About TWP - History

\Third World Press is one of the nations oldest and well-respected independent publishers of Black thought and literature. In 1967, Haki R. Madhubuti along with the help of Johari Amini (Jewel C. Latimore) and Carolyn Rodgers planted the roots of Third World Press. For over thirty-five years, Third World Press has stayed committed to local and national Black arts empowerment movements that mobilized the African American community\'s economic and cultural awareness across the country.

Madhubuti invested a $400 honorarium received from a poetry reading and acquired a used mimeograph machine to create the first publications of Third World Press in a basement apartment on the South Side of Chicago. Since its humble beginnings, Third World Press has moved to an impressive, multi-million dollar facility, expanding its production and market while continuing a successful tradition.

\Third World Press has published the works of the late Illinois Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize recipient Gwendolyn Brooks, poet and publisher Dudley Randall, poets Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Mari Evans, Margaret Walker, world-renown psychiatrist, Frances Cress Welsing; editor Hoyt W. Fuller; historians, John Henrik Clarke and Chancellor Williams; Chicago writers, Sterling Plumpp, Useni Eugene Perkins; playwright and producer Woody King Jr.; writers, Kalamu ya Salaam, Pearl Cleage, Ruby Dee, Ruth Garnett, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Derrick Bell; artist Murry DePillars. Recent releases include Jacob Carruther\'s Intellectual Warfare, Michael Simanga\'s In the Shadow of the Son, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Art and Literature, edited by Tony Medina, Samiya A. Bashir, and Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Gwendolyn A. Mitchell\'s House of Women.

\Over the years, Third World Press served as advisor for the publishing branch of the Institute of Positive Education (IPE), a community resource and research center specializing in education and communications that began in 1969. IPE also runs the New Concept School (est. 1971), a fully accredited preschool, the Bethune Teacher\'s Training Program and the Betty Shabazz International Charter School (1998).

For forty years, Third World Press has brought Black literature and thought to the center of the literary community. By providing a showcase for the vital works of best selling authors and the prosperous words of emerging literary talent, Third World Press solidifies its position as one of the most important publisher of progressive Black discourse and critique.