Truly yours,

D. S. S. Goodloe,
Principal, Maryland Normal and Industrial School

“Why then, should the new year be signalized by the appearance of a magazine bearing the title THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY?  How can there be such a thing as history for a race which is just beginning to live?  For the JOURNAL does not juggle with words; by ‘history’ it means history and not current events.  The answer is to be found within its pages....”

“But the outstanding feature of the new magazine is just the fact of its appearance.  Launched at Chicago by a new organization, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, it does not intend ’to drift into the discussion of the Negro Problem,’ but rather to ’popularize the movement of unearthing the Negro and his contributions to civilization ... believing that facts properly set forth will speak for themselves.’”

“This is a new and stirring note in the advance of the black man.  Comparatively few of any race have a broad or accurate knowledge of its part.  It would be absurd to expect that the Negro will carry about in his head many details of a history from which he is separated by a tremendous break.  It is not absurd to expect that he will gradually learn that he, too, has a heritage of something beside shame and wrong.  By that knowledge he may be uplifted as he goes about his task of building from the bottom.”

The New York Evening Post.

When men of any race begin to show pride in their own antecedents we have one of the surest signs of prosperity and rising civilization.  That is one reason why the new JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY ought to attract more than passing attention.  Hitherto the history of the Negro race has been written chiefly by white men; now the educated Negroes of this country have decided to search out and tell the historic achievements of their race in their own way and from their own point of view.  And, judging from the first issue of their new publication, they are going to do it in a way that will measure up to the standards set by the best historical publications of the day.

The opinions which the American Negro has hitherto held concerning his own race have been largely moulded for him by others.  Himself he has given us little inkling of what his race has felt, and thought and done.  Any such situation, if long enough continued, would make him a negligible factor in the intellectual life of mankind.  But the educated leaders of the race, of whom our colleges and universities have been turning out hundreds in recent years, do not propose that this shall come to pass.  They are going to show the Negro that his race is more ancient than the Golden Fleece or Roman Eagle; that Ethiopia had a history quite as illustrious as that of Nineveh or Tyre, and that the Negro may well take pride in the rock from which he was hewn.  The few decades of slavery form but a small dark spot in the annals of long and great achievements.  That embodies a fine attitude and one which should be thoroughly encouraged.  It aims to teach the Negro that he can do his own race the best service by cultivating those hereditary racial traits which are worth preserving, and not by a fatuous imitation of his white neighbors.