This article title reflects persistent efforts by Black newspapers and magazines to pressure the federal government on passing legislation formally outlawing the practice of lynching.

Make Lynching Federal Crime

This brief article from the first issue of The North Star outlines its key aims and ambitions. The North Star, edited by Frederick Douglass, was one of the most influential Black newspapers of the antebellum period and became a key mouthpiece for the abolitionist movement.

The Object of The North Star

This headline reflects how the civil rights movement was gathering significant momentum by the second half of the 1950s. The impact of campaigns such as the Montgomery Bus Boycotts had a galvanizing effect on activists across the country and sparked a new wave of co-ordinated campaigns.

Southern Negroes Mobilize to Secure their Voting Rights

This headline reflects the dominant thrust of early Black newspapers towards the abolition of slavery - a subject that dominated Black journalism up until the American Civil War.

Abolition of Slavery

The Chicago Whip (1919-38) was a spirited local paper that sought to usurp the Chicago Defender's reputation as the "dean" of Chicago's Black Press. It was funded by Anthony Overton and Jesse Binga, two of the city's leading Black businessmen, and Oscar DePriest, who later became the first Black politician elected to Congress in the twentieth century. The Whip is perhaps best known for its "Don't Spend Money Where You Can't Work" campaign, which called for boycotts of discriminatory white-run businesses. This campaign would later serve as an inspiration for direction action boycotts of the post-World War II civil rights era.

CHICAGO WHIP

This photograph shows participants in a silent protest parade held in New York in July 1917. Around 10,000 African Americans participated in this protest, which was organised by the NAACP following the East St. Louis massacre.

Silent Protest Parade in New York City

Negro Exodus

This article charts the growth of Black business enterprise since the start of the twentieth century, providing a summary of national Black business exploits. Black newspapers and magazines, in addition to being important Black businesses in their own right, were vital to the health of other Black commercial and business enterprises - promoting their services and influence through editorial and advertising content.

Negro Business Enterprises in the United States

This article by Black journalist E. B. Henderson celebrates the prevalence of Black sports stars and argues that their success is a "powerful foe of intolerance." An increase in sports-specific coverage was one part of the departmentalization of Black newspapers during the early decades of the twentieth century, as they grew larger and more commercially successful.

Athletic Performances Often Under-Estimated

This article reports on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Berea College v. Kentucky, which upheld a Kentucky state law prohibiting the coeducation of Black and white students. The Afro-American warned that, by the logic of the decision, America "can do almost anything to the Negro it likes." The article also notes a dissent by Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan, who became a prominent critic of the Court's efforts to constrain civil liberties during this period.

Jim Crowism Spreading

This article covers the murder of Lawrence Brown and subsequent efforts by Brown's father to claim damages from the State of South Carolina following his lynching.

Damages for Lynching

This extract from an article by Arthur Huff Fauset reflects on the emergence of a "New Negro," characterized by "an independence, a daring...[and] beginning to love the color of his skin."

The New Negro

This article covers the experience of Howard University student John H. Moody, who was among the many students to participate in the Freedom Rides of 1961. Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Freedom Riders set out to test the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions such as Boynton v. Virginia (1960) which had ruled segregated public transport as unconstitutional.

Freedom Rider Declare's He's Undaunted By Dixie Tyranny

The Negro Problem

This image, taken by New York World Telegram and Sun photographer Dick De Marsico, shows street scenes in the aftermath of the shooting of Black teenager James Powell by a white police officer in July 1964. Powell's death sparked a week of rioting in Harlem, New York; one of many violent confrontations between Black urban communities and predominantly white police forces during the 1960s.


The Fatal Shooting of Powell Stirred Negro Rioters

This article extract reflects on the Haitian Revolution of 1790-1804, the first successful large-scale insurrection by enslaved Africans that established the independent republic of Haiti. It argues that the Haitian revolution should have been anticipated by France, as it was natural that the "flame of liberty" that burned in the country's metropole should spread to its colonies.

Hayti, No. II

In 1932 Black schoolgirl Tidye Pickett became a sensation in the Black Press after equalling the record for the 60 yard dash. Pickett's exploits would earn her a place on the 1932 Olympic team in the sprint relay, although she and fellow Black teammate Louise Stokes were controversially left out of the final team that ran at the Olympics. Four years later, Pickett would finally become the first Black woman to represent the United States at the summer Olympics.

