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The article focuses on African American newspapers referred to Afro-Montauk Olivia Ward Bush-Banks as dame of literati and mentions poetry and plays that feature representations of African Americans. Topics discussed include interactions with influenced racial identity formation, deconstructing the ideology of black separatism, and racism alongside colonialism in the U.S.

Black sociological discourse in E. Franklin Frazier's work during the Great Depression associated sexual immorality with migrants. However, Frazier unintentionally unearthed the voices of Black migrant women, who included in their accounts specific ways they achieved sexual pleasure in the South and in the North. The Black press, on the other hand, viewed these women as readers who purchased newspapers during the financial decline of the Great Depression. Thus, key African American newspapers included images of Black migrant women's sexuality that, in part, mirrored Frazier's views but expanded discussions of their sexual autonomy and pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1852, enslaved people's great champion lampooned Americans who rejoiced on the Fourth of July while millions wore chains. Although widely lauded by historians, Frederick Douglass's speech has not been placed in proper context. Indeed, as this article shows, Douglass participated in a holiday tradition that Black abolitionists established during the mid–nineteenth century. Tracing the formation of the tradition primarily in Black newspapers, this article reveals that as Black abolitionists grew troubled by the growing power of enslavers, they hosted celebrations to reimagine America as an antislavery, antiracist nation. Especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, they articulated an America cleansed of slavery and racism. When the US Civil War began, they continued the tradition yet also mobilized it to influence the direction of the war. This article details the evolution of Black abolitionists' Fourth of July tradition and exposes the importance of American nationalism to Black abolitionist thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reconstructs the history of the Cotton Farmer, a rare African American newspaper edited and published by black tenant farmers employed by the Delta and Pine Land Company, once the world's largest corporate cotton plantation located in the Mississippi delta. The Cotton Farmer ran from 1919 to circa 1927 and was mainly confined to the company's properties. However, in 1926, three copies of the paper circulated to Bocas del Toro, Panama, to a Garveyite and West Indian migrant laborer employed on the infamous United Fruit Company's vast banana and fruit plantations. Tracing the Cotton Farmer 's hemispheric circulation from the Mississippi delta to Panama, this essay explores the intersections of labor, literacy, and diaspora in the global black south. What do we make of a reading public among black tenant farmers on a corporate cotton plantation in the Mississippi delta at the height of Jim Crow? How did the entanglements of labor and literacy at once challenge and correspond with conventional accounts of sharecropping in the Jim Crow South? Further, in light of the Cotton Farmer's circulation from Mississippi's cotton fields to Panama's banana fields, this essay establishes the corporate plantation as a heuristic for exploring the imperial logics and practices tying the US South to the larger project of colonial domination in the Caribbean and Latin America, and ultimately reexamines black transnationalism and diaspora from the position of corporate plantation laborers as they negotiated ever-evolving modes of domination and social control on corporate plantations in the global black south. In so doing, it establishes black agricultural and corporate plantation laborers as architects of black geographic thought and diasporic practice alongside their urban, cosmopolitan contemporaries. Keywords transnationalism, black geographies, global south, Garveyism, print culture [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the representation of crime in the first African American newspaper, New York's Freedom's Journal (1827-29). In a growing body of scholarship on law, criminal narrative, and antebellum African American literature, discussions of the early black press are remarkably absent. This article makes a case for the relevance of Freedom's Journal to these critical conversations. It views the first African American newspaper as an important bridge between the popular first-person biographies of condemned black felons from colonial and early national America and the more familiar slave narratives of the antebellum period. It argues that Freedom's Journal purposefully reverses the negative stereotypes of blacks and crime located in the earlier ephemera, and more contemporary publications like Skillman's New York Police Reports, by exclusively reporting the criminal actions of whites. To achieve this, Freedom's Journal collects and reprints previously published notices of white crime from newspapers scattered across the nation, in an effort to create a lawful space for black citizens in New York following the state's recent abolition of slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 19th century novel "Hearts and Homes" by Landseer is presented, particularly focusing on its relationship to the coverage of Reconstruction by the 19th century weekly newspaper the "Anglo-African," and the significance of African American newspapers during Reconstruction and the social and economic conditions of African Americans during the era.

The article discusses the efforts by African Americans in Oregon, particularly in Portland, to fight housing exclusion policies in the early 1900s. Also cited are the actions taken by African American realtors, investment companies, banks, credit unions, and activist organizations to uplift their community, how African American newspapers fought racial stereotypes and celebrate African American homeownership, and how African Americans developed strategies to fight housing exclusion.

