Black Press

By: Hayward Woody Farrar

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century

Black Press

By the end of the nineteenth century a number of black journalists had learned enough from their predecessors to be able to keep normally short-lived black newspapers running. Among these pioneers were W. Calvin Chase of the Washington Bee, T. Thomas Fortune of the New York Age, John Mitchell of the Richmond Planet, Chris Perry of the Philadelphia Tribune, and John H. Murphy Sr. of the Baltimore Afro-American. As of this writing, two of these papers, the Tribune and the Afro-American, are still in existence.

Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.

Black newspapers at the end of the nineteenth century represented the outlook of the black elite, which though tiny in number still strove to speak for and to the race. Like the first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, newspapers such as the Bee, the Planet, and the Afro-American had a dual mission to protest racial oppression and also to encourage their readers to uplift themselves socially, morally, and intellectually. This second mission intersected with the goals and activities of the most powerful and important African American of the time, Booker T. Washington.

Washington's policies of accommodation to the nation's subordination of African Americans made him the favorite of the white establishments of the North and South. For example, northern white philanthropists approved of Washington's ideology, and their support—important for the survival of many black educational and social welfare enterprises—flowed through his hands. President Theodore Roosevelt favored Washington as well, putting him in charge of federal patronage for blacks and southern whites. Washington founded the National Negro Business League for the support of black businessmen, and during Washington's heyday it was difficult for any African American professional to advance without his support.

Augmenting Washington's power base in the white community was his popularity in the black community. Most of the black elite, as well as the masses, approved of his advocacy of black advancement through the creation of socially and economically self-sufficient black communities. Nevertheless, Washington's public acceptance of the South's denial of civil and political rights to blacks alienated significant segments of black opinion, an alienation expressed by certain black newspapers.

The black newspaper most critical of Washington was the Guardian, founded in 1901 by Monroe Trotter, a combative Boston realtor. Although the Guardian performed the services of a traditional newspaper, its main reason for being was to lead the opposition to Booker T. Washington. As Washington's power waned in the 1910s so did the Guardian, and it shut down in 1913. Chicago was another center of anti-Bookerite activity. Ida B. Wells, the leading black female journalist of her time, and her husband, Ferdinand Barnett, published the Chicago Conservator. Wells had published the Memphis Free Speech in the 1890s and in that capacity had crusaded against lynching—one of the few southern black leaders to do so. For her advocacy Wells was herself nearly lynched when a Memphis mob destroyed her newspaper offices and printing plant. Wells then moved to Chicago, where she married Barnett, who was publishing the Conservator. Her background made her a natural enemy to Washington, whose public statements on lynching were always cryptic and tactful. Other black newspapers critical of Washington were the Cleveland Gazette, the Richmond Planet, and, initially, the Washington Bee.

Except for the Richmond Planet, southern black newspapers supported Washington, and some northern black newspapers—such as the Indianapolis Freeman and the New York Age, edited by the preeminent black journalist of the era, T. Thomas Fortune—did so, too. Washington gained the support of most of the black press through his “Tuskegee machine,” an organization of educators, politicians, businessmen, journalists, ministers, civic leaders, and other stalwarts of the black bourgeoisie beholden to him and his white allies. Many southern black newspaper publishers depended on paid press releases and advertising from the Tuskegee Institute and from black businesses and churches favored by Washington. Washington's political power was vital in ensuring the safety of black newspaper offices and printing plants. Also, Booker T. Washington was a covert investor in at least two major black newspapers: T. Thomas Fortune's New York Age and the Washington Bee. Washington purchased the Age through his associate Fred Moore in 1907. The Age was the most influential black newspaper of the era, and Fortune was called the “dean of black journalism.” Under Washington's control, the Age became an even stronger advocate of his policies. Washington also in 1907 became a silent partner in the Washington Bee and ensured its support for him. Of all the black newspapers in the South, only John Mitchell's Richmond Planet stood up to the Tuskegee machine.

Meanwhile the Baltimore Afro-American saw no contradiction in the approaches to the race question taken by Booker T. Washington on the one hand and his critics—now gathered into the Niagara Movement—on the other. The Afro-American was established in 1892 by a consortium of black preachers and small businessmen and then was taken over in 1896 by John H. Murphy Sr. The Afro-American explained that Washington's approach of forming economically and socially self-sufficient and prosperous black communities within a framework of accommodation to southern racial mores was best suited to conditions in the South. Meanwhile, as the Afro-American explained, the approach advocated by W. E. B. Du Bois and his associates in the Niagara Movement was generated by and consistent with conditions in the North. The Niagara Movement's approach was one of agitation through publicity, litigation, and political action for the civil, social, and political rights denied blacks in the South and elsewhere. The approaches of Washington and of the Niagara Movement were complementary, not contradictory. The Afro-American constantly emphasized this complementarity in its treatment of the Washington–Niagara Movement struggle during the latter half of the 1900s.

