The Crisis is the official monthly publication of the NAACP. It began in 1910 with William Edward Burghardt DuBois as editor, and became a leading periodical for African Americans. It was known for its radical position against lynching and racial prejudice and reflected the ideology of Dr. DuBois. Until 1919 it sold for 10 cents a copy and boasted a monthly circulation of 80,000 copies. In the 1920s, literary contributions to the magazine increased in keeping with the cultural explosion known as the Harlem Renaissance. The magazine began to sponsor a literary contest and the works of poets Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay, among others, began to appear. The cover was also illustrated by leading African-American visual artists such as Aaron Douglas, John Henry Adams and Laura Wheeler Waring. The magazine continues to emphasize cultural, social and economic matters. It is still being published monthly by the NAACP.