Tidye Pickett, A Chicago Girl, Equals Record

The National Afro-American League was an important early civil rights organization founded by Black journalist T. Thomas Fortune in 1887. It aimed to address growing anti-Black violence and disenfranchisement. Although the organization floundered, it was later revived in a more substantive form as the National Afro-American Council.

The League in Sight

The Freedom Rides that took place during the summer of 1961 were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to test the enforcement of racial integration on interstate travel. This headline documents the violence faced by many Freedom Riders as they travelled across the South. Activists were attacked in stations by white mobs, and one bus was firebombed outside of Anniston, Alabama.

Freedom Riders Beaten By Mississippi Mob

This article outlines the ambitions of the Weekly Anglo-African and its editors to "supply a demand too long felt in this community" - that of a forthright and independent Black-owned publication to provide "a press of our own."

Our Paper

Black newspapers played a major role in advertising abolitionist talks in towns and cities such as Rochester, New York, which was a hub of anti-slavery activism. The figures named in this advert include the essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, the transcendalist minister Theodore Parker, and Salmon P. Chase, who would later serve as chief justice on the US Supreme Court.

Anti-Slavery Lectures in Rochester

The Ram's Horn (1847-8) was a shortlived abolitionist newspaper published by Willis A. Hodges, a free Black man from Virginia and an important figure on the Underground Railroad in the state. The newspaper was edited by Frederick Douglass and Thomas Van Rensselaer, two of New York's most prominent Black abolitionists.

THE RAM'S HORN

James E. Shepard, a prominent Black pharmacist and educator, founded North Carolina Central University in 1910. Like other conservative Black Southern leaders such as Booker T. Washington, he cautioned African Americans against abandoning the South, arguing that despite its flaws, it remained the best place in the country for Black communities to live.

Negro and the South

The Miami Times (1923-) was founded by Sigismund Reeves, a Bahamian immigrant.  Reeves initially printed the paper on a small press at his residential address, before later moving into a business office. The paper played an important role in chronicling the civil rights movement in Florida, and has remained under the control of the Reeves' family throughout its life. Sigismund's son Garth succeeded him as publisher in 1970, and subsequently passed control of the newspaper to his daughter, Rachel Reeves, in 1994. The current publisher is Sigismund's great-grandson, Garth Basil Reeves III.

MIAMI TIMES

The Colored American (1837-41) was published in New York City by Samuel Cornish, Phillip Alexander Bell, and Charles Bennett Ray. After Cornish retired not long after the publication began circulation, the remaining editors were joined by James McCune Smith, a well regarded Black intellectual and the first African American to earn a medical degree.



COLORED AMERICAN

This article reflects a growing interest in shared diasporic experiences between Africans and African Americans during the 1960s. The content of Black newspapers and magazines, which reflected and helped to promote this trend, was the latest chapter in a longstanding history of transnational solidarity and activism.

Africans, American Negroes Uniting in Fight Against Bias

This letter from a Chicago Defender reader pushes back on Black leaders who advised against northward migration, outlining their own reasons for why they believed migration could provide new opportunities for Black workers.

Migration

The Pittsburgh Courier (1907-) remains one of America's most prominent Black weekly newspapers. It is perhaps most closely associated with its "Double V" campaign during World War II, which called for victory abroad against fascism and victory at home against racial discrimination and segregation. The paper briefly halted circulation in the 1960s, before being purchased by John Sengstacke, the publisher of the Chicago Defender, and relaunched as the New Pittsburgh Courier. Although the latter publication is technically a separate entity - for tax and liability reasons - scholars and readers tend to equate the two titles.

PITTSBURGH COURIER

The St. Louis American (1928-) is Missouri's largest Black newspaper. It was founded by Nathan Young, Nathaniel Sweets, and a group of local Black businessmen, with Sweets serving as its owner-publisher for around fifty years. Donald Suggs, a dentist and long-time activist, purchased majority shared in the newspaper in the early 1980s, and helped transform the paper from limited paid circulation to a wider, free circulation. The American has continued to evolve in recent decades into a multi-platform media entity.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

Headlines such as these were used to raise awareness of the inhumanity and barbarity of the slavery system in the United States.

Horrors of Slavery

The Northern Star and Freeman's Advocate (1842-3, also published as the Freemen's Advocate) was a short-lived but influential Black newspaper based in Albany, New York. Although its title echoes that of The North Star, Frederick Douglass's better known and longer running newspaper, The Northern Star and Freeman's Advocate actually predated Douglass's paper by five years.