In 1887, T. Thomas Fortune published an editorial, “The Negro's Peculiar Work,” in the black newspaper the New York Freeman, wherein he reflected on a recent keynote speech delivered by Reverend J. C. Price on 3 January in Columbia, South Carolina, to commemorate Emancipation Day. Price, a member of the Zion Wesley Institute of the AME Zion Church, hailed from North Carolina and his denomination considered him to be “the most popular and eloquent Negro of the present generation.” On the occasion meant to reflect on the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation (which went into effect on 1 January 1863) for present-day African Americans, Price turned his gaze away from the US towards Africa. In his speech “The American Negro, His Future, and His Peculiar Work” Price declared that African Americans had a duty to redeem Africans and help them take back their continent from the Europeans who had partitioned it in 1884–85. He railed, The whites found gold, diamonds, and other riches in Africa. Why should not the Negro? Africa is their country. They should claim it: they should go to Africa, civilize those Negroes, raise them morally, and by education show them how to obtain wealth which is in their own country, and take the grand continent as their own. Price's “Black Man's Burden” projected American blacks as agents of capitalism, civilization, and Christianity in Africa. Moreover, Price suggested that African American suffering under slavery, failed Reconstruction, and Jim Crow placed them in a unique position to combat imperialism. He was not alone in seeing parallels between the conditions of “Negroes” on both sides of the Atlantic. Many African Americans, Afro-Canadians, and West Indians saw imperialism in Africa as operating according to Jim Crow logic: white Europeans would subordinate and segregate Africans, while economically exploiting their labor to bring wealth to Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented of the 1852 nonfiction fiction essay series titled "The Heads of Colored People," by James McCune Smith, or Communipaw, published in the newspaper "Frederick Douglass Paper." An overview of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass's criticism of Smith's work and perspective on African American Americans is provided. Smith's depiction of anti-heroism in his essays, contrasting it with the portrayal of heroism in the book "The Heroic Slave," by Douglass is discussed.

This study examines business trends for African American newspapers from 1993 to 2013, the period in which digital distribution emerged and the Great Recession occurred. By 2013, roughly 151 weeklies existed, a net loss of 30 weeklies over two decades. During this time, paid circulation declined, free circulation increased, open line advertising rates increased, and the percentage of weeklies owned by groups increased slightly. African American newspapers were more aggressive than general circulation weeklies in adding websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of competitive rivalries, racism, and editorial policy in the 1934 murder of African American newspaper editor William Alexander Scott, Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia. Emphasis is given to topics such as Scott's founding of the newspaper the "Atlanta Daily World" and the Scott Newspaper Syndicate, the publication of crimes against African Americans, and the connection between the murder and sale of the Odd Fellows building.

The article examines black print culture during the period between 1827-1829 which led to the founding of African-American newspapers "Freedom's Journal," and "The Rights of All." It notes the network established by editors Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm to distribute more that 800 issues of "Freedom's Journal" across North America. It cites that the African-American newspapers created an emancipatory cosmology that transcended time, space, and biopolitical borders for readers.

The article explores how the Ottoman Empire was portrayed by the African American newspaper "Freedom's Journal," published from 1827 to 1829 in the U.S. Topics discussed include the commitment of the newspaper to the political and social advancement of the African American community, the way the journal examined issues such as slavery, the Greek Uprising, and violence associated with the Ottoman Empire, and the significant interest of the journal in Christian philosophy.

This study examined seven historically Black newspapers' coverage of the landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967), which overturned anti-miscegenation laws that prevented non-White individuals from marrying White individuals. A content analysis of frames and source usage within 31 news stories about the case indicated that about half of the stories ( N = 14) advocated for the Lovings and a small number ( N = 1) advocated for the State of Virginia; the remaining stories were either informational ( N = 7) or objectivist ( N = 9). Because the media is said to be a cultural mirror of public opinion, the results of this study may indicate the public's views on the issue of intermarriage laws. This study's findings also showed that historically Black newspapers agreed with their mainstream counterparts more than they disagreed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the website "Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers located at http://blackquotidian.com, from Stanford University Press.

