The Messenger was co-edited by A. Phillip Randolph and Chandler Owen and called itself a “magazine of scientific radicalism.” Focusing on the labor movement and socialism, it has been considered by many to be the best radical magazine that was published by and for black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. Its aim was “to appeal to reason, to lift our pens above the cringing demagogy of the times, and above the cheap peanut politics of the old reactionary Negro leaders…. Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has. Party has no weight with us; principle has. Loyalty is meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to. …” (Journal of Negro History, vol. 13, 1928, p. 17)