NORTHERN STAR AND FREEMAN'S ADVOCATE

The Jackson Advocate (1938-) remains one of the most significant Black newspapers based in the US South. Its founding publisher Percy Greene, initially sought to position the paper as a strident voice for Black rights in the South, but subsequently adopted a conciliatory and accommodationist position that increasingly blamed African Americans for the challenges they faced. It would later emerge that Greene had accepted payments from the pro-segregationist Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a revelation that undermined the paper's credibility. However, after Charles Tisdale purchased the paper in 1978, he was able to rehabilitate its reputation.

JACKSON ADVOCATE

This article honors Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, who was born a slave in the French colony of Saint-Domingue and played a key role in establishing the independent Haitain Republic. L'Ouverture and other key military and political leaders of the Haitian Revolution were championed in Black American newspapers as models of Black radical protest and revolutionary action.

Toussaint L'Ouverture

This article is characteristic of a broader emphasis on the importance of education by the antebellum Black Press. For pioneering Black editors such as John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish, greater educational opportunities for Black people - centered on improving literacy rates - were a critical tool for racial uplift and self-empowerment.

Education, No. 1

This article pushes back against criticisms of Black Power within the mainstream white press and large sections of the Black Press.

In Defense of 'Black Power'

This article details the introduction of an act in Ohio requiring Black residents to pay bonds "for their good behavior." It is a reminder that although the antebellum Black Press was primarily focused on the anti-slavery cause, free Black communities across the North still faced widespread prejudice.

Barbarism in America

This article reflects on the "Negro Negro Movement" during the 1920s and the decade's outpouring of Black arts and culture. It also argues that the impact of the depression years helped to usher in a "new" New Negro artist that was more closely attuned to working-class and radical politics.

The 'New Negro' of the '20s Makes Way for a New Artist

The Negro Spokesman (1938-1958) served the Black community of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for around 20 years. Operating primarily at the local level, its name reflected the broader ambitions of the Black Press to function as a "voice for the race."

NEGRO SPOKESMAN

This letter to the editor uses a baseball analogy to make the case for Black equality. It argues that segregation and continued political disenfranchisement has left Black Americans "stranded on the bases," and that "we have waited long enough...we want a homer."

Democracy, War, and the Negro

This article, composed by a reader in the South, celebrates the launch of Freedom's Journal as the first Black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States. It contends that the appearance of such a journal should not fail "to awaken the liveliest joy and gratitude," and hopes that the newspaper could help pave the road to full emancipation.

For The Freedom's Journal

The Richmond Planet (1882-1938) was founded in Richmond, Virginia by a group of thirteen formerly enslaved men. The Planet is most closely associated with John Mitchell, Jr., who served as its editor and publisher from 1884 until his death in 1929. Under Mitchell's leadership, the Planet gained a reputation as one of the South's most militant Black newspapers - embodied by its logo of a clenched Black fist.

RICHMOND PLANET

This article emphasises the role of Black women in fostering and leading Black radical activism. 

Women Long Ago Paved the Way to Black Power

During the years following World War II, editorial cartoonists in the Black Press became increasingly outspoken on the need for civil rights agitation and their frustrations with the slow pace of change.

Complete Record of Civil Rights Bills Passed by the 84th Congress

The Weekly Anglo-African (1859-65), along with its sister publication the Anglo-African Magazine, began publication on the brink of the American Civil War. Echoing the sentiments of earlier abolitionist Black papers, the Anglo-African declared that "we need a Press—a press of our own." Variations of the paper continued publication until the end of 1865.


WEEKLY ANGLO-AFRICAN

This article by Mabel Travis Wood argues for a greater acknowledgement of Black contributions to contemporary American music and composition.

Negro's Contribution to Musical Art

This article responds to the ongoing "long hot summer" of 1967, which was characterized by destructive rioting in cities such as Detroit and Newark and violent confrontations between Black urban communities and law enforcement. It emphasizes the significance of "unbearable living conditions [and] insufficient opportunities to rise out of ghetto life" as a catalyst for Black rage and frustration.

Grinding Poverty Blamed for Riots

This article details the scale of civil rights activism across the South, which by the early 1960s was leading to hundreds of campaigners being jailed every week. Co-ordinated and persistent campaigns across the region placed huge pressure on law enforcement and helped to swing the tide of public opinion in favor of civil rights reform.

South Keeps Up War on Rights Fighters

This article outlines the desire of Black Americans for full equality under the law. In response to the question "what do you colored people want?" - a question that the Anglo-African contends is routinely asked "by the politicians of the present day" - the newspaper asks simply for "our rights as men, and shall never cease agitation until we obtain them."

