The Black Press, 1865–1951

December 30, 1865 · Augusta, Ga.

The Colored American

The first Black newspaper published in Georgia, founded by John T. Shuften eight months after the war ended. It lasted five issues. This is the third. Within weeks the Georgia Equal Rights Association had bought the press and renamed it the Loyal Georgian — the paper died, but the type kept printing.

December 18, 1870 · New Orleans, La.

The Louisianian

Issue no. 1

The first issue of P.B.S. Pinchback's paper. Two years after printing it he became governor of Louisiana — the first Black man to govern an American state, and the last for a hundred and twenty years. He ran the Louisianian under the motto “Republican at all times, and under all circumstances,” and wrote it for Black and white readers both, which almost no Black paper of the century attempted.

September 24, 1881 · Louisville, Ky.

The Bulletin

The Library of Congress does not know when this paper started or when it stopped; its catalog entry reads 18??–18??. The masthead on this copy says Volume 5, Number 17 — so by the day it was printed it had already been coming out for five years. That is most of what survives of the Black press: the paper itself, still counting.

October 24, 1882 · Atlanta, Ga.

The Weekly Defiance

Eight years of a Black weekly in Atlanta named, without apology, the Defiance. It ran from 1881 until 1889 — the same decade the state was writing the laws that would take the vote back.

August 26, 1883 · Savannah, Ga.

Savannah Weekly Echo

Founded by Robert and Thomas T. Harden with D. Griffin in 1879, and read across Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. It claimed the largest circulation of any Black paper in the South and used it to report racial violence and the fight against it.

April 29, 1893 · Baltimore, Md.

The Afro-American

Still publishing

John H. Murphy Sr. was born enslaved, fought for the Union, and at fifty-two merged three church bulletins into a newspaper. This copy is from its first year. It is still publishing — the longest-running Black family-owned newspaper in the United States, now in its fifth generation. Everything else on this page is history. This one is a going concern.

January 6, 1900 · Indianapolis, Ind.

The Freeman

The first illustrated Black newspaper in the country — it ran engravings and portraits when almost no Black paper could afford them, and was called the Harper's Weekly of the colored race. The Library of Congress holds 883 issues of it from this quarter-century alone.

January 13, 1900 · Detroit, Mich.

The Detroit Informer

Detroit, twenty years before the Great Migration turned it into a destination. The front page is mostly advertising — overcoats, furniture, a clothing house — which is a Black paper carrying Black commerce on page one.

January 13, 1900 · Atlanta, Ga.

The Atlanta Age

Portraits set into the front page — including Fredericka Douglass Sprague, granddaughter of Frederick Douglass. Printed in Atlanta six years before the white mobs of 1906.

January 13, 1900 · Baton Rouge, La.

The Observer

Volume 1, number 11 — this paper was eleven weeks old when it printed an application for registration on its front page. Louisiana had written its grandfather clause into the state constitution two years before, and registration was the whole fight.

January 20, 1900 · Jacksonville, Fla.

The Florida Evangelist

A church paper doing the work of a newspaper. For a great many Black communities the congregation was the only institution that could carry a press, so the religious weekly is where the news went.

January 27, 1900 · Indianapolis, Ind.

The Indianapolis World

A globe filling the masthead and a price of five cents. Two Black papers were publishing in Indianapolis the same week — this one and The Freeman — which tells you how much there was to report and how little of it anybody else was printing.

January 27, 1900 · Augusta, Ga.

The Augusta Union

Four dense columns, no illustration, nothing wasted. A weekly out of Augusta at the turn of the century, when Georgia had more Black newspapers than any state in the South.

January 27, 1900 · Macon, Ga.

The Macon Sentinel

“Devoted to All Positive Upward News.” The headlines on this front page argue with each other — one reads “Conspiracy” Says Landers, another “Editors Bold” — which is what a paper looks like when it is the only one telling its side.

November 10, 1900 · Richmond, Va.

The Richmond Planet

John Mitchell Jr. ran the Planet for nearly fifty years and put a raised, muscled arm gripping lightning in the masthead. He reported lynchings by name and address when doing so could get a man killed.

November 24, 1900 · Washington, D.C.

The Colored American

The front page announcing the National Negro Business League — “the first organization of its kind in America” — ringed with portraits of its founding members. Booker T. Washington convened it in Boston that August. This is what a Black business network looked like 126 years ago.

December 21, 1901 · Washington, D.C.

The Washington Bee

W. Calvin Chase edited the Bee for 39 years under the motto “Honey for Friends, Stings for Enemies.” He used both liberally, on white officials and Black leaders alike.

October 25, 1902 · Saint Paul, Minn.

The Appeal

“The leading Afro-American paper.” A national weekly out of Saint Paul with editions in Chicago, Louisville, and Washington — one of the widest-reaching Black papers of its era.

January 3, 1903 · Chicago, Ill.

The Broad Ax

Julius F. Taylor moved the Broad Ax from Salt Lake City to Chicago and aimed it at anyone he thought was selling the race short — including the Black establishment of his day.

March 15, 1912 · Nashville, Tenn.

The Nashville Globe

Founded during the 1905 streetcar boycott, the Globe backed Black business and Black schooling in Nashville and campaigned for what became Tennessee State University.

May 10, 1913 · Stamps, Ark.

The Reminder

Stamps, Arkansas — the town Maya Angelou would be sent to as a child two decades later, and write about for the rest of her life. A Black paper was already printing there in 1913.

April 27, 1918 · Omaha, Neb.

The Monitor

“A national weekly newspaper devoted to the interests of colored Americans.” Father John Albert Williams founded it in Omaha in 1915 and edited it for a quarter century.

December 14, 1928 · Omaha, Neb.

Omaha Monitor

“The militant defender of the rights of the race,” printed under the masthead where other papers put the price. It succeeded the Monitor and kept its volume numbering — this issue is only the second under the new name and already carries volume fourteen.

September 15, 1930 · Institute, W. Va.

The Yellow Jacket

Still publishing

The student newspaper of West Virginia State, a historically Black college, opening the school year with faculty appointments and a new trades building. Students have been putting it out for most of a century, and still are.

March 18, 1932 · Atlanta, Ga.

Atlanta Daily World

Still publishing

W. A. Scott II was twenty-six when he started this paper, and on 13 March 1932 he took it daily — the first Black daily newspaper in America to survive. This copy was printed five days later, in its first week, and it is the earliest issue the Library of Congress holds. Its offices were on Auburn Avenue, in the middle of the Black business district. Within a year Scott was syndicating fifty papers.

June 25, 1939 · Chicago, Ill.

Sunday Chicago Bee

Anthony Overton founded the Bee in 1925 on the profits of a cosmetics company and a bank he also owned. In 1930 the paper ran a contest to elect a “Mayor of Bronzeville” — and that is where the name of Chicago's South Side comes from. A neighborhood of a hundred thousand people is called what a Black newspaper decided to call it.

October 11, 1946 · Lincoln, Neb.

The Voice

Issue no. 1

Volume one, number one, the year after the war ended: “dedicated to the promotion of the cultural, social and spiritual life of a great people.” Lincoln, Nebraska had a Black population in the low thousands and it had its own paper, leading with a local man at the National Urban League conference.

March 3, 1951 · Robbins, Ill.

The Robbins Eagle

Robbins, Illinois was incorporated in 1917 and governed entirely by Black residents — the first town in Cook County where Black families could own the land they stood on. In 1931 it built the first Black-owned airfield in the country. This is the second issue its newspaper ever printed, covering a village board vote, and it calls itself the world's littlest newspaper.