This essay explores the political ideas of black nationalist women during the 1940s, based on their writings in the New Negro World newspaper. Modeled after the Negro World, the official periodical of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the New Negro World was established by James R. Stewart, Garvey's successor. Following Garvey's death on June 10, 1940, Stewart was elected the new president general of the organization, which he led from his base in Cleveland, Ohio. He established the New Negro World in October of that year, providing a vehicle for UNIA members to address various issues ranging from racial violence in the Jim Crow South to decolonization in Africa. Despite the masculinist and patriarchal orientation of the UNIA, the New Negro World provided a crucial platform for nationalist women to engage in national and international political discourses. Through an array of writings including editorials and poems, black nationalist women articulated a global vision of black emancipation and promoted Pan-Africanism--the belief that African peoples, on the continent and in the diaspora, share a common past and destiny. Moreover, these women endorsed the establishment of a black nation-state in West Africa as a legitimate response to racial discrimination and global white supremacy. By recovering the history of the newspaper and foregrounding the writings of the women who graced its pages, this essay deepens our understanding of the diverse political strategies and tactics people of African descent have employed in their struggles against racial discrimination, inequality, and global white supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Orleans Tribune (1864–1870), the first black daily newspaper in the United States, was the singular text in the public South at its time to staunchly advocate for public, integrated education, anticipating the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, and arguing that separate education would always be synonymous with unequal education and would reinforce the mark of inferiority already placed upon blacks by slavery. This article argues that the Tribune grounded its argument against segregated education in logos-centred rhetoric that focused specifically on combating the dominant discourse of white supremacy and black inferiority embedded in the emerging ideology of scientific racism. The Tribune defended against the divisive rhetoric of the newly forming eugenics movement and instead posed public, integrated education as a necessary prerequisite to rebuilding a nation destroyed by the Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There was an explosion of Black American newspapers in the United States in the period after the Civil War. These newspapers faced significant challenges of widespread illiteracy in the Black population and a hostile rhetorical environment. This analysis examines the ways in which the editorial cartooning of Henry J. Lewis allowed the Indianapolis Freeman to face these obstacles. The use of illustration allowed the Freeman to address Black demands for equality while avoiding dominant White attacks. Specifically, our analysis finds that Lewis argued for three forms of equality in his drawings: biological equality among the races, social equality through Victorian values, and political equality by adopting the norms of White political voice. These strategies, when taken together, help to connect Reconstruction-era Black rhetoric to Black rhetoric of the twentieth centuries. Implications for Black citizenship and the role of the Black press in grounding civil rights debates are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which everyday African American political participation operates across US borders is rarely examined. This article explores this phenomenon by asking if there is a relationship between the characteristics of black social movements outside the USA and how African American institutions encourage their constituencies inside the USA to participate politically. Through background research, the authors developed hypotheses about how independent variables relating to the ideology, tactics, and membership of the African independence movement relate to the dependent variable, participation encouragement, by African American institutions. In order to operationalize these measures, data were gathered through the African American Press Internationalism Study-a content analysis of 451 articles and editorials about the African independence movement that appeared in African American newspapers between 1957 and 1971. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines and interprets the writings of Ollie Stewart, the Paris-based foreign correspondent for the Afro-American newspaper from 1949 to 1977. The articles and lively columns this expat journalist wrote during the post-World War II period when the black press was in decline, provided his and foreigners' views about some of the seminal events that were shaping America and directly impacting Blacks throughout the world. Though at one point he was the only Black correspondent reporting continually reporting from abroad, he has largely been invisible in media history. This article aims to fill this gap. Using framing theory approach and textual analysis, this article examines how Stewart addressed race, U.S. foreign policy, politics and the achievements and activities of Blacks abroad. Stewart's writing provided information and viewpoints that were largely excluded from mainstream media and filled an important void in the press and American history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World War II forced many American women to leave the privacy of their homes to work in factories and participate in volunteer activities that supported the war effort. Women's wartime experiences varied greatly. For black women, segregation and discrimination created additional obstacles to full democratic rights that white women did not have to consider. Race-based differences in the wartime experience may have contributed to differing perspectives about the war. This study uses the historical-critical qualitative method to analyze the themes used in Rebecca Stiles Taylor's "Activities of Women's National Organizations" and "Federated Clubs" column published in the Chicago Defender from 1939 to 1945. This examination of Taylor's journalistic career and commentary provides an opportunity to explore the sentiments and concerns of African American women and infuse the black female voice into an otherwise masculine body of knowledge about the black press during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing comparisons between Rev. Jermain W. Loguen's letters to African American newspapers during the mid-nineteenth century and the Apostle Paul's letters to churches in Greece and Asia Minor, this manuscript examines Loguen's employment of "constitutive rhetoric" to spread the "gospel" of abolitionism by mobilizing African American Christians in order to obliterate the sin of slavery. Employing theoretical frames by James Jasinksi and Kenneth Burke, I show how Loguen's use of letters as "veins" within the organs of African American newspapers circulated information intended to rebuke, praise, and provoke his readers to respond collectively to the exigencies that plagued African Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses the newspaper columns penned by Nation of Islam leaders Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X in the 1950s and '60s. The author explains how these columns were connected to the expansion of the African American newspaper community during this period, and notes topics addressed in the columns, which include the genealogical origins of black people, Black Nationalism, and the history of Jesus Christ in contrast to that espoused by whites.

