Reflections on the Little Time I Spent With ‘The Negro’

by Ernie McCray

Looking through a box
of my mother’s things
I came across
“The Negro,”
a magazine
my mother used to subscribe to
when I was a child,
this particular issue
dating back to
June, 1945
when I was a seven-year-old,
and it brings back memories
of me listening
to conversations
my mother and her friends
engaged in
about articles they had read,
going on and on
about topics Black folks were interested in
back then
and when I skimmed through
a few of the essays,
déjà vu
set in,
making me aware,
from the content,
that I could be reading
one of today’s Black publications,
giving credence to whoever claimed
“The more things change
the more they stay the same,”
as the themes match those
in the copy of The Negro
that was in my house
78 years ago:
the need for better schools for
Black children
and tolerance between races,
appeals to Congress to do more
to bring about better race relations
in the nation,
poetry and prose
encouraging African Americans
to keep the faith,
to never break away
from the pursuit of
social equality and civil liberty,
to never cease fighting
to protect our voting rights
wherein our voice is loudest,
knowing that we, essentially, are a people
who, arguably,
have done more,
over and over again,
towards trying to make our country
fulfill its promises,
Langston Hughes|
writing in The Negro
regarding how Black folks
believe in democracy,
wanting to make it real, and workable
and complete
for all Americans,
with another writer, James C. Wynn,
weighing in
with how such can’t happen
without a change of heart
on the part
of the White masses.
Now that might not be so true today
but there are still a lot of White people
who refuse to join the fray,
choosing instead
to look with disdain
at Black History,
the very underpinning of American History,
rejecting
the truths embedded in it
that could act as catalysts
for what is needed
to change our country for the better,
which, in effect,
makes them stumbling blocks
to such an undertaking.

So, the reality
that there’s still much work to do
to bring such a transfiguration
to bear
for the benefit of all people,
was made clearer to me
during the little time I spent with
The Negro.
But my sleeves are rolled up