The Opportunity Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from the Urban League’s Opportunity Magazine (Modern Library (Paperback))

Product Description

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance

In 1923, the Urban League’s Opportunity magazine made its first appearance. Spearheaded by the noted sociologist Charles S. Johnson, it became, along with the N.A.A.C.P.’s Crisis magazine, one of the vehicles that drove the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. As a way of attracting writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Johnson conducted literary contests that were largely funded by Casper Holstein, the infamous Harlem numbers gangster, who contributed
several essays in addition to money.
        Dorothy West, Nella Larsen, and Arthur Schomburg were among Opportunity’s contributors. Many of the pieces included in The Opportunity Reader have not been seen since their publication in the magazine, whose motto was “Not alms, but opportunity.”

The fertile artistic period now known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930) gave birth to many of the world-renowned masters of black literature and is the model for today’s renaissance of black writers.

Amazon.com Review

“Not alms, but opportunity,” was the credo of the National Urban League, the civil rights organization that in 1923 began publishing the monthly magazine
Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. Like its contemporary
The Crisis (the NAACP’s literary magazine),
Opportunity, edited by sociologist Charles Johnson, offered invaluable exposure to many of the African American writers who defined the Harlem Renaissance. This anthology, expertly compiled by Sondra Kathyrn Wilson, contains some of the magazine’s best short stories, essays, and poetry by authors such as Alain Locke, Arthur Schomburg, Dorothy West, and Langston Hughes. Zora Neale Hurston’s “John Redding Goes to Sea”–a heroic and heartbreaking tale of a young man’s desire to leave rural Florida to see the world–highlights her uncanny ability to re-create Negro Southern vernacular speech in print, while Afro-Caribbean writer Eric D. Walround’s “The Stone Rebounds” is a witty reversal of race and class prejudice as seen through the eyes of a white socialite who travels uptown to Harlem’s “Barrett Manor,” a sprawling mansion where the highest members of the Negro elite barely tolerate his social intrusion.
Opportunity ceased publication in 1949, but its belief that the dissemination and celebration of Afro-American art will contribute to improved race relations in America is as true today as it was during the magazine’s heyday.
–Eugene Holley Jr.

From Library Journal

The National Urban League’s Opportunity magazine, edited by sociologist Charles S. Johnson, was one of the most important journals published during the Harlem Renaissance. Though its circulation was often dwarfed by its larger competitor, the NAACP’s The Crisis, Opportunity served as the training ground for many New Negro authors. Wilson (The Crisis Reader) has done a service to those interested in black literature and culture by bringing together stories, poems, plays, reviews, and essays from some of the leading contributors to Opportunity, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and Eric Walrond. Most interesting, perhaps, are the more obscure pieces such as the stories of John F. Matheus and Arthur Huff Fauset. Wilson provides a helpful if somewhat brief introduction, discussing JohnsonAwho believed that demonstrating black literary and intellectual achievements would improve conditions for the raceAand outlining the history and significance of Opportunity.ALouis J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance

In 1923, the Urban League’s Opportunity magazine made its first appearance. Spearheaded by the noted sociologist Charles S. Johnson, it became, along with the N.A.A.C.P.’s Crisis magazine, one of the vehicles that drove the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. As a way of attracting writers such as Langston Hughes and Zor