The Afro-American was not alone in its judicious treatment of the controversy between Booker T. Washington and the Niagara Movement. Until 1907 the Washington Bee supported both sides, as did the Indianapolis Freeman. The location of these two newspapers in the borderlands between the North and the South helps account for their fence straddling. Yet it is likely that these papers also expressed mainstream black opinion, which, though not happy with blacks’ subordination, still found hope in Washington's philosophies of self-help and racial uplift. The clash between Washington and his critics may have been based more on frustration with Washington's dictatorial powers over black institutions than on a deep ideological cleavage.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century the black press, despite the almost complete suppression of its audience by racism, operated on a much firmer basis than ever before. Newspapers such as the Baltimore Afro-American, the New York Age, the Richmond Planet, the Washington Bee, and the Philadelphia Tribune were financially stable, and some of them lasted throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. In the early twentieth century, the black press with few exceptions turned away from Washingtonian accommodation to racial oppression and turned toward W. E. B. Du Bois's and the NAACP's crusades to end racism.

As time went by, the black press intensified its protest against racial oppression. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, racial segregation was codified in the South and imposed informally everywhere else. Black newspapers in Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, and elsewhere in the North, as well as in Baltimore and Washington, vigorously crusaded against racism north and south. Not only did they protest racial oppression through news stories, columns, and editorials but they also provided financial aid, office space, and employment to civil rights organizations and leaders. Black newspapers also provided these leaders with media platforms. W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Ida B. Wells, Kelly Miller, Walter White, and Marcus Garvey all had columns in black newspapers or, in the case of Wells and Garvey, published their own newspapers. Black newspapers were among the most successful businesses in the black community, with many of the newspapers lasting fifty to a hundred years and with some of them still in existence. This was quite unlike the nineteenth-century black press and was a testament both to the critical mass of black journalists and publishers who could establish a newspaper and also to the critical mass of a black readership that now could sustain a newspaper in black communities north and south. Along with the black church, the black press provided media coverage, outlets, and material sustenance for black protest and advancement organizations.

Black newspapers and magazines were open to all within the black community who had something to say. Since aspiring black journalists were barred from most if not all journalism schools in the early twentieth century, black newspapers had to train their own reporters, columnists, and critics, and in doing so, they tapped the rich, developing source of black literary talent. Black publishers were for the most part highly literate and educated people who wanted to showcase black literary and artistic talent to the world.

Enter the Chicago Defender.

One of the most important black newspapers, the Chicago Defender, made its first appearance in 1905. Its publisher and editor was Robert S. Abbott. Born on Saint Simons Island, Georgia, in 1868, Abbott grew up in Savannah and was raised by his mother and his stepfather, John Sengstacke. Abbott attended Hampton Institute, where he was trained as a printer. Printing jobs were hard to find, however, so he studied law. Despite completing a law course, Abbott was not admitted to the Georgia bar, so he turned to journalism.

Newsroom. Washington Tribune newsroom, c. 1935. Photograph by Addison Scurlock.

Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

view larger image

In 1905 Abbott decided to start his own newspaper; he chose to base it in Chicago, a city whose black population was 40,000 and growing. Abbott called his newspaper the Defender. From an initial press run of 300 copies in 1905, the Defender grew to a circulation of more than 200,000 during World War I. The newspaper was distributed throughout the Midwest and as far as the Deep South. It constantly publicized and crusaded against racism, especially in the South. To combat southern Jim Crow, the Defender urged its southern readers to migrate north, preferably to Chicago. As a result of this campaign Chicago's black population increased 144 percent to 110,000 between 1910 and 1920; most of the blacks were migrants from the South. The newspaper's circulation, wealth, and influence increased when many of these newcomers became Defender readers.

From the 1920s on, the Chicago Defender was the most widely read black newspaper in the country, with a circulation approaching 250,000. The Defender became a sensationalist newspaper, appealing to all segments of the black community. Not only did the Defender crusade against local and national racism but it also provided comprehensive coverage of the day-to-day life of Chicago's black community. The Defender was divided into sections covering local, national, and international news; sports, entertainment, and society; and editorials and opinion—as well as a features section that spotlighted black writers and artists. The Defender's layout was imitated throughout the rest of the black press, and by the late 1920s most black newspapers had adopted its sensationalist comprehensive format. Politically, the Defender differed little from its contemporaries in the black press; it generally supported the Republican Party both locally and nationally. Befitting his status as a successful entrepreneur, Robert Abbott was moderate to conservative on most issues besides race.

Abbott and the Defender fell on hard times during the Depression. The newspaper's circulation dropped by 75 percent, and Abbott was forced to dip into his personal assets to keep the paper afloat. Then his health began to fail in the late 1930s. In 1939 Abbott turned over control of the Defender to his nephew John Sengstacke. Shortly thereafter, in February 1940, Abbott died. Under Sengstacke's leadership the Defender revived itself during World War II, reaching new heights in circulation and influence because of its extensive coverage of and advocacy for equitable black participation in the war.

Pittsburgh Courier.

The Pittsburgh Courier was established in 1910 by a consortium of black businessmen. Robert L. Vann, one of the few black attorneys in Pittsburgh, organized their legal affairs. When they were unable to keep the newspaper going, Vann took it over and in ten years built it to equal the Defender in circulation and influence. The Courier's layout followed that of the Defender, except that the Courier was less sensational. The Courier's columnists and writers also tended to be of higher quality than those of the Defender.

