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Between the death of the Journal and the death of slavery, 23 other black newspapers were to raise their mastheads in protest of that institution, of the denial of full enfranchisement of freed blacks, and of oppression of them. Equally, they promoted the Underground Railroad and other abolitionist efforts, while constantly encouraging self-improvement, self-definition, industry and thrift.

Among the most outstanding of these mostly short-lived papers were: Fred Douglass' North Star, Willis Hodges' Ram's Horn, William Welles Brown's Rising Sun, Phillip Bell and Charles Ray's Colored American, Dr. Martin Delaney's Mystery, and the AME Church's Christian Advocate which is still going after 124 years.

With slavery dead in 1865, black leaders believed there was no urgency to continue black newspapers. Only about 10 such papers were established between the end of the Civil War and the Hayes-Tilden deal which led to the withdrawal of troops from the South in 1877 and the rolling back of the clock whose hands were to stand still in racial progress for more than half a century.

Between 1877 and 1900, about 150 black newspapers came into being to protest mob violence, lynchings, the total abrogation of the 14th and 15th amendments and only half observance of the 13th.

Still Going

The leading black papers of this dark period were: The Washington Bee, established in 1879 by Attorney William Calvin Chase; the Cleveland Gazette, launched in 1883 by Harry C. Smith; the Philadelphia Tribune, founded by Chris J. Perry, a successful realtor, in 1884. This 88-year-old paper, now under the leadership of the able Eustace Gay, is one of five that still survive from the 19th century.

Other outstanding papers of the era were: Timothy Thomas Fortune's New York Age, John Mitchell's Richmond Planet, Sol Johnson's Savannah Tribune, Phillip Bell and W.J. Powell's San Francisco Elevator, Nick Chiles' Topeka Plaindealer, John Murphy's Afro-American which, along with the Indianapolis Recorder, the New Iowa Bystander, and the Houston Informer and Texas Freeman, are the other four that are still going.

Harvard educated William Monroe Trotter practically opened the 20th century with his Boston Guardian. Much like Rev. T.J. Smith's Pittsburgh Broad-Axe, it let the chips fall where they may.

The Guardian was soon followed by Robert Sengstacke Abbott's Chicago Defender in 1905, P.B. Young's Norfolk Journal and Guide, James Anderson's Amsterdam News, Robert L. Vann's Pittsburgh Courier, Roscoe Dungee's Oklahoma Black Dispatch, and Joseph and William Mitchell's St. Louis Argus. 

With the departure of George White of North Carolina from the Congress in 1901, the long night of disfranchisement, nurtured by the Ku Klux Klan and grandfather clauses in state constitutions, set in for 27 years.

Go North

But Robert Abbott, unlike Boston-reared Trotter, was born and reared in Savannah, Ga., and educated at Hampton Institute of Virginia. He knew that no amount of cursing and protesting and demanding alone would improve the plight of black people as long as they remained in the South. The answer, as he saw it, wasa to get as many black people as possible out of the South. And he launched his campaign to bring them North.

By the time his campaign got well underway, World War I had begun and there arose a demand in the North for black workers to help man the steel mills, stockyards, and other industries. During and following the war, Abbott's Chicago Defender carried red headlines week after week, reading "Negroes are Coming North by the Thousands."

Largely, it has been the voting

[[images - 3 black and white photographs of attendees at the National Newspaper Publishers Association Convention]]
[[caption]] Herbert Wright and Wanda Washington of Philip Morris, and Webster Thompson of the Miller Brewing Co. entertained the "Delegates" to the National Newspaper Publishers Ass'n. Convention. Richard King of the Herman Walker Distillers also participated in the week of hosting the newspaper people by entertaining the Editors and their wives with special reception. [[/caption]]