Cover of the Day: January 1968

Walter Allner, Art Director
Romare Bearden, Illustrator

Original credit: For this special issue, Fortune commissioned Negro artist Romare Bearden, fifty-three, to convey his own mood of urban life. What Bearden pieced together is the striking collage on the cover. Bearden knows the neighborhood signposts well; he grew up in Harlem. He serves as art director of the Harlem Cultural Council, which seeks to encourage promising Negroes in the arts. For Bearden, the assignment was reminiscent of an earlier one. In 1942, he painted a picture to accompany a Fortune article on an all too familiar subject: the Negro and discrimination.