The Courier was an activist newspaper. It crusaded for racial equality in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, and nationwide. It was one of the few black newspapers that supported the labor movement, giving news coverage and editorial support to A. Philip Randolph's effort to organize Pullman porters into the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Workers. From the 1920s on the Courier, though not the most widely read black newspaper (the Defender had higher circulation), was perhaps the most influential, because of its excellent leadership and staff.

The Depression damaged the Courier, as it did other black newspapers. But by the late 1930s the Courier's health had improved. The newspaper's coverage of the impending World War II and its tireless advocacy of full black participation in the war effort restored the Courier to national prominence. It led the black community's “Double V” campaign for victory over racism at home and over Fascism abroad. Sadly, Robert Vann did not live long enough to see this revival. He died of cancer in 1940.

Baltimore Afro-American.

Founded in 1892 the Baltimore Afro-American predated both the Defender and the Courier. The Afro-American grew to dominate the black media markets along the Eastern Seaboard, and it joined the Defender and the Courier as one of the “big three” of the black press.

Throughout its history the Afro-American continuously crusaded for racial justice and advancement in Baltimore, in Maryland, and nationwide. Among the movements led by the newspaper were the efforts to equalize teacher salary in Baltimore, the efforts to maintain and increase black membership in the Baltimore city council, the struggles for black representation on the local school board and the police department, and crusades against lynching. Nationwide the Afro-American supported antilynching legislation and called for increased federal patronage for black Republicans.

The Afro-American was progressive for its time, supporting leftist views and politicians. For example in 1924 it endorsed the third-party candidate Robert La Follette for president. In 1928 the Afro-American supported the Democratic Party candidate Alfred E. Smith over the Republican Herbert Hoover. Then in the 1930s the newspaper gave covert endorsements of Communist and Socialist Party candidates for local, state, and national offices. The Afro-American also had a wide range of quality columnists and feature writers. Walter White, head of the NAACP, Kelly Miller, dean of Howard University, James Weldon Johnson, and others all had columns in the newspaper.

Unlike its competitors the Defender and the Courier, the Afro-American expanded and prospered during the Depression. It established branch offices and editions in Washington, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Newark. The Afro-American reached unprecedented highs in circulation, income, and influence during World War II, becoming a million-dollar company in 1945. It remained at that level for many years afterward.

Negro World.

In 1918 Marcus Garvey established the Negro World to publicize the activities of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). For a time the Negro World was the most important black newspaper in Harlem. At its peak its circulation approached 200,000. T. Thomas Fortune, who had published the New York Age and was considered to be the most important black journalist at the turn of the century, edited the Negro World. Along with hard news, the Negro World promoted Garvey's Black Nationalism in its editorials and featured serialized fictional stories of Africans overthrowing white colonialists. As did other black newspapers of the era, the Negro World published poems, essays, and short stories, by authors like Alain Locke, Claude McKay, and Zora Neale Hurston. Over time the Negro World became solely a propaganda organ for the UNIA. The Negro World flourished as long as Marcus Garvey did. When Garvey was imprisoned for mail fraud in 1925, however, and was deported to Jamaica in 1927, the UNIA faded away. So did the Negro World. Still, during its heyday it was the strongest voice for black nationalism.

Norfolk Journal and Guide, Richmond Planet, and Kansas City Call.

The Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier were national in circulation and influence. But there were other black newspapers in the first half of the twentieth century that, though not as widely influential, were still important in their respective regions. One of the most noteworthy of these was the Norfolk Journal and Guide. Founded by P. B. Young, the Journal and Guide was especially influential in tidewater Virginia. The newspaper was more conservative than its peers in the black press, preferring a conciliatory approach toward racial problems. Nonetheless, when black interests were threatened locally or nationally, the Journal protested loudly. In the 1920s the newspaper campaigned against lynching and called for better schools, improved housing, and jobs for its readers. It also took a strong stand on crime reduction within the black community.

The Norfolk Journal and Guide's main rival for journalistic dominance in Virginia was the Richmond Planet. The Planet was run by John Mitchell from 1884 until his death in 1929. From its beginnings the Planet crusaded against the disfranchisement of black voters in the South and led boycotts of streetcar companies that segregated black riders. It took a far more militant stance on racial matters than the Journal and Guide did and represented the more militant “New Negro” of Du Bois and his followers. The Norfolk paper harked back to the accommodationist ways of Booker T. Washington. After John Mitchell died, the Richmond Planet declined. The newspaper was taken over by the Baltimore Afro-American in 1938. Renamed the Richmond Afro-American and Planet, it followed the parent Baltimore Afro-American in layout, but its news coverage and editorials focused on Richmond.

An important Midwest black newspaper was the Kansas City Call, started by Chester A. Franklin in 1919. After a difficult beginning, by the mid-1920s the Call had attained a firm financial and journalistic footing. Like other black newspapers of the time, it campaigned for racial equality locally and nationally. It led crusades against lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and police brutality. It also campaigned for desegregated education and housing and for increased job opportunities for blacks. The Call constantly presented the local and national black community in the most positive light, emphasizing news about black religious, social, and cultural activity. The Call also employed a distinguished roster of reporters and columnists. The most important of these was Roy Wilkins, later the head of the NAACP, who started his career as a reporter columnist for the Call in the late 1920s.

Civil Rights Movement.

