(Lorraine Hansberry) MASSES & MAINSTREAM Volume 3, Number 9 (1950) Magazine

New York: Masses & Mainstream, Inc., 1950. First and only edition. Pictorial wrappers, 8 x 5 1/4 ” (203 x 135 cmm.), 96 pp., perfect-bound. Minor wear and rubbing to wrappers, overall near fine.

Masses & Mainstream was a Marxist monthly periodical. Lorraine Hansberry’s first appearance in print, here described as “a twenty-year-old art student living in Chicago”. She contributes a three page poem, “Flag from a Kitchenette Window”.

“The poem was a sparse indictment of American militarism and hypocritical proclamations of liberty in the face of Jim Crow: an ironic commentary on Memorial Day.” (Perry, Looking for Lorraine, 2018, p. 44.)

“[This poem] was a public declaration of being affiliated with the Left.” (Shields, Lorraine Hansberry, p. 102).

This is a scarce volume. WorldCat lists twenty-two libraries with runs of this periodical. I can find no examples of it available for sale online, nor any record of it appearing at auction.