During the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Black literary societies emerged in many communities across the United States. In Cleveland, The January Club was a private society of Black writers, women and men, who financed the publication of their own writings and those of others in the community from about 1930 to 1933. Dundo: Anthology of Poetry by Cleveland Negro Youth (1931), was the first title they produced. Only 500 copies were published, making it a fairly scarce item today.
Dundo contains poetry by 10 African-American student poets: Ruby Baker, Virginia V. Houston, Gladys Mitchell, Gwyneldean Mitchell, Harvey M. Williamson, Margaret Suthern, James B. Turner, Faith Jackson, and the two editors of the volume: Clarence F. Bryson and James H. Robinson. The book contains a one-page introduction by Frederick Herbert Adler, then head of the English Department of Cleveland College. It begins: "Dundo, the Swahili word meaning Drum Throbs, is a significant title for this first anthology by the Negro youth of Cleveland... ."
The Universal Negro Catechism: A Course of Instruction in Religious and Historical Knowledge Pertaining to the Race (1921) is an instructional guide written by George Alexander McGuire for a youth audience. McGuire was the chaplain-general for the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the Black nationalist organization formed by Marcus Garvey during the 1920s, the largest and most prominent such group of its time.
Written in a question and answer format, the Catechism covers 4 topic areas: religious knowledge, historical knowledge, “The Constitution and Laws of the U.N.I.A.,” and, the “Declaration of Independence of the Negro People of the World.” More commonly known as the “Declaration of Rights” the document was adopted on August 13, 1920, during the First International Convention on Negro Peoples of the World.