Tour of a Legendary Publisher

Hanging in the Third World Press Archive

Today we had a tour of the famed Third World Press on Chicago's South Side that publishes books about the black American experience. It was founded by Haki R. Madhubuti in his basement in 1967. He is one of the architects of the Black Arts Movement, former CSU professor (also named CSU's first University Distinguished Professor), and founder of CSU's Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing, among many other things. He's also written a ton of books, won a ton of awards and is a Chicago legend.

The staff gave us a great tour. We got to see a selection of the books they published (both front and backlist) as displayed up front, the editing room where decisions are made about which submitted manuscripts to publish as books, Madhubuti's office and more. We spent some time in the archive looking at the items the staff archivist pulled, like first editions of early books/chap books and issues of Black Books Bulletin, founded by Baba Haki (what Madhubuti's staff calls him). While in the archive, one of the CSU staff that was on the tour shared with us her transformative experience of having Madhubuti as a professor of a class about the Black Arts Movement when she was at DePaul in 2011. The TWP archivist told us about how much Madhubuti loves students, which makes sense; he founded multiple schools and academies. And multiple staff members shared with how involved he is with the publishing, even as he gets older. That man is a powerhouse.

The artwork and awards on the walls alone was tremendous. There was a photo of Madhubuti with Lerone Bennett Jr. accompanied by a note from Bennett's daughter hanging on the wall (see below). It was a nice continuity with the material I've been sifting through in the CSU archive. It was really interesting to see an obvious through line between Johnson Publishing that was created in the 1940s and TWP Press founded in the 1960s, since the boxes in Bennett's collection made their way to the CSU archive through Bennett's offices at Ebony (at Johnson Publishing).

I learned that TWP currently has most of the publishing rights for Gwendolyn Brooks' books, and that their biggest selling title is Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. by Chancellor Williams. Aside from the links to African American history and the legacy of Chicago small press, I love seeing the behind-the-scenes and the daily going-ons of an independent publisher. The small but devoted staff work behind the bounty of material on their desks and do so in former rectory on a side street off 79th.

Photocopiers and faxes: the analog experience publishing and distributing.

Back in the archive, it was interesting to see the older stuff, when there were ties between TWP and Broadside Press. There were first editions of things that I remember wholesaling when I worked in a bookstore. I'd ordered later editions of those books from IPS (Ingram Perseus [sometimes called Publisher] Services -- clearly the distributor for TWP, if I recall correctly -- it's possible I may have wholesaled TWP books from elsewhere, maybe Baker and Taylor). The older periodicals were particularly fascinating. There were also editions of things when Baraka was still Leroi Jones, or when periodicals were under $2.

First edition maybe?!

The archive itself isn't just TWP and Broadside Press material -- it's a library of many books about the black experience. I could see how inspiring it would be to spend more time in there.

We also spent a minute in Madhubuti's office and the area right outside of it. The artwork! The awards! The photos with luminaries!

The press itself will be 60 next year, and the staff we met has all been there for years. I know how funding can wax and wane for non-profit organizations (Madhubuti founded the Third World Press Foundation in 2002), so I appreciated how everybody does a little bit of everything at an independent press like this. That makes it extra special that they spent as much time with us as they did, seeing as how each person there probably has a lot to do. I could also tell that the archivist took to heart the SAA standard about making sure the community knows that the archive is a resource to be used.

As we were leaving we were each gifted a packet of information about the press and a copy of Madhubuti's 25th Anniversary Edition of his book of poetry Don't Cry, SCREAM (with a foreward by Gwendoyln Brooks herself). What thoughtfulness!

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Today's standards fulfilled as per the Society of American Archivists Curriculum:

A. CORE ARCHIVAL KNOWLEDGE, 2. Knowledge of the Profession, c) Professional Ethics and Values (p. 7)

A. CORE ARCHIVAL KNOWLEDGE, 1. Knowledge of Archival Material and Functions, f) Outreach, Instruction, and Advocacy (p. 6)

A. CORE ARCHIVAL KNOWLEDGE, 3. Contextual knowledge, a) Social and Cultural Context, d) Underserved & Underrepresented Communities (pp. 7-8)