Black Editors' Responses to Power and Propaganda.

Two leading black newspapers were very outspoken during the black American's struggle for equality following the Civil War of the 1860s. The Chicago-based "Conservator" and "Appeal" actively encouraged blacks to enter the nationwide power struggle among warring interests on their own behalf, and on a cultural level they attempted to elevate the race above the increasingly disappointing Republican party as a symbol of moral legitimacy. Staunchly defending bourgeois morality and propriety, the editors of both papers exemplified a secular piety, a return to morality through the creation of a secular culture rather than a return to the other-worldly religion of the previous generation. With the rise of racial political consciousness, black newspapers leaned toward reporting black news and away from editorial commentary, as illustrated by continued coverage of the lynchings and other injustices against blacks in the South. The promotion of a respectable middle-class life style and a concern about home life, education, and standards of conduct and morality were characteristic concerns of the rising coterie of black women journalists. As the small crusading newspapers were soon overshadowed by the mass press, their plans for the race were realized later by the professional politicians and advancement workers. The papers provided the rhetorical models to weld black Americans into a group with shared racial allegiance. (HTH)