‘a hope not hopeless but unhopeful’: African American Childhood in The Brownies’ Book

Taylor, K ORCID: 0000-0002-4750-6979 (2025) ‘a hope not hopeless but unhopeful’: African American Childhood in The Brownies’ Book. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines The Brownies’ Book (1920-1921), the first magazine published specifically for African American children. Amidst a children’s publishing industry that did not hire people of colour or support the literature of people of colour, The Brownies’ Book was a radical experiment in what African American children’s literature might look like. Edited by W.E.B Du Bois and Jessie Fauset and featuring several prominent Harlem Renaissance writers, the new magazine was a landmark publication in the history of African American children’s literature.
Examining a range of written and visual texts from the magazine, I make new arguments about the distinctive politics of Black childhood that the editors of The Brownies’ Book develop. Firstly, I argue that The Brownies’ Book is a vital forum for understanding the development of Du Bois’ theorisation of double consciousness. Double consciousness is theorised as a reflection on the question Du Bois poses in his 1903 text, The Souls of Black Folk: ‘how does it feel to be a problem?’ (1903, 2). His concerns about how racialised social exclusion produces negative affects in African Americans is explicitly tied to his development of children’s literature. Secondly, I pay new attention to the role of Fauset as co-editor of The Brownies’ Book and highlight the significance of her role in positing new pedagogies for the cultural and political education of modern Black children. In an era of progressive education reform, this thesis asks what role progressivism plays in the development of new pedagogical approaches to teaching Black children about racial politics.
Thirdly, underpinning the thesis is an engagement with the politics of fugitivity; a theory of Black resistance and a way of understanding the psychological experience of Blackness in an anti-Black America. What does it mean to be a Black child in an anti-Black America? How do the editors and contributors to The Brownies’ Book create new kinds of literature which address this complex question?
The key interest I have is in what possibilities for hope emerge from The Brownies’ Book’s experimental approach to children’s literature. In the face of persistent anti-Black racism, the magazine prompts consideration of what it requires of Black children to ask them to be hopeful about their place in the world, and their future. The magazine’s experiments with the forms of children’s literature like folk and fairy tales, photography and nature writing, posit a range of radical approaches to African American children’s literature. In this thesis, I examine The Brownies’ Book alongside the reflections of Du Bois and Fauset on the circumstance and fate of Black children in America. I argue that these reflections on Black childhood are vital to the development of a new racial politics that takes hold in the early 1920s. The Brownies’ Book is not only important for its landmark contribution to African American children’s literary history, but its value also lies in what it can tell us about the ways childhood was central to a broad range of contemporary discussions about race in America.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	The Brownies' Book; W.E.B Du Bois; Jessie Fauset; African American Literature; Children's Periodicals; Children's Literature; Race; Black Literature; Black Fugitivity; Double Consciousness; Harlem Renaissance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) P Language and Literature > PZ Childrens literature
Divisions:	Humanities and Social Science
Date of acceptance:	23 October 2025
Date Deposited:	28 Nov 2025 14:34
Last Modified:	28 Nov 2025 14:34
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00027573
Supervisors:	Harrison, C and Tolan, F
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27573

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