Author | Irvine Garland Penn |
---|---|
Publisher | Willey & Company |
Publication date | 1891 |
ISBN | 9780598582683 |
Afro-American Press and Its Editors is a book published in 1891 written by Irvine Garland Penn. Penn covers African-American newspapers and magazines published between 1827 and 1891. [1] The book covers many aspects of journalism, and devotes a chapter to black female journalists. [2]
Penn believed that the black press played a crucial role in presenting the case to the broader American population that black people were fit for the full benefits of citizenship. [3]
The book is frequently referenced as an important early work on African-American journalism. John Ernest called Penn's book comprehensive and detailed and the foundation of many later studies. Penn wrote in part to encourage blacks to support black papers. [4] Charles A. Simmons writes that Penn's book along with Armistead S. Prides, A Register and History of Negro Newspapers in the United States: 1827–1950 and Warren Henry Brown's Check List of Negro Newspapers in the United States (1827-1946) are essential starting points for understanding the early history of African American newspapers. [5]
Timothy Thomas Fortune was an American orator, civil rights leader, journalist, writer, editor and publisher. He was the highly influential editor of the nation's leading black newspaper The New York Age and was the leading economist in the black community. He was a long-time adviser to Booker T. Washington and was the editor of Washington's first autobiography, The Story of My Life and Work. Fortune's philosophy of militant agitation on behalf of the rights of black people laid one of the foundations of the Civil Rights Movement.
Freedom's Journal was the first African American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. Founded by Rev. John Wilk and other free Black men in New York City, it was published weekly starting with the March 16, 1827 issue. Freedom's Journal was superseded in 1829 by The Rights of All, published between 1829 and 1830 by Samuel Cornish, the former senior editor of the Journal. The View covered it as part of Black History Month in 2021.
African American newspapers are news publications in the United States serving African American communities. Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm started the first African American periodical, Freedom's Journal, in 1827. During the Antebellum South, other African American newspapers sprang up, such as The North Star, founded in 1847 by Frederick Douglass.
The Baltimore Afro-American, commonly known as The Afro or Afro News, is a weekly African-American newspaper published in Baltimore, Maryland. It is the flagship newspaper of the AFRO-American chain and the longest-running African-American family-owned newspaper in the United States, established in 1892.
William Henry Steward was a civil rights activist from Louisville, Kentucky. In February 1876, he was appointed the first black letter carrier in Kentucky. He was the leading layman of the General Association of Negro Baptists in Kentucky and played a key role in the founding of Simmons College of Kentucky by the group in 1879. He continued to play an important role in the college during his life. He was also co-founder of the American Baptist, a journal associated with the group, and Steward went on to be the journal's editor. He was a leader in Louisville civic and public life, and played a role in extending educational opportunities in the city to black children. In 1897, his political associations led to his appointment as judge of registration and election for the Fifteenth Precinct of the Ninth Ward, overseeing voter registration for the election. This was the first appointment of an African American to such a position in Kentucky. He was elected president of the Afro-American Press Association in the 1890s He was a close associate of Booker T. Washington, and in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Steward was a prominent member of the National Afro-American Council, which was dominated by Washington. He was president of the council from 1904 to 1905. He was a lifelong opponent of segregation and was frequently involved in anti-Jim Crow law activities. In 1914 he helped found a Louisville branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he left in 1920 to become a key player in the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC). He was also a prominent freemason and twice elected Worshipful Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky.
James Dallas Bowser was a journalist and educator in Kansas City, Missouri. He was the principal of Lincoln School there from 1868-1879 and later the principal of Attucks School. He was a civil rights leader in the city and was widely known for his poem, "Take up the Black Man's Burden", written in 1899 in response to British poet Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden". Bowser was a member of the Citizen's League of Kansas City Inter-Racial Committee.
Robert A. Pelham Jr. was a journalist and civil servant in Detroit, Michigan and Washington, D.C. Along with his brother, Benjamin, and others, he was a founder and editor of the Detroit Plaindealer in 1883. He served in a number of public positions in Michigan, and later worked at the United States Census in Washington, D.C. In Washington, he continued to work as a journalist, and late in his life edited the Washington Tribune, a weekly paper. He was also a member of a number of civil rights organizations, including the National Afro-American League, the American Negro Academy, and the Spingarn Medal Commission.
John Campbell Dancy was an American politician, journalist, and educator in North Carolina and Washington, D.C. For many years he was the editor of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion church newspapers Star of Zion and then Zion Quarterly. In 1897 he was appointed collector of customs at Wilmington, North Carolina, but was chased out of town in the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, in part for his activity in the National Afro-American Council which he helped found that year and of which he was an officer. He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as Recorder of Deeds from 1901 to 1910. His political appointments came in part as a result of the influence of his ally, Booker T. Washington.
Elizabeth Stumm better known by her pen name Mrs. C. C. Stumm (1857-?) was an African-American teacher and journalist. As her husband was involved in missionary service, the couple moved often, but Stumm was able to work as a writer and teacher. She wrote for many newspapers and journals in the black press and was noted by numerous compilers of her day as an influential and effective journalist.
Our Women and Children was a magazine published in Louisville, Kentucky by the American Baptist, the state Baptist newspaper. Founded in 1888 by William J. Simmons, president of State University, the magazine featured the work of African-American women journalists and covered both juvenile literature and articles focusing on uplifting the race. The magazine staff was made up of women who had an affiliation with State University. Of the hundreds of magazines begun in the United States between 1890 and 1950, very few gave editorial control or ownership to African American Women. Our Women and Children was one of them. It had a national reputation and became the leading black magazine in Kentucky before it folded in 1891 after Simmons' death.
Irvine Garland Penn was an American educator, journalist, and lay leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was the author of The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, published in 1891, and a coauthor with Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Ferdinand Lee Barnett of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbia Exposition in 1893. In the late 1890s, he became an officer in the Methodist Episcopal Church and played an important role advocating for the interests of African Americans in the church until his death.
The Richmond Planet was an African American newspaper founded in 1882 in Richmond, Virginia. In 1938, it merged with the Richmond Afro-American.
Meta Pelham (1855–1941) was an American journalist and clubwoman. She wrote for the DetroitPlaindealer.
Benjamin Burnside Pelham (1862–1948) was an American lawyer, accountant, political organizer, journalist, and newspaper publisher.
Augustus Michael Hodges, was an American editor, writer, journalist, and political organizer.
Rev. Chasteen C. Stumm (1848–1895) was an American minister, teacher, journalist, editor, and newspaper publisher. He was from Kentucky, and also lived in Tennessee, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Detroit Plaindealer (1883–1894) also known as simply The Plaindealer, was an American newspaper that served the Black community and was published in Detroit. Since 2020, the former newspaper publishing building has a historical marker at 1114 Washington Boulevard in the Capitol Park district in Detroit.
The National Afro-American Press Association, formerly known as the National Colored Press Association, was established in 1890 in Indianapolis as a result of African American newspapers emerging around the country. With its creation came the election of Timothy Thomas Fortune, an American journalist and civil rights activist, as its chairman. Some other notable names that were a part of this association for a time were John Mitchell Jr., journalist, politician and civil rights activist, and Cyrus Field Adams, a civil rights activist and newspaper editor and manager, both having a role as president. Even with the increase of black newspapers and journalism, the longevity and success of the newspapers were limited, with funding being a primary reason for that. African-American newspapers allowed space for a racial minority to publish thoughts and promote discussions with other people in their community. The National Afro-American Press Association provided an umbrella for Afro-American newspapers, journalists, and civil rights activists, and gave them a space to continue to fight for rights and discuss their political aims.