A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies Book

Contributions by Jani L. Barker, Rudine Sims Bishop, Julia S. Charles-Linen, Paige Gray, Dianne Johnson-Feelings, Jonda C. McNair, Sara C. VanderHaagen, and Michelle Taylor Watts The Brownies Book occupies a special place in the history of African American childrens literature. Informally the childrens counterpart to the NAACPs The Crisis magazine, it was one of the first periodicals created primarily for Black youth. Several of the objectives the creators delineated in 1919 when announcing the arrival of the publication"To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race" and "To make colored children realize that being colored is a beautiful, normal thing"still resonate with contemporary creators, readers, and scholars of African American childrens literature. The meticulously researched essays in A Centennial Celebration of "The Brownies Book" get to the heart of The Brownies Book "project" using critical approaches both varied and illuminating. Contributors to the volume explore the underappreciated role of Jessie Redmon Fauset in creating The Brownies Book and in the cultural life of Black America; describe the young people who immersed themselves in the pages of the periodical; focus on the role of Black heroes and heroines; address The Brownies Book in the context of critical literacy theory; and place The Brownies Book within the context of Black futurity and justice. Bookending the essays are, reprinted in full, the first and last issues of the magazine. A Centennial Celebration of "The Brownies Book" illuminates the many ways in which the magazinesimultaneously beautiful, complicated, problematic, and inspiringremains worthy of attention well into this century.