What We Want

This article frames the abolitionist fight as a spiritual and moral crusade, portraying slavery as a force of darkness and urging readers to engage in ongoing, vigorous intellectual resistance to defeat it.

Abolitionists of Western New York, Awake!

This poem, written as a heartfelt plea, calls on the conscience of the American public to recognize the suffering of enslaved people and take action. Poems such as this one were a regular feature in antebellum Black newspapers, offering another opportunity to press the case for abolition.

Slave Petition

Jesse Owens Voted Year's Best Athlete

This article condemns the 1906 Atlanta Massacre, where white mobs attacked and killed dozens of Black residents and destroyed Black-owned property. Like many other race riots and massacres during the "nadir", the Atlanta massacre was fuelled by white newspapers publishing lurid and misleading accounts of alleged sexual assaults by Black men.

The Atlanta Massacre

The 'Best Citizens'

Drawings of Frederick Douglass remained commonplace in Black newspapers during the 1890s despite his advancing years, a testament to his enduring influence as one of the nation's premier Black activists and public spokesmen.

Frederick Douglass

The Atlanta Daily World (1928-), was founded as a weekly before converting to daily publication several years later. Founded by W. E. Scott, the paper made its most significant strides under his brother C. A. Scott, who assumed control after W. E. Scott was killed in 1934. It is one of the few Black newspapers to successfully maintain a daily publication schedule, compared to the weekly format favoured by the majority of Black papers, and remains one of the most influential Black newspapers in the country.

ATLANTA DAILY WORLD

This article highlights the athletic exploits of female track and field athletes such as Tidye Pickett, who became the first Black woman to represent the United States at the Summer Olympics in 1936.

Tuskegee Girl Wins National Broad Jump Title

The Detroit Tribune (1935-1966) was a successor to the Detroit Leader, which began publication in 1907 and was cancelled during the mid-1920s. Its Managing Editor was James Edward McCall, a veteran Black journalist who moved to Detroit after his work in the Southern Black Press prompted threats from the Ku Klux Klan. The Tribune marketed itself as "the leading Negro newspaper in Michigan," and it battled with the Michigan Chronicle for this title throughout its three decade in print. 

DETROIT TRIBUNE

By the 1840s, Black and abolitionist newspapers were increasingly arguing that slavery actively hindered economy of southern states. By presenting slavery as an economic, as well as ethical and political mis-step, such arguments sought to further characterize slavery as a barrier to America's development as a democratic and progressive nation.

The Curse of Slavery

This article stresses how the negative impact of lynching goes far beyond individual attacks to "degrade the entire community." This framing of lynching as both anti-American and a threat to American democracy became an important part of anti-lynchhing messaging.

The Lynching Evil

This article reflects the importance of the Black American press in documenting events in newly independent African nations. Many African leaders sought to cultivate close ties with Black newspapers and magazines such as the Chicago Defender and EBONY, believing that coverage in such publications could elevate their international profile.

New African Nations Ask Support of Negro Press

The decolonization movement in Africa was a galvanizing moment for many Black American activists. This article speaks to the role of civil rights at home within the larger contours of Cold War geopolitics.

The Black Man Has Become A Power In World Affairs

The Afro-American (1892-), more commonly known as the Afro, was founded in Baltimore, Maryland. It is historically associated with the Murphy family, headed by John H. Murphy Sr., who purchased the paper shortly after its founding. After John's son Carl Murphy assumed control of the paper during the early 1920s it significantly expanded its reach, becoming one of the nation's premier Black newspapers. This included the addition of local editions in cities such as Washington, D C., Philadelphia, and Richmond. The paper is still led by members of the Murphy family, making it one of the few Black legacy newspapers still in print today that remains under family control.

AFRO-AMERICAN

The Black Panther (1967-1980) was the mouthpiece of the Black Panther Party and, for a brief period during the late 1960s and early 1970s, one of the most widely circulated Black newspapers in the United States and internationally. Best known for its confrontational rhetoric and the artwork of Emory Douglas, the Party's Minister of Culture, The Black Panther played a critical role in publicizing the Party's ideology and activism.

THE BLACK PANTHER

Boston Students Support Sitdowns

This poem by celebrated Black writer Langston Hughes, reprinted in the Afro-American from Opportunity magazine, relays frustrations over poor pay and the desires of Black people to push back against their oppressors.

