African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Brownies' Book

As I promised in yesterday's post about A. O. Stafford, I wanted to write about W.E.B. DuBois's children's literary magazine, The Brownies' Book, today; Stafford is just one of many writers whose work appeared in the pages of this magazine, which was published in 1920 and 1921, for a total of 22 issues.

There has not been a complete republication of the contents of these magazines, but you can read it all at the Internet Archive, thanks to the way that the Wayback Machine was archived the web presentation of the materials at this wonderful digital project from the University of Nebraska Libraries: The Tar Baby and the Tomahawk: Race and Ethnic Images in American Children's Literature, 1880-1939.

Here's a link to the archived Wayback Machine copy:

You will find all kinds of materials in the pages of these magazines, including these African and African American folktales; most of the authors have appeared in the pages of this blog before, like A. O. Stafford, C. Kamba Simango, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Julian Elihu Bagley.

African stories:

The Hare and the Elephant

The Twin Heroes. An African Myth. (A. O. Stafford)

Some African Riddle (A. O. Stafford)

Mphontholo Ne Shulo (C. Kamba Simango)

The Moon-Bird (Coralie Howard Haman)

Wolf and His Nephew (Elsie Clews Parsons)

African Diaspora stories:

Annancy an' Tiger Ridin' Horse

Chronicles of Br'er Rabbit (Julia Price Burrell)

How Mr. Crocodile Got His Rough Back (Julian Elihu Bagley)

The Origin of Thunder and Lightning (Gwendolyn Robinson)

How Br'er Possum Learned to Play Dead (Julian Elihu Bagley)

How Br'er Possum Outwitted Br'er Rabbit (Julian Elihu Bagley)

The Little Pig's Way Out (Julian Elihu Bagley)

As you can see, folktales are not especially common in the pages of the magazine; it is geared much more to literary works. To learn something about the DuBois's motivations in publishing this magazine and the choices that he made, there is this excellent study available at the Internet Archive too: Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance by Katharine Capshaw Smith.

The first chapter of the book is devoted to DuBois's efforts in both The Crisis (which had an annual children's issue every year from 1912 to 1934), and in The Brownies' Book.

Here are just a few of the covers of The Brownies' Book: