The Beacon. Vol II no 2-d4 (July 29, 1939)
- Pittsburgh: Beacon Publishing Company, 1939
Pittsburgh: Beacon Publishing Company, 1939. Single quarto issue. Offset-printed wrappers over mimeographed text; 22pp. Soil and wear to wrappers; internally complete, clean and unmarked. Good and sound.
An unknown and practically unrecorded Pittsburgh African-American weekly magazine, devoted to race relations, uplift, and news of goings-on in Pittsburgh's historically Black neighborhoods, including the Hill District, Coraopolis, Homewood, Beltzhoover, etc. Of editor George E. Pierce we can discover nothing certain - no specific mention of this publication appears in contemporary newspaper accounts, and the name is common enough that we hesitate to make an attribution. A few of the contributors to this issue, however, were prominent enough to have left some trace – Joseph D. Avent (ca. 1887-1959), chair of English at Florida A&M University, contributes an uplift piece titled "Can the Negro Be Classed as a Backward Race?;" the proprietors of the Ella-Rene School of Beauty Culture, whose existence was richly chronicled by Pittsburgh photographer "Teenie" Harris, offer "A Beauty Page for Women;" Rev. T.J. King, well-known minister of Pittsburgh's Ebenezer Baptist Church, provides a summary of recent church events, etc. Other features include a detailed account (unsigned) of ground-breaking and excavation for the municipal housing project at Ruch Hill; an announcement of the Pittsburgh Inter-Racial Hospital Association; a page of recipes, a page of jokes titled "In the Fields of the Wise Acres" (Q: What is a Communist? A: One who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings), etc etc.
Danky does note a single physical holding for this publication (Howard University), but there is no entry for it in OCLC and we are unable to locate it by title anywhere in the Howard Libraries card catalog. DANKY 655 (citing a 1935 issue and noting publication as monthly, leading us to suspect Danky did not lay eyes on the issue himself – our copy is plainly identified as a weekly, and we find it doubtful that a lapse of four years occurred between the first and second volumes).
An unknown and practically unrecorded Pittsburgh African-American weekly magazine, devoted to race relations, uplift, and news of goings-on in Pittsburgh's historically Black neighborhoods, including the Hill District, Coraopolis, Homewood, Beltzhoover, etc. Of editor George E. Pierce we can discover nothing certain - no specific mention of this publication appears in contemporary newspaper accounts, and the name is common enough that we hesitate to make an attribution. A few of the contributors to this issue, however, were prominent enough to have left some trace – Joseph D. Avent (ca. 1887-1959), chair of English at Florida A&M University, contributes an uplift piece titled "Can the Negro Be Classed as a Backward Race?;" the proprietors of the Ella-Rene School of Beauty Culture, whose existence was richly chronicled by Pittsburgh photographer "Teenie" Harris, offer "A Beauty Page for Women;" Rev. T.J. King, well-known minister of Pittsburgh's Ebenezer Baptist Church, provides a summary of recent church events, etc. Other features include a detailed account (unsigned) of ground-breaking and excavation for the municipal housing project at Ruch Hill; an announcement of the Pittsburgh Inter-Racial Hospital Association; a page of recipes, a page of jokes titled "In the Fields of the Wise Acres" (Q: What is a Communist? A: One who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings), etc etc.
Danky does note a single physical holding for this publication (Howard University), but there is no entry for it in OCLC and we are unable to locate it by title anywhere in the Howard Libraries card catalog. DANKY 655 (citing a 1935 issue and noting publication as monthly, leading us to suspect Danky did not lay eyes on the issue himself – our copy is plainly identified as a weekly, and we find it doubtful that a lapse of four years occurred between the first and second volumes).