Throughout its history, the black press called for the liberation of communities of color worldwide and strived to establish an image of blackness that was counter to notions perpetuated in the mainstream media and society. In the early twentieth century, the Negro World, the official organ of Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association, played a crucial role in fostering black internationalism as a movement that had political, economic, and social implications for black communities worldwide. This article examines editorials published in Garvey's Negro Worlds from 1924 through 1926 and argues that the newspaper called for the destruction of white capitalism and Western colonialism while simultaneously embracing Western ideals of advancement and applying those to communities of color around the world. Such messages provide insight into how a black newspaper embraced both a radical and pro-Western ideology (even while the newspaper's editorials condemned Western colonialism) in relation to the development of an early twentieth-century black internationalist movement. This study, therefore, contrasts with previous literature on the Negro World that positions Garvey's newspaper as an anticolonial media tool. Furthermore, it illustrates how black journalism in the early twentieth century promoted global solidarity among black people throughout the black Atlantic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis of the Civil War-era issues of the Pacific Appeal, an African-American newspaper published in San Francisco, found an overarching agenda for support of abolition but also consistent advocacy for the rights and abilities of black men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1827 to 1841 the black newspapers Freedom's Journal and the Colored American of New York City were venues for one of the first significant racial projects in the United States. To counter aspersions against their race, the editors of these publications renegotiated their community's identity within the matrix of the Black Atlantic away from waning discourses of a collective African past. First, Freedom's Journal used the Haitian Revolution to exemplify resistance, abolitionism, and autonomy. The Colored American later projected the Republic of Haiti as a model of governance, prosperity, and refinement to serve this community's own evolving ambitions of citizenship, inclusion, and rights [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of activist journalist Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Smitherman is presented, with focus given to his work arguing for the equality and improved social conditions of African Americans. He was born in 1883 in Childersburg, Alabama, and worked for the Oklahoma African American newspaper "Muskogee Cimeter" following college. He would later establish his own paper, "The Tulsa Star," and moved to Buffalo, New York, where he founded the newspaper "The Buffalo Star." The Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 are discussed.

The article discusses the African American press in New Orleans in 1865, including the cultural aspects of the verse published within it. An overview of the African American newspaper the "Black Republican," including the political aspects of the anonymous African American poem "The Song of the Black Republicans" published within it is provided. The relationship between American literature by white and African American authors is discussed.

This article examines the depiction of first-wave West Indian immigrants to the United States in Black print culture in the early 20th century. The authors conduct a series of content analyses of four newspapers that had wide circulation in the Black community between 1910 and 1940. Each content analysis serves as an empirical test one of four common hypotheses about ethnic differentiation between West Indians and African Americans: (a) the group consciousness hypothesis, (b) the racial nationalism hypothesis, (c) the radical politics hypothesis, and (d) the model minority hypothesis. The authors find very little empirical support for either the group consciousness hypothesis or the racial nationalism hypothesis and find only a modicum of support for the radical politics hypothesis. Finally, the authors find evidence confirming the model minority hypothesis. They also find that the Black press presented an accurate portrayal of the West Indian immigrants’ socioeconomic advantages to native-born Blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This case study examines the 1982 protest of a blackface performance by a white singer--a Baltimore police officer who fought and won a First Amendment battle with the police department over his right to perform Al Jolson tunes in black makeup. How did newspapers treat this episode of blackface performance, and how does this coverage illuminate the dynamics of class, race, and the media in Baltimore in the late twentieth century? This study examines the pages of the Baltimore Afro- American, the city's primary black newspaper, and the Baltimore Sun, the city's mainstream newspaper of record. Whereas the Afro more directly addressed the NAACP's protest of racial representation, both newspapers refrained from commenting editorially on the case until the issue was resolved in the courts. Most notably, Sun coverage evolved from nostalgic profiles of the act before the protest to denouncements of blackface by columnists after the court cases were settled, evidence of the beginning of a broader shift in the representation of race spurred by protests against the newspaper itself. Additionally, this study considers the cultural functions of nostalgia and privilege in alleviating economic anxieties of the white working class during discrete time periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses anti-lynching imagery and illustrations in the African American press during the period 1889 to 1898, particularly focusing on the newspapers the "Richmond Planet" of Virginia, the "Cleveland Gazette" of Ohio, and the "Indianapolis Freeman" of Indiana. The author examines the ways in which this imagery challenged prejudices used to justify lynching, including the stereotype of the African American rapist. Other topics include the desire for a response from the U.S. government and the U.S. presidential election of 1896, a triple lynching in Memphis, Tennessee in 1892, and the activism of journalist Ida B. Wells.