Volume 3
In this volume of Umbra, the poets expose how unfairly they are treated simply because their skin is darker than the rest. They talk about a man who received a beating from a state trooper for no reason, resulting in a lump on his head, the idea of “raising their taxes, and freezing their wages” to further put them at a disadvantage in society and reference the late great Muhammad Ali. Black people were expected to fail in America always being put in “second class houses [and] second class schools” so the goal of the poets and writers of this edition was to stop white people from running from their guilt and face the evil reality they have created. In the magazine, Calvin C Herton talks about his experience when seeing the play Blues For Mr. Charlie. He describes the atmosphere in the room as tense and uneasy as white people began to squirm in their seats, disturbed by the depiction of the Emmett Till Murder case of 1955. They had been hiding from the truth they were living, but the black community was ready to force it in their face no matter how hard or how long it took. They expressed feelings of longing for a childhood remembered with good and fun memories, but instead filled with constant horror and fear making them even more hungry to change this for generations to come. The images found throughout the magazine are black and white with much more black than white to create dark, ominous backgrounds. The paintings are abstract and filled with chaos as one depicts people running from what seems like a fiery war, symbolizing African Americans running from oppression and all the other evils of the world. As for the cover of this magazine, it is most complex of them all. It depicts a pope who does not look very holy; he is wearing a confederate flag holding a cross in one had with a flame in the other holding it underneath the cross. In front of him to the right is a man with a grudged look on his face who is looking in the mirror, but the reflection shows a much fairer and better looking person who is not at all the man sitting. Across his lap a dead body is laying and in his hand not holding the mirror he is gripping the end of a chain wrapped around a man who looks powerful as he wears a bull head as a hat with a gun and wolf ready to attack by his side. All of this may be alluding to the white community masking their identities to seem perfect and fair (you'd assume a pope is holy at first glance and the man sees himself as better than he is in the reflection) when in reality they are not and are filled with hatred for the black community.