Pride

This image, taken by photographer Russell Lee, shows a small group of Black women outside a community store in Steele, Missouri. Lee documented life in Steele and other smalltown communities as part of his documentary work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). This image demonstrates how new styles of dress were being embraced by Black women far beyond the urban centers most closely associated with the Black Renaissance of the interwar years.

Negro Women in Front of Ten Cent Store

The Inter-State Tattler (1925-32) was a lively Black weekly published in New York City and dedicated to culture, sports, and entertainment. It was notable for providing space to Black women journalists and society editors at a time when Black women continued to be marginalized with many Black publications. It's gossip and advice columns and profiles of Black celebrities preceded the commercial Black magazines that came to dominate the Black Press during the decades following World War II.

INTER-STATE TATTLER

This article mocks the anxieties of white Southern newspapers as to the impact of Black migration and revels in the Defender's notoriety as an "agitator."

Read This, Then Laugh

Novelist Secures Guggenheim Prize

This deadline celebrates Black sailor Dorie Miller's award of the US Navy Cross. Miller was the first Black soldier to receive this recognition for his conduct during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Black Press celebrated the story as evidence that Black servicemen were just as brave and capable as their white counterparts. A little over one year later, Miller was killed in action in the Pacific Theater, when his ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

Dorie Miller Awarded Navy Cross by F.D.R.

Speaks for the Negro

The landmark Supreme Court ruling in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" case, along with subsequent appeals and connected legal battles, were extensively covered in the Black Press.

U.S. Supreme Court Condemns 'Separate But Equal' Doctrine

This article emphasizes the importance of good social conduct, given that individual actions by Black people were often characterized as representative of the entire race. This "burden of representation" would become a prominent concern for Black periodicals in their efforts to "uplift the race."

Propriety of Conduct

The Arkansas State Press (1941-59) was established in Little Rock, AK, by civil rights activist Lucius and Daisy Bates, after had they purchased and renamed the Twin City Press. It was the largest Black newspaper in Arkansas during its time in print, and provided forceful support for civil rights activism on both the local and national scale, complementing that Bates's work as leaders of the Little Rock NAACP.

ARKANSAS STATE PRESS

The Topics, also known as Kansas City Topics, was published in Kansas for a brief period during the late 1900s. This article interrogates the superficiality of racial prejudice, arguing that "mind and manners, not race or money makes the men." 

Race Prejudice

This photograph of Richard Wright taken by Black photographer Gordon Parks in May 1943. It was taken several years after the publication of Wright's debut novel, Native Son, which established him as one of the country's premier Black writers.

Richard Wright

Joe Louis Retains Title

Photograph of Black nationalist leader Malcolm X taken by New York World staff photographer Ed Ford in early 1964.

Malcolm X

The Washington Bee (1884-1922) ably served the capital's growing Black community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. William C. Chase, a local lawyer and businessman, assumed control of the newspaper before the end of its first year in print and remained in control throughout the remainder of its time in print. Under Chase's leadership, the Bee became closely associated with the Republican Party - in keeping with Black party politics of its day.

WASHINGTON BEE

This 1971 poster was created by the New York Committee to Free Angela Davis, a prominent Black feminist and left-wing activist as part of an ongoing legal campaign against her. After being held in jail for more than a year, all charges against Davis were dropped.

Free Angela Davis Now!

This article demonstrate how, in the aftermath of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights act, Black activists began to turn their attention away from the South towards racial inequality in northern cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Boston

King Leads 25,718 in Boston Rain

Migration to the North

This article discusses the public reaction to Black Power, suggesting that despite rhetorical differences, the goals of Black Power activists were not radically different from those of established mainstream civil rights actors.

King and Carmichael?

This photograph of Josephine Baker, a celebrated Harlem Renaissance actress, dancer, and civil rights activist, was taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1949. 

Portrait of Josephine Baker, Paris

Eye-catching headlines such as this one helped to cement Malcolm X's reputation as a militant Black leader and, in the eyes of federal authorities, "the most dangerous man in America."

'Get Guns' Says Malcolm X

Article discussing the involvement of Black New Yorkers in recent elections for both local and national office. This extract is significant for featuring an early written example of the phrase "stay woke!" which has become part of modern speech and activist language.

Harlem Negroes Waking Up

This photograph documents the scale of destruction caused by the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when white mobs razed the Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, OK.

Part of a District Burned in Race Riots, Tulsa

This photograph, taken by Orlando Fernandez, shows activists Bayard Rustin and Cleveland Robinson in conversation outside of 170 west 130 Street in Washington, D.C. Rustin, as Deputy Director, and Robinson, as Chairman of the Administrative Committee, were both key organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.