Along with the black church, the black press provided an important institutional base for the civil rights movement. By providing intensive news coverage, editorial support, and sometimes financial and material assistance to civil rights groups, the black press justifiably can claim some of the credit for the successes of the civil rights movement.

It can be said that the civil rights movement began with World War II. That conflict brought momentous changes to American life and was a catalyst for the early civil rights movement. Generations of racism, plus the tradition of racial exclusion and segregation in the armed forces, caused the black community to be apathetic toward the American war effort. Apathy turned to anger over the exclusion, segregation, and mistreatment of African Americans in the military and the grudging inclusion of blacks in the war production effort.

Black newspaper publishers, who for the most part were optimistic about the war's effect on race relations, recognized this anger and tried to channel it into nonviolent protests of domestic racism. This strategy was called the Double V campaign. First popularized by the Pittsburgh Courier in 1942, the strategy's goal was to convince the black community that World War II was a struggle against racism and tyranny at home as well as abroad. The newspapers hoped to accomplish this through intensive coverage of the exploits of black servicemen and the relentless exposure of the racial abuse heaped upon those soldiers. Through these tactics black organizations enlisted their readers in an effort that they believed would lead to the end of racial discrimination in the postwar era.

The black press's intense coverage of racial abuse in the armed forces worried government agencies such as the Office of War Information, the FBI, and the Justice Department. They were concerned that such coverage would weaken the black community's support for the war. This concern reached the White House, and President Roosevelt in 1942 asked Walter White of the NAACP to use that organization to muzzle the black press. White then called a meeting of black newspaper publishers to convey the president's sentiments and warn the publishers against going too far in their criticism of racism in the war effort. There even was talk in high government circles about charging some black newspapers, particularly the Baltimore Afro-American, with sedition. The attorney general, Francis Biddle, however, a strong supporter of free speech, squelched such talk. Nevertheless the Afro-American, Pittsburgh Courier, Detroit Tribune, Chicago Defender, Philadelphia Herald, and other black newspapers were the subjects of intense surveillance from the FBI and the Post Office. These newspapers’ exposure of racism in the armed forces prompted the FBI to spy on them throughout World War II. No seditious material was found, though J. Edgar Hoover, if he had his way, would have closed the Afro-American and other black newspapers.

In any event, black newspapers were not deflected from their coverage and criticism of racism in the armed forces. Black newspapers such as the Afro-American, Journal and Guide, Courier, Defender, and Atlanta Daily World covered the reluctance of the army to use black soldiers in combat roles in France, the mistreatment of black officers at Freeman Field, Indiana, and racial abuse of black soldiers in southern army camps, among other racial wrongs.

As a result of the black press's exposure of racism in the armed forces, the army decided to cooperate with black newspapers in efforts to boost black morale. The army set up pooling arrangements for black newspapers so that war correspondents from these papers could cover wider areas. Resulting from this cooperation was an endless stream of stories in black newspapers stressing the heroism of black soldiers. The Afro-American's pages were particularly filled with this kind of news, since the newspaper sent six of its reporters overseas as war correspondents—more than any other black newspaper. Among other black newspapers, the Journal and Guide also sent reporters overseas and filled its pages with stories of blacks in combat. Such stories fulfilled the Double V mission.

The Double V campaign, plus the intense hunger of blacks for news about their brethren overseas and a black community prosperous as never before, brought the black press heretofore-unseen wealth and influence. The big three of the black press—the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Baltimore Afro-American—all averaged 300,000 in circulation during the war. By 1945 the Afro-American, having become a newspaper chain with branches in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, Newark, and Richmond, grossed more than 1.1 million dollars.

The prosperity of the black press continued in the postwar era. By 1947 the total circulation of black newspapers had risen to 2,120,000. Of this circulation, 38 percent (812,000) could be attributed to just four newspapers: the Courier (277,900), the Afro-American, (235,600), the Defender (193,900), and the Amsterdam News in New York City (105,300). Other black newspapers prospered proportionately during World War II and in the years immediately following.

In the immediate postwar period black newspapers were more powerful than ever. For example the black sports journalists Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier and Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American were significant factors in the desegregation of Major League Baseball, leading the media coverage of Jackie Robinson's joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The Afro-American sent Sam Lacy to the Dodgers’ spring training camp in Havana, Cuba, in March 1947 to cover Robinson's activities. The Afro-American and other black newspapers intensely covered Jackie Robinson during his first season and covered subsequent black baseball pioneers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Willie Mays.

By 1950 the black press was exponentially stronger than it had been a century earlier. Two important new black newspapers were the Atlanta Daily World, established in 1928 by William Alexander Scott II and later published by his descendants (even as of this writing), and the Amsterdam News in New York, founded in 1909 but greatly overshadowed by T. Thomas Fortune's New York Age, which was the main black media outlet in New York. But by the late 1930s the Age was no more, and the Amsterdam News, now owned by C. B. Powell and Philip Savory, was the leading black newspaper in New York.

By then black newspapers had their own wire service, the Associated Negro Press (ANP). Founded by Claude Barnett in 1919 the ANP proved vital to rural and small-market black newspapers by providing them with national and international black news stories that they could obtain nowhere else. The Associated Press (AP) and other white services ignored black newspapers, so Barnett's ANP filled that vacuum. And in 1940 the leading black newspaper publishers formed their first trade association, the Negro (later National) Newspaper Publishers Association. This group spoke for the interest of black newspapers as a whole and coordinated many of their activities.

