The Race-Advocacy Function of the Black Press

Many scholars have recognized the importance of the race-advocacy function of the black press, but few have done empirical studies to assess its effect on black press content..The following questions, therefore, have remained unanswered. How was a racepride philosophy carried out in black newspapers? What was the general image of blacks produced by the press? And how did this image contribute to black self-definition and self-determination? This study explores the image of blacks resulting from the Chicago Defender's use of personalities to carry out its race-advocacy function. The Defender was selected both because of its preeminence among black newspapers, which makes it a suitable vehicle for exploring the questions posed about the black image in the black press, and its reputation for being a race-advocate. It is one of the oldest and largest black papers and is one of only five black papers established during the New Journalism Era between 1880 and World War I that survives today. Journalists and researchers have consistently listed the Defender among black America's most important and influential newspapers. And Metz T. P. Lochard, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, and Time magazine have documented its influence in the civil rights struggle.2 Because the white media have largely ignored the existence of blacks or have presented a negative image of them, the black press has developed a raceconsciousness designed to present blacks' viewpoints, aspirations, and struggles in a positive way. Yet historians of the black press have also noted a negative image of blacks in black papers because of the press's sensational character. From 1924 to 1927 Eugene Gordon conducted annual studies of the largest black newspapers and found