posted by Brandon Gollotti

on July 9, 2007

So when I was sorting through the mail the other day at my other job at Van Pelt, the main library at the University of Pennsylvania, I came across a copy of the Crisis. As you may already know, the Crisis is the magazine that W.E.B. Du Bois founded in 1910. However, today’s issue, I can only assume, the content is a lot different from the one Du Bois originally published. On the cover of this issue was Lorraine Miller, the clerk of the House of the House of Representatives for the US government. She happened to be the first African American to have this position in the government. I was wondering if this is what Du Bois envisioned imagined what the Crisis would turn into. Wondering who and what was on the past covers of the Crisis, I went to the magazine’s website and looked at their past issues.

In the past, the cover of the magazine has been home to prominent African Americans leading the way in certain fields and areas. Some of the recent past covers have had Rosa Parks (civil rights leader), Deval Patrick (the new governor of Massachusetts), and Bruce S. Gordon (former NAACP leader) on their cover. Was this what Du Bois wanted the Crisis turning into? I think so, the magazine talks about important African Americans in their fields and how they are over coming adversity to have better lifestyle. I think that Du Bois would have been proud to see the magazine now, as it not strayed away from its original content and did not conform to more “entertainable” subjects.