 Selma Times-Journal building | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Boone Newspapers Inc. |
| Editor | James Jones |
| Founded | 1827 |
| Language | English |
| OCLC number | 1080316481 |
| Website | selmatimesjournal |
The Selma Times-Journal is a five-day-a-week newspaper located in Selma, Alabama. It publishes every day of the week except Sunday and Monday. The Saturday paper is called the "Weekend Edition." It is owned by Tuscaloosa, Alabama-based Boone Newspapers Inc.
The paper was founded as the Selma Courier on November 2, 1827, by Thomas Jefferson Frow. [1]
The newspaper was later known by various names, including the Selma Free Press, Selma Reporter, and Selma Daily News. During the American Civil War, the newspaper's press was torched by Union Army troops following the Battle of Selma (see Selma, Alabama in the American Civil War). [1] The paper then merged with the weekly Selma Messenger to form the Times Messenger. The paper then merged with the Selma Argus (becoming the Times-Argus), and then with the Selma Evening Mail (becoming the Selma Times). In 1889, the paper changed its name to the Morning Times. [1] In 1914, Frazier Titus Raiford purchased the Selma Times, and on March 1, 1920, the paper merged with the Selma Journal to become the Selma Times-Journal. [2] Frazier Titus Raiford and his wife Mary Howard Raiford served as editors and publishers until Frazier died in 1936. Mary Raiford—Alabama's only female publisher—then ran the paper by herself for 23 years. [3]
In 1923, the paper editorialized against the Ku Klux Klan, writing, "Selma has no room within her confines for that ugly, malevolent institution of the devil known as Ku Kluxism." [4] In the later 1920s, the paper denounced James Thomas Heflin and his anti-Catholic demagoguery. In the 1930 election for governor, the paper supported the candidacy of Judge Benjamin M. Miller, "a noted foe of lynching and the Klan" and a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith. [5]
During the civil rights movement, the Times-Journal attempted to provide balanced reporting, unlike many other Southern newspapers of the era. Nevertheless, the paper did publish "advertisements from the local White Citizens' Councils that included veiled threats and ... other advertisements purportedly showing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a communist training session." [6] The paper provided meaningful coverage of the Selma to Montgomery marches. Journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, in their book The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation , wrote: "Selma had something most other venues of civil rights activity did not: a local newspaper that visiting reporters could depend on. The Selma Times-Journal saw the historic importance of the story and took its responsibility seriously, providing detailed accounts that reporters found reliable." [7]
Kathryn Tucker Windham, a writer and storyteller, was a journalist and photographer with the Times-Journal in the mid-20th century, writing the column "Around our House" from 1950 to 1966. [8]
| Year | Award | Place | Recipient |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Best Spot News Story | 1st | Blake Deshazo |
| 2018 | Best Business Story or Column | 1st | Justin Averette |
| 2018 | Best Sports News In-Depth Coverage | 1st | Thomas Scott, Alaina Denean Deshazo |
| 2018 | Best Sports Feature Story | 1st | Daniel Evans |
| 2018 | Best Local Sports Column | 1st | Daniel Evans |
| 2018 | Best Feature Photo | 1st | Alaina Denean Deshazo |
| 2018 | Best Spot News Photo | 1st | Alaina Denean Deshazo |
| 2018 | Online Breaking News Coverage | 1st | Blake Deshazo |
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers.
John Tyler Morgan was an American politician was served as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and later was elected for six terms as the U.S. Senator (1877–1907) from the state of Alabama. A prominent slaveholder before the Civil War, he became the second Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama during the Reconstruction era. Morgan and fellow Klan member Edmund W. Pettus became the ringleaders of white supremacy in Alabama and did more than anyone else in the state to overthrow Reconstruction efforts in the wake of the Civil War. When President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched U.S. Attorney General Amos Akerman to prosecute the Klan under the Enforcement Acts, Morgan was arrested and jailed.
Viola Fauver Liuzzo was an American civil rights activist. In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. At the age of 39, while driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was fatally hit by shots fired from a pursuing car containing Ku Klux Klan members Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., William Orville Eaton, Eugene Thomas, and Gary Thomas Rowe, the last of whom was actually an undercover informant working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Hank Klibanoff is an American journalist, now a professor at Emory University. He and Gene Roberts won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History for the book The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.
