MR bills itself as "A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts, and Public Affairs." A key early focus was on civil rights as well as African-American history and culture; the Review published, among many others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling A. Brown, Lucille Clifton, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr..[3] Sidney Kaplan, a founder of the Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, was a founding member of MR as well; Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, also a founder of Afro-American Studies at UMass, continues to serve as a Contributing Editor. In 1969, co-editor Jules Chametzky and Kaplan put together a collection of essays from the first ten years of MR; Julius Lester, in the New York Times, called Black and White in American Culture "a rare anthology [...] with a higher degree of relevance than almost any other book of its kind."[4]
MR is known for visual as well as literary arts.[5] Its cover design was initially conceived by the sculptor and graphic artist Leonard Baskin, who contributed work throughout his career. Jerome Liebling – the photographer, filmmaker, and mentor to Ken Burns – was also an MR editor. Recent artists featured in magazine inserts include Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Whitfield Lovell, Anna Schuleit, and Dan Witz.
The magazine awards the Anne Halley Poetry prize to the best poem it published yearly; it also awards the Jules Chametzky Prize for Translation each year, alternating between its prose and poetry translations.[citation needed]
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The current staff includes: Jules Chametzky, Editor Emeritus; Jim Hicks, Executive Editor; Ellen Doré Watson, Poetry and Translation Editor; Michael Thurston, Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; Pam Glaven, Art Director; Emily Wojcik, Managing Editor; Edwin Gentzler, Translation Editor; Corinne Demas, Fiction Editor; and Deborah Gorlin, Poetry Editor.
^Julius Lester, "For America on the Eve of the Second Civil War; Black and White In American Culture." The New York Times, Book Review, March 29, 1970.
^Julius Lester, New York Times, March 29, 1970. Jules Chametzky and Sidney Kaplan, Eds., Black and White in American Culture: An Anthology from the Massachusetts Review. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Amherst Press, 1969