Thomas and Quaker mystic and Haverford
College professor Rufus Jones. The paper ceased
publication in 1934 but was incorporated into the
magazine Christian Century.
Writer and editor WALLACETHURMANwas
on staff at the white-owned journal during the fall
of 1926 during the period when he was working to
produce FIRE!!The journal published ERICWAL-
ROND’s “The Color of the Caribbean” in its May
1927 issue. His piercing essay on the demoralizing
nature of emigration to the United States was an
extremely forthright and searing articulation of
the racial stereotypes that white society upheld
and the ways in which people of color were so
carelessly and violently abused of their self-confi-
dence, qualifications, and goals. In May 1928 the
journal published ZORANEALEHURSTON’s mem-
orable essay “HOW IT FEELS TO BE COLORED
ME.” She had submitted the work in an effort to
generate monies to cover the production costs as-
sociated with Fire!!
Bibliography
Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora
Neale Hurston.New York: Scribner, 2003.
Hemenway, Robert. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biog-
raphy.Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Kaplan, Carla. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.New
York: Doubleday, 2002.
Thurman, Howard. With Head and Heart: The Autobiog-
raphy of Howard Thurman.New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1979.
Wright, Richard(1908–1960)
One of America’s foremost literary figures and an
accomplished scholar whose emergence repre-
sented the end of the Harlem Renaissance and the
inauguration of American modernism. Born in
September 1908 in Mississippi, Wright was the son
of sharecropper Nathan Wright and teacher Ella
Wilson Wright. The family moved frequently dur-
ing Wright’s early years and later settled in
Arkansas with his maternal kin. The brutal murder
of his uncle Silas Hopkins by a white lynch mob
forced the family to flee from their home in Elaine,
Arkansas. Wright’s itinerant childhood was marked
by poverty and violence. He was able to focus on
schooling by 1921 and immediately demonstrated
his deep love of literature and writing. He moved
with his family to CHICAGO, and it was there that
his writing career began.
Wright’s early publications included “Supersti-
tion,” a short story that appeared in the African-
American-owned ABBOTT’S MONTHLY magazine.
As he became immersed in communism and politi-
cal groups, he also began to publish in journals such
as NEWMASSESand The Left Front.In 1935 he
joined the Federal Writers’ Project, a movement af-
filiated with the Works Progress Administration and
the organization with which ARNA BONTEMPS,
Gwendolyn Brooks, CLAUDE MCKAY,RICHARD568 Wright, Richard
Richard Wright. Photographed by Carl Van Vechten.
Permission granted by the Van Vechten Trust (Yale
Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library)