The United Klans of America Inc. (UKA), based in Alabama, is a Ku Klux Klan organization active in the United States. Led by Robert Shelton, the UKA peaked in membership in the late 1960s and 1970s, and it was the most violent Klan organization of its time. Its headquarters was the Anglo-Saxon Club outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The Ku Klux Klan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden and it also had a presence in several of the state's northern counties in the 1920s. It had the most members in Monmouth County, and operated a resort in Wall Township.
Crime rates in Alabama overall have declined by 17% since 2005. Trends in crime within Alabama have largely been driven by a reduction in property crime by 25%. There has been a small increase in the number of violent crimes since 2005, which has seen an increase of 9% In 2020, there were 511 violent crime offenses per 100,000 population. Alabama was ranked 44th in violent crime out of a total 50 states in the United States.
The U.S. Post Office Building in Selma, Alabama, also known as the Federal Building or United States Courthouse.
Harold Wayne Greenhaw was an American writer and journalist. The author of 22 books who chronicled changes in the American South from the civil rights movement to the rise of a competitive Republican Party, he is known for his works on the Ku Klux Klan and the exposition of the My Lai Massacre of 1968. Greenhaw wrote for various Alabamian newspapers and magazines, worked as the state's tourism director, and was considered "a strong voice for his native state".
Ray Sprigle was a journalist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for his reporting that Alabama Senator Hugo Black, newly appointed to the US Supreme Court, had been a member of the 20th-century Ku Klux Klan.
The Southern Courier was a weekly newspaper published in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1965 to 1968, during the Civil Rights Movement. As one of a few newspapers to cover the movement with an emphasis on African-American communities in the South, it provided its readership with a comprehensive view of race relations and community and is considered an important source for historians.
James Albert Hare Jr. was a politician from the U.S. state of Alabama and a veteran of the United States Army during World War II. He served as an assistant state Attorney General, a county solicitor, a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, and an Alabama circuit court judge. He was an active defender of Jim Crow segregation as a judge.
Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., known in Witness Protection as Thomas Neil Moore, was a paid informant and agent provocateur for the FBI. As an informant, he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO project, to monitor and disrupt the Klan's activities. Rowe participated in violent Klan activity against African Americans and civil rights groups.
The Pickens County Herald is a newspaper serving Carrollton, Alabama. It is published once a week on Wednesday, with a circulation of just under 4,000. The current editor is Gena Huff, who took the helm in 2018, succeeding previous editor Bo Black.
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Lowndes County Freedom Party (LCFP) or Black Panther party, was an American political party founded during 1965 in Lowndes County, Alabama. The independent third party was formed by local African-American citizens led by John Hulett, and by staff members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael.
The Democrat-Reporter is a local weekly newspaper in Linden, Alabama, United States. It was established in 1911 from the merger of the Linden Reporter and the Marengo Democrat. The newspaper was published by the Sutton family for over a century, with Goodloe Sutton running it from 1985 to 2019. The newspaper won national acclaim in the 1990s for its investigation of a corrupt county sheriff, but was met with criticism in early 2019 over an editorial from Sutton calling for the return of the Ku Klux Klan.
Howard Goodloe Sutton was an American newspaper editor, publisher, and owner. From 1964 to 2019, he published The Democrat-Reporter, a small weekly newspaper in Linden, Alabama. Sutton was widely celebrated in 1998 for publishing over four years a series of articles that exposed corruption in the Marengo County Sheriff's Office; he received awards and commendations and was suggested as a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2019, Sutton once again became the focus of national attention when he wrote and published an editorial suggesting the Ku Klux Klan be revived to "clean out" Washington, D.C. He already had a local reputation for other, similarly inflammatory racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and homophobic editorials.
Boone Newspapers, Incorporated (BNI) is the parent company of a publishing business that includes dozens of newspapers as well as magazines, other published materials, and internet properties in the United States. It is a private company and owns papers in smaller cities in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Mississippi, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. The company is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Theresa Burroughs was an active participant in the civil rights movement during the 1960s. She worked to secure the right to vote for blacks in Alabama and the rest of the Southern United States. In 1965 she was attacked and arrested by state troopers and sheriff's deputies along with other civil rights demonstrators attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. She was the founder of the Safe House Black History Museum in Greensboro, Alabama, the location where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hidden from the Ku Klux Klan during his visit to Alabama in 1968. Burroughs was a childhood friend of King's wife, Coretta Scott King.