In their support for the civil rights movement, black newspapers in some instances were civil rights organizations themselves, bringing lawsuits challenging Jim Crow or using their reporters and employees to test racial segregation laws and policies. These tactics sometimes took place long before the 1950s and 1960s, the popularly accepted dates for the civil rights era. For example, as far back as 1929 the Baltimore Afro-American used its reporters to test the segregated seating on Baltimore's buses. After the Afro-American brought unwelcome publicity and boycotts to the bus company, the company changed its policies and desegregated. In 1943 two reporters from the same newspaper attempted to travel in whites-only railroad cars in Virginia. When they were removed from the train, they sued, and a federal court ruled that racial segregation was unconstitutional on intrastate railroads. In the early 1960s the Afro-American dressed up some of its reporters as African diplomats to see whether they would be served in diners and motels along U.S. Route 1, the main highway between Washington, D.C., and New York. Some African diplomats had been refused service along that highway by motel and restaurant owners. The Afro-American wanted to shed light on these practices, and the resulting diplomatic crisis helped generate support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations.

Other black newspapers were just as vigorous in their coverage of and support for the civil rights movement. The other two members of the black press big three, the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier, closely covered the civil rights movement in the South, where they had branch newspapers, and in the North, where there were local antiracist movements. The Defender, especially, covered Martin Luther King's civil rights activities in Chicago and conducted a poll there to determine the extent of his popularity. It found that 76 percent of the respondents considered Dr. King the preeminent leader of his people. Midwestern black newspapers such as the Kansas City Call and the St. Louis Argus also strongly supported the civil rights movement and King, as did black newspapers on the West Coast.

The record of southern black newspapers in the civil rights era is mixed. Many southern black newspaper publishers were conservatives, still following Booker T. Washington's policy of conciliation and accommodation with the southern racial order. In some instances their newspapers were dependent on local white businessmen for advertising, supplies, and credit. Finally, the youthful, radical nature of the movement, especially as expressed by groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), grated on the sensibilities of these “old school” black publishers. For example the publisher of the Advocate in Jackson, Mississippi, Percy Greene, was openly critical of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Brown decision, and the sit-in movement. This made his newspaper unpopular in black Mississippi. Not helpful were revelations that Greene received subsidies from the Mississippi state sovereignty commission, a state agency dedicated to preserving racial segregation in Mississippi.

A similar story was told in South Carolina, where one of the leading black newspapers, the Orangeburg Herald, actually filed suit against the local NAACP to cripple its activities. This newspaper and others in South Carolina were heavily dependent on covert subsidies from white businessmen, which accounts for their reactionary stances. Even in the birthplace of the sit-in movement, Greensboro, North Carolina, the black newspaper, the Greensboro Herald, gave little or no coverage to the demonstrators or to the civil rights movement in general. The Deep South's most powerful black newspaper, the Atlanta Daily World, though generally supportive of the goals of the civil rights movement, deplored some of its more radical tactics, like sit-ins. The Norfolk Journal and Guide took a similar stance.

Nevertheless, some southern black newspapers strongly supported the civil rights movement at all costs. Throughout the 1950s the Birmingham World urged its readers to register to vote and staged voter registration drives, and in 1963 the World was firmly behind the civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. The World supported the demonstrators so strongly that Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham's notorious police chief, threatened to exile its editor, Emory Jackson. Texas's two leading black newspapers, the Houston Informer and the Dallas Express, both run by Carter Wesley, also closely covered and supported the civil rights movement. In fact Heman Sweatt, whose NAACP-conducted lawsuit opened the University of Texas law school to black students, was the circulation manager for the Houston Informer and was urged by that newspaper to bring forth the lawsuit.

Contemporary Black Press.

The 1960s and the years following saw immense changes in the nature and organization of the black press. For the first time, black alternative media in the form of alternative newspapers such as The Black Panther, Muhammad Speaks, and The Final Call, magazines such as Jet, Ebony, and Essence, and Internet Web sites such as Africana.com and BlackVoices.com made their appearances. Meanwhile, traditional black newspapers faced unprecedented challenges. These challenges stemmed from the changes in the American racial order generated by the civil rights and Black Power movements, and from the creation of a black community considerably different from the one that existed before.

Rise of an Alternative Black Press.

One little-remarked result of the 1960s was the appearance of alternative black newspapers. Not only did these publications oppose the white power structure but they also set themselves in opposition to the black establishment for whom the black press spoke. The two most important of these newspapers were the organ of the Black Panther Party, The Black Panther, and that of the Nation of Islam, Muhammad Speaks.

The Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, two militant and articulate students at Oakland's Merritt Junior College. They wanted to start a movement that would end local, national, and international racial and economic repression. Consequently, they organized their local black community around political education classes, free food programs—especially breakfasts for children—and free health counseling clinics. Their chief organizing tool was their campaign against police brutality, then rampant in Oakland. The armed Panther membership paraded around Oakland's ghetto with their weapons in full view (which was legal at that time) to defend its residents from out-of-control police. This was more theatrical bluff than anything else, but it did inspire the black community. The Black Panthers attracted the unwanted attention of the Oakland white power structure and the police, who viewed the Panthers as a threat to their control of the city.

