The Black Press: Historical Black Magazines and Newspapers

Author Patrick S. Washburn explores how the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender led the way as the two most influential black newspapers in U.S. history, effectively setting the stage for the civil rights movement's successes.

This work examines both predominately black newspapers in general and four in particular - The Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City), and the Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate - and their coverage of national events.

"An extraordinary history...Deeply researched, elegantly written...a towering achievement that will not be soon forgotten." --Brent Staples,New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY  The New York Times Book Review * The Washington Post * Amazon Giving voice to the voiceless, theChicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott foundedThe Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses," becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process. His successor wielded the newspaper's clout to elect mayors and presidents, including Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, who would have lost in 1960 if not forTheDefender's support. Along the way, its pages were filled with columns by legends like Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King. Drawing on dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, Ethan Michaeli constructs a revelatory narrative of race in America and brings to life the reporters who braved lynch mobs and policemen's clubs to do their jobs, from the age of Teddy Roosevelt to the age of Barack Obama.

American Studies 13, no. 2 (1972): 119-124.

Dissertation - University of Florida

Traces the development of the Baltimore Afro-American, one of America's leading black newspapers, from its founding in 1892 to the dawn of the Civil Rights Era in 1950. It focuses on the Afro-American's coverage of events and issues affecting Baltimore's and the nation's black communities, particularly its crusades for racial reform in the first half of the 20th century. Farrar examines how the Afro-American grew and prospered as a newspaper and as a business. How and why the Afro-American conducted its news and editorial crusades for a powerful local and national black community free of racial disabilities is discussed as well. He also evaluates whether or not the Afro-American succeeded or failed in its racial justice campaigns and to what extent these campaigns made a difference in the local and national black communities' struggle for racial equity. He asserts that the Afro-American was a black middle-class institution that wanted to shape its community according to bourgeois values, but it also broke ground by looking at class issues in the early 20th-century black community.

This work examines both predominately black newspapers in general and four in particular - The Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City), and the Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate - and their coverage of national events.

This work examines both predominately black newspapers in general and four in particular - The Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City), and the Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate - and their coverage of national events.