In front of 170 West 130 Street

Headline for article outlining the historic role of Black women in shaping Black radical activism

Today's Militant Movement Indebted to Black Women

Antebellum Black newspapers revelled in their status as "truth-tellers" for Black communities, explicitly framing their importance against the lies of mainstream white publications.

The Truth and Nothing But the Truth

During World War II, Black women became key workers in the US war economy.

Negro Women Welders

This opening editorial from The Rights of All outlines the ambitions of its editor Samuel Cornish for it to be "devoted to the rights & interests of the colored population." Cornish had co-founded Freedom's Journal, the nation's first Black newspaper, several years earlier, but had left the paper over disagreements with John Russwurm on the efficacy of colonization and Black emigration to West Africa.

To Our Patrons, and the Publick Generally

Article relaying comments made by the conductor Leopold Stokowski, the head of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which champion the role of Black musicians in the development of Jazz.

American Negro Given Credit For Jazz Music

This editorial cartoon criticizes the hypocrisy of "Uncle Sam," a stand-in for the US government, over its treatment of Black soldiers returning from World War I. Despite millions of Black Americans registering for the draft and more than one-third of a million actively serving, Black veterans were denied war benefits and returning Black soldiers were met with discrimination and violence.

Boy, You've Saved the World!

This article criticizes the newly enacted segregation laws in Jacksonville, Florida, mandating race separation on streetcars, and highlights how local Black communities were organizing to protest separate car laws. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the Jim Crow system had become formalized in many southern states.

An Epidemic Of Insanity

This article, a firsthand account from a Black woman travelling through Mississippi, denounces the inhumane and degrading conditions of segregated train cars. On a lengthy trip from New Orleans to Chicago, she contends that "humiliation and disgrace afforded by this legalized rule of slavery" accounted for much of the trip, and "filth, dirt, and unfair treatment made up for the rest."

Jim Crow Cars Assailed

The Broad Ax (1895–1931) was originally published in Salt Lake City, Utah, by Julius F. Taylor, a Virginia-born barber and Black entrepreneur. Taylor relocated the newspaper to Chicago several years after its founding, and it was here that it developed its reputation as an iconoclastic and independent outlet. Like many other Black newspapers that began publication during this period, the Broad Ax featured an eye-catching masthead - a reflection of how Black publishers were embracing new visual and printing technologies.

BROAD AX

This illustration offers readers an artistic depiction of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Tuskegee was one of the nation's most important Black colleges. Its fortunes were closely linked to that of its figurehead, Booker T. Washington, who used Tuskegee to advance his model of industrial education.

The Tuskegee Institute

Foreign news, particularly with regards to Africa and the West Indies, was a prominent part of the Journal's coverage from its inception. This coverage reflected a broader interest in Black life beyond the United States within antebellum Black newspapers.

Foreign News

The Tulsa Star (1913-1921) was founded by A. J. Smitherman as the Muskogee Star, but changed its name soon after its founding after relocating to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The paper was an important voice for Tulsa's growing Black community throughout the World War I, helping to celebrate the development its its vibrant Black business district. In May 1921, the Star's offices were burned to the ground as part of the Tulsa Massacre


TULSA STAR

A digital bridge to a tradition born in 1827 — the FTC tool is organized around four core themes, which explore the significance and coverage of the Black Press during four key historical periods:

THE EARLY BLACK PRESS  (1820s-1850s) - discover how the Black Press advanced the anti-slavery crusade, covered the Black Diaspora, and documented the development of Black communities in antebellum America.


GREAT MIGRATION AND THE RISE OF JIM CROW (1890s-1920s) - discover how the Black Press spoke out against racial violence, promoted early civil rights initiatives, and documented the start of the First Great Migration.


THE BLACK RENAISSANCE ERA (1920s-1940s) - discover how the Black Press charted new intellectual and activist trajectories and documented Black cultural, political and business achievements during the boom-and-bust of the interwar period.


MODERN BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE (1940s-1970s) - discover how the Black Press became the mouthpiece of the civil rights movement and provided a forum to discuss Pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, and other strategies for Black liberation.

Filter tool content by selecting one of our four main themes, types of content, or time period, to explore how the Black Press covered key moments in Black History.

Select text and images to build your own Black Press front page, or create your own newspaper title and articles, placing your own words in conversation with those of pioneering Black journalists and readers.

Share your front page with family and friends, or add it to the Freedom to Create community archive to help us celebrate the Black Press Bicentennial!