The newspaper the Black Panther was generated by the police killing of a black man in Richmond, California, in early April 1967. The refusal of the white press or of mainstream black newspapers to give much coverage to the incident prompted the Black Panthers to set up their own newspaper to publicize this and other incidents of police brutality. The first issues of the Black Panther were mimeographed sheets stapled together. Soon the Black Panther was published as a tabloid newspaper selling for 24 cents a copy. True to its anticapitalist ideology, the Black Panther Party newspaper would not carry business advertising; it depended instead on circulation, with each member of the party having to sell a certain number of newspapers each week.

From its beginnings the Black Panther harshly criticized American capitalism and racism, seeing these phenomena as inextricably linked. It prominently displayed the Black Panther ten-point platform on its front page. Among other things, this platform called for full employment for all, for the black community to control its own institutions, for decent housing and education for all, for an end to police brutality, for the release of all black prisoners, and for reparations for slavery. According to the newspaper, this platform was to be accomplished through the violent overthrow of the U.S. political and economic system and its replacement by a democratic socialist state. The Black Panther's news coverage concentrated on local and nationwide incidents of racial injustice and police brutality. The newspaper was vividly designed, with drawings and silhouettes of machine guns and rifles; with heroic pictures of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and other leaders; and with cartoons of bloodthirsty police officers depicted as pigs assaulting innocent blacks.

The Black Panther was first edited by Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information of the party. Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and David Hilliard had prominent roles in the newspaper, with numerous signed columns and editorials. The newspaper frequently accepted outside columns from such sympathizers and fellow travelers as Angela Davis. Although the leadership of the Black Panthers was predominantly male, women members of the party kept the newspaper going, doing the typing and layout, as well as writing many of the articles.

The Black Panther captured the spirit of the times. It had a large circulation in the late 1960s—estimates ran from 100,000 to 200,000—and the newspaper was sold everywhere there was a Black Panther chapter. The newspaper's strong stance against the Vietnam War made it popular with radical young whites, who were a significant part of its readership. The Black Panther spread the word of the Black Panthers both nationwide and internationally. It inspired the creation of chapters everywhere, and these chapters in turn helped the paper to build its circulation.

Sadly, the Black Panther lasted only as long as the party did, and that was not very long. Illegal FBI and local police surveillance and harassment had fatally weakened the Black Panthers by the early 1970s. These actions caused the party's membership to dwindle both in numbers and in morale. As a result the Black Panther came out less frequently, going from a weekly to a biweekly in the late 1970s, then finally to a monthly in 1980, just before it shut down. But though the Black Panther is gone, it is not forgotten. As of this writing, a version of it is still published in Oakland.

The other major alternative black newspaper of recent times was Muhammad Speaks, known as of 2008 as the Final Call. This newspaper was published in Chicago by the Nation of Islam. The Nation of Islam was founded in the depths of the Depression in Detroit by W. D. Fard and was carried on by his disciple Elijah Muhammad after Fard's mysterious disappearance. Fard and Muhammad preached a version of Islam that claimed that blacks were the lost nation of Islam, that they were the original humans, and that whites were “devils” who had denied blacks their rightful place as rulers of the world. Muhammad preached that on judgment day, Allah would restore blacks to their primary place in the world. This theology was attractive to those downtrodden blacks who needed a reason to believe in themselves.

The Nation of Islam might have remained an insignificant cult within the black community had it not been for Malcolm X. Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X joined the Nation of Islam while imprisoned. Once freed he turned his back on his previous life of petty crime and became a minister and missionary for Elijah Muhammad. In doing so Malcolm X transformed the Nation of Islam from a small cult group centered in the Midwest to a social and religious organization with nationwide membership, influence, and notoriety. He organized temples in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, bringing in thousands of converts to the Nation of Islam. In 1960 the Nation of Islam burst upon the public as the result of televised documentaries, newspaper articles, and books. Malcolm X, charismatic and witty, put forth the Nation of Islam as the militant black nationalist alternative to the civil rights movement.

Aiding Malcolm X in his efforts to make the Nation of Islam a powerful national presence was the organization's newspaper Muhammad Speaks. Professionally designed and laid out, Muhammad Speaks covered local, national, and international black news as comprehensively as did the more established black newspapers. However, it was primarily the house organ for the Nation of Islam. It extensively covered Nation of Islam rallies, as well as Elijah Muhammad's speeches. The newspaper prominently featured Nation of Islam theology in its editorials and published a manifesto that resembled that of the Black Panthers in that it called for reparations for slavery by carving land out of the United States to create a black nation.

Yet Muhammad Speaks was hardly as radical as the Black Panther. The Nation of Islam's millennial theology precluded its members from taking radical action in the here and now to change the system. Members of the Nation were to live law-abiding, abstemious lives, built around the local temple. Malcolm X, the most radical of the Nation's hierarchy, chafed at its reluctance to immerse itself in the black liberation movements of the era. After Malcolm was forced out, the Nation of Islam lost its most militant voice and remained quiet for the rest of the 1960s and 1970s.

