Masses & Mainstream (1948–1963) was an AmericanMarxist monthlypublication headquartered inNew York City. The magazine resulted from a merger betweenNew Masses, which ceased publication in January 1948, andMainstream, a Communist cultural quarterly established in 1947.[1]
Masses & Mainstream was edited bySamuel Sillen. On the board of editors were critics, writers and scholars includingSidney Finkelstein,W.E.B. Du Bois,Mike Gold,Herbert Aptheker,Phillip Bonosky,Lloyd L. Brown,Annette Rubinstein, andJohn Howard Lawson.[2]
Although many of the magazine's best-known contributors had written forNew Masses beforeWorld War II,Masses & Mainstream also provided a platform for younger writers such asHoward Fast,Thomas McGrath,Eve Merriam,Jesús Colón, andLorraine Hansberry.[1][3]
In a book about the African-American cultural left of the 1950s, Mary Washington observes: "Except for black publications, no magazines or journals, even leftist journals likePartisan Review, published black writers regularly in the 1950s or 1960s" to the same extent asMasses & Mainstream.[4] In its 1952Negro History Week issue, the magazine listed 20 black contributors—among themAlice Childress,James W. Ford,William L. Patterson,Pettis Perry,Paul Robeson, andCharles W. White—whose writings appeared in the magazine in the prior year.[5]
The magazine had a circulation of 17,000 in 1948, but steadily lost subscribers during theMcCarthy era.[1]Masses & Mainstream shut down in 1956. It then became an offshoot publication entitledMainstream which lasted until 1963.[6]
In addition to its monthly magazine,Masses & Mainstream published a small number of pamphlets and books, including:[7]
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