Opportunity magazine was published from 1923 to 1949 by the National Urban League (at first as a monthly, later as a quarterly). Founded in 1911, the National Urban League hoped to document the urban conditions of African Americans who, in the wake of World War I, increasingly migrated north from the southern United States. The publication's title came from the National Urban League's slogan, "Not Alms But Opportunity." Charles S. Johnson served as its first editor for five and a half years; Elmer A. Carter took over in 1928. The magazine published both sociological reporting on conditions of African American life and poetry and literature written by young black writers.

Opportunity reached its highest reputation and widest circulation in the late 1920s (what one member of the National Urban League called its "Golden Era"). Published out of New York City during a time in which Harlem was becoming a predominantly black neighborhood...