Still, Muhammad Speaks seemed a successful operation. Like the Black Panther, Muhammad Speaks was sold by the members of the parent organization, each of whom had to sell a quota of newspapers every week. Unlike the Black Panther, Muhammad Speaks carried advertising, mostly from local black businesses. During the 1960s the Nation of Islam claimed a circulation of 600,000 for Muhammad Speaks. If that figure is accurate then Muhammad Speaks was the most widely circulated, if not read, black newspaper of all time. Even if, as seems likely, the figure is exaggerated, Muhammad Speaks was a fixture in many black urban communities; almost daily, one saw immaculately dressed Black Muslims selling the newspaper.

Warith Deen Muhammad took over the Nation of Islam in 1975 upon the death of his father and turned it into a mainstream Islamic sect, dropping the theology that made the Nation of Islam unique. To symbolize the break with the past, Muhammad Speaks was changed to the Bilalian News, Bilal being one of the prophet Muhammad's black lieutenants. That this change was unpopular with its readers is demonstrated by the fact that the newspaper disappeared a few years later.

One of Elijah Muhammad's lieutenants, Louis Farrakhan, displeased at the direction that Muhammad's son was taking the organization, broke away to form a new group that continued the theology and legacy of Elijah Muhammad. Called the Nation of Islam after its predecessor, Farrakhan's group put out its own newspaper, the Final Call, and this is the real successor to Muhammad Speaks in that it follows its predecessor's layout, format, and ideology. While not as widespread in black communities as Muhammad Speaks was, the Final Call remained a popular if controversial source of news and opinion not found in the white press or mainstream black newspapers. As the main media outlet for Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam, the Final Call had (and as of this writing continues to have) considerable influence in contemporary black communities.

Black Magazines.

Black magazines have existed almost from the beginnings of the black press. In fact black newspapers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries more resembled magazines than newspapers in their weekly distribution, layout, and news coverage. In the 1910s and 1920s black literary magazines made their appearance, most notably The Crisis and Opportunity. Although these magazines were officially the house organs of the NAACP and Urban League, respectively, under the editorship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson, The Crisis and Opportunity served as media outlets for the essayists, poets, and novelists of the Harlem Renaissance. When the Harlem Renaissance collapsed, both magazines reverted back to being house organs for their respective organizations. There were also black radical journals during this era, most notably the Messenger published by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen. During its heyday from 1917 to 1928 the Messenger was a major source of socialist thought in the black community.

Black periodical publishing took off in the 1940s when John H. Johnson created Negro Digest, Ebony, and Jet magazines. An insurance salesman, Johnson used a $500 loan from his mother to start Negro Digest in 1942. This magazine, similar to Reader's Digest in that it published reprinted articles—in this instance articles covering black topics—became an instant success and provided Johnson with the resources to create Ebony and Jet magazines. From the beginning Johnson wanted his periodicals to reflect the most positive aspects of African American life. This was particularly true of Ebony, which had a format and layout similar to Life magazine. When not portraying them in a negative light, white magazines such as Life, Look, and Reader's Digest ignored African Americans. These white magazines had a national reach and influence unimaginable today, so there was tremendous need for glossy magazines for the black community that would counteract the white magazines’ racist coverage. Ebony in particular filled that need and still does as of 2008; it and Jet remain integral parts of the black community. Life and Look are no more, but Ebony, created to serve an audience overlooked by these two white magazines, stands alone as a mass-circulation, general-news picture magazine. As it did during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Ebony emphasizes black achievement and prosperity. For that the magazine was criticized during the 1960s by militant blacks, who claimed that it painted too rosy a picture of black life. Yet Ebony survives and flourishes even as of this writing, while more militant magazines have faded away. John H. Johnson's publishing company was for years the largest and most profitable black business in the nation, and Johnson himself wound up on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. The Johnson Publishing Company is one of the most successful black media enterprises of all time.

One of the more important periodical voices of the black liberation movement was Black World. It was published by Johnson Publications and was originally the Negro Digest. That magazine, the first of the Johnson stable, was ended in 1951 only to be brought back in 1961 to serve as an outlet for black writers connected to and with the civil rights movement. Under the editorship of Hoyt Fuller, during the 1960s the Negro Digest and Black World published articles from such writers as LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Julian Mayfield, Nathan Hare, Wole Soyinka, and John A. Williams. Through his magazine, Hoyt Fuller helped bring about the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and beyond. To reflect his cultural nationalist outlook Fuller changed the name of Negro Digest to Black World in 1970. Unfortunately the magazine did not last long into the 1970s. Johnson, never comfortable with the magazine's radical black nationalism and disliking Fuller, shut the magazine down because of its low circulation and consistent losses. Its demise created a vacuum that has not been completely filled.

Black magazines came and went during the 1980s and 1990s, but two that stood out were Emerge and Essence. Emerge appeared in the early 1990s as a black-oriented news magazine along the lines of Time and Newsweek. Under the editorship of George Curry, Emerge was highly regarded, but it was shut down by its publisher, the black cable-king Robert Johnson, for much the same reason that John Johnson had earlier shut down Negro World. Out of Emerge's ashes came Savoy, which attempted to be a black version of GQ magazine in catering to an upscale black urban market, but it shut down, too.

