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Black Press
4 articles on Black Press
Black Press
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 3606 Includes: The Colored American and its Successors | Frederick Douglass, Journalist | BibliographyThe oppressed black communities of the antebellum North produced a variety of published materials. Benjamin Banneker's almanac was one of the earliest black periodicals. In the years preceding the advent in 1827 of the first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, African American activists and orators published pamphlets protesting slavery and racial segregation, exclusion, and disfranchisement. Black pamphlets were prototypical media platforms for the public protest that black newspapers would later embody. Among the most important pamphlets of the era was A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, during the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, published by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen in 1794. In the pamphlet Jones and Allen, prominent African American community leaders and the founders of the ...
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Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 10557 Includes: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. | Enter the Chicago Defender. | Pittsburgh Courier. | Baltimore Afro-American. | Negro World. | Norfolk Journal and Guide, Richmond Planet, and Kansas City Call. | Civil Rights Movement. | Contemporary Black Press. | Rise of an Alternative Black Press. | Black Magazines. | Decline of the Traditional Black Press. | Future of the African American Press. | BibliographyBy the end of the nineteenth century a number of black journalists had learned enough from their predecessors to be able to keep normally short-lived black newspapers running. Among these pioneers were W. Calvin Chase of the Washington Bee, T. Thomas Fortune of the New York Age, John Mitchell of the Richmond Planet, Chris Perry of the Philadelphia Tribune, and John H. Murphy Sr. of the Baltimore Afro-American. As of this writing, two of these papers, the Tribune and the Afro-American, are still in existence.Black newspapers at the end of the nineteenth century represented the outlook of the black elite, which though tiny in number still strove to speak for and to the race. Like the first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, newspapers such as the ...
Read full articlePress, Black, in Latin America and the Caribbean
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 4638 Includes: Black Writers, Abolitionism, and Independence During the Nineteenth Century | Black Press and Black Consciousness during the Twentieth Century | BibliographyNewspapers and magazines that chronicle political, social, and cultural events of communities of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean; also refers to publishers of books, especially poetry collections, by writers of African descent. The black press did not become established until the early nineteenth century in Latin Americaand the Caribbean. This was due to the oppressive system of slavery and to extremely high illiteracy rates. Indeed, learning to read and write was a punishable offense under some slave codes. Even after abolition, blacks and mulattoes (persons of African and European descent) encountered numerous obstacles to opportunities that involved writing, such as exclusion from higher education. Many of the most celebrated early black poets and journalists were largely self-taught. Those who did publish before the nineteenth century—notably ...
Read full articlePress, Black, in the United States
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 2557American newspapers and magazines published by African Americans, focusing on black political, social, and cultural issues. The black press has represented the spectrum of African American opinion since the nineteenth century. It has enabled African Americans to define their own identity, work for black equality, and present events from a black perspective. In the black press, African Americans have been able to highlight black achievement ignored by the mainstream press and to create a sense of unity by establishing a communication network among literate blacks and sympathetic whites.The first black newspaper in the United States was Freedom's Journal, founded March 16, 1827, in New York City by John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish. Russwurm and Cornish used the paper as a forum to discuss ...
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