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NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

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Lighting the Road to Freedom…

Black Press of America

CREDO OF THE BLACK PRESS
The Black Press believes that America can best lead the world away from racial and national antagonisms when it accords to every man, regardless of race, color or creed, is human and legal rights. Hating no man, fearing no man, the Black Press strives to help every man in the firm belief that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.

GARY SHERATON HOTEL
GARY, INDIANA
JUNE 15, 1983

Brief History of 148-Year-Old Black Press
By Sherman Briscoe
Executive Director, NNPA

The voice of one of the longest protests in history is the Black Press of America which celebrated its 145th anniversary last March.

But it has been more than an effective voice of protest that has played a major role in every erg of resistance overcome; it has also stimulated attainments in education and self-improvement to help keep black people abreast of opportunities as they have been achieved.

It was in March of 1827 — more than 200 years after slavery had been established in America — that John B. Russwurm and the Rev. Samuel E. Cornish launched Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States and the first black voice raised in newsprint against bondage.

The Journal not only spoke out against slavery in the South and ill treatment of freed blacks in the North, but it also emphasized education, self-improvement, industry, and thrift on the part of freedmen.

Within a little over a year, Russwurm, an 1826 graduate of Bowdoin College, became discouraged, left the paper and joined the American Colonization Society. He emigrated to Liberia where he served as superintendent of schools and governor of the Maryland colony until his death in 1851.

Changes Name

The Reverend Mr. Cornish, founder of the first black Presbyteran Church in America, continued briefly with the Journal, changing its name to "The Right of All."

Between the death of the Journa land 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 Wells Brown's Rising Sun, Philip 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 ther 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.

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