One contemporary black magazine that found lasting success is Essence. Founded in the 1970s to cater to college-educated black women, Essence was quite political in its outlook, promoting the ideals of black feminism. It was not just a political magazine, though. If it had been it would not have lasted as long as it has. From its beginnings Essence covered the fashion, beauty, health, relationship, and family concerns of black women, and in so doing filled a historic vacuum, since white women's magazines routinely ignored black women. The concerns of black women were also shortchanged by mainstream black magazines and alternative media. The only magazine that caters exclusively to black women, Essence has enjoyed enduring success. Today Essence is not as explicitly political as it was in its earlier years, now more resembling a black women's version of Cosmopolitan magazine.

Decline of the Traditional Black Press.

Since the civil rights era, the mainstream black press has lost circulation, prosperity, and influence. It is instructive to look at the fates of the big three of the black press, the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Baltimore Afro-American. The Chicago Defender, taken over by Robert Abbott's nephew John Sengstacke on Abbott's death in 1940, became a daily newspaper in 1956. It continued to prosper under Sengstacke's leadership into the 1960s, becoming the major black newspaper chain in the Midwest, acquiring the Pittsburgh Courier, Memphis's Tri-State Defender, and Detroit's Michigan Chronicle. The Chicago Defender's circulation was less as a daily than it had been as a weekly, however, and even that circulation began dropping after the 1970s. Sengstacke kept control of the paper for a long time, relinquishing control only upon his death at age eighty-four in 1997. By then the Defender and its chain newspapers were close to extinction. A five-year dispute among Sengstacke's descendants over the terms of his will further crippled the Defender, as well as the Courier. The confusion was finally resolved when Thomas Picou, a nephew of Sengstacke's, and Kurt Cherry purchased the Sengstacke properties to form Real Times Media. As of 2008 the Defender was still publishing daily, while the Courier, renamed the New Pittsburgh Courier, published twice a week. But neither newspaper is as influential as it once was. As of this writing, the Baltimore Afro-American is still going strong, though its chain of newspapers has been greatly reduced. Since the late 1980s declining circulation forced it to close its Philadelphia, Newark, and Richmond branches. The last closing was particularly painful because the Richmond Afro-American had originally been the Planet, so its closing ended that paper as well. Financial reverses in the early 1990s almost killed the Afro-American, but through closing unprofitable branches, moving to a more economical office building, and other economies, the Afro-American survived and remained the main black newspaper for Baltimore and Washington, D.C. While the Defender, the Courier, and the Afro-American survive, though in an attenuated form, many other black newspapers have shut downed since the 1960s.

There are many reasons for this. First, the rise of television and the Internet has imperiled all print media, regardless of race. Many mainstream white newspapers and magazines have shut down since the 1960s. For example, at one time New York City had more than seven major daily newspapers, but as of 2008 it had just three. Few major urban areas have more than one major daily today. Black newspapers could not be immune from these trends, and those that survived did so by adapting, by revamping their formats and developing Web sites.

Another reason for the decline of the traditional black press was publishers’ inability to attract or retain new talent. Family-owned enterprises for the most part, black newspapers did not bring in enough nonfamily talent, so they became inbred and stagnant. Aggravating this was the competition for black journalists now coming from the white media. Newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune offer higher pay, better working conditions, and more prestige than do their black counterparts. Though the number of black journalists in white newsrooms is still disproportionately small, it is enough to drain black newspapers of their talented journalists, greatly diminishing their quality. Many traditional black newspapers—still run in some instances by publishers and editors from before the civil rights era—did not keep up with the social and demographic changes in the black community. They were the victims of their own successful crusades for civil rights and racial integration. As the black elite for whom back newspapers spoke moved more and more into white institutions and even into neighborhoods, they felt less and less need for the black newspapers that helped them to get there. Today newspapers like the Afro-American are distributed and read primarily in inner-city black communities.

Future of the African American Press.

Despite the decline and fall of many traditional black newspapers, the black press is far from dead. There are still more than 300 black newspapers. The NNPA provides Web sites to twenty-six black newspapers through its black press network, and all told, sixty-seven black newspapers have Web sites. Thanks to low start-up costs, it is easy to start a small community-based newspaper, and many of these exist and flourish in the early twenty-first century. One example is the Baltimore Times, established in the 1980s. It publishes weekly and, since it subsists on advertising income, is free to its readers. The Times has become a credible competitor to the Afro-American. With low overheads and volunteer staffs, these small-scale community newspapers are the best hope for keeping the black press alive, since they fill a niche ignored by white or traditional black newspapers. For the black press to have a future, it may have to return to its roots in the small-scale black newspapers of the nineteenth century. But so long as there is a black community, there will be a black press.

[See also Amsterdam News; Associated Negro Press; Atlanta World; Baltimore Afro-American; Black Panther Party; Boston Guardian; Broadcast Industry, African Americans in; Chicago Defender; Civil Rights and the Media; Colored American Magazine; See Ebony; See Horizon, The; Houston Informer; Indianapolis Freeman; Jet; Johnson Publishing Company; Journalism, Print and Broadcast; Literature; See Moon Illustrated Weekly; National Newspaper Publishers Association; See Negro World; See New York Age; Pittsburgh Courier; Radio and Television Stations, African American; See Southern Workman; Washington Bee; and biographical entries on figures mentioned in this article.]

processed xml | source xml