Westside Gazette<\/em> Publisher Bobby Henry.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDr. Toni Draper, the publisher of the 130-year-old AFRO in Baltimore and Washington, also noted the enduring value of the Black Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe contribution of the Black Press is invaluable. If not for the Black Press, there would be a lot of things we would not have documented in terms of the African American experience,\u201d Draper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Black Press was founded in 1827, and African Americans were not in any of the pages of the white-owned press unless there was an advertisement of our sale, of our resale, or us having run away from slave owners or plantations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Draper continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Black Press is one of the only places where you can find news and information and commentary about, by, and for African Americans across the spectrum. You don\u2019t have to do anything wrong to make the pages of the Black Press; you don\u2019t have to do anything famous. The Black Press covers the totality of the Black experience in the United States and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anniversary of the Black Press is a reminder of the contributions that remain indelibly associated with the fearlessness, determination, and success of the Black Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those contributions include the works of Frederick Douglass, WEB DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, and former NNPA Chairman Dr. Carlton Goodlett.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Douglass, who helped enslaved people escape to the North while working with the Underground Railroad, established the abolitionist paper, The North Star<\/em>, in Rochester, New York. He developed it into the most influential Black antislavery newspaper published during the Antebellum era.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe North Star<\/em> denounced slavery and fought for the emancipation of women and other oppressed groups with a motto of \u201cRight is of no Sex \u2013 Truth is of no Color; God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nToday, the Black Press continues to reach across the ocean where possible to forge coalitions with the growing number of websites and special publications that cover Africa daily from on the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe spirit of Black journalism, which Russwurm and Cornish inspired, found its way to Houston 128 years later through a vision given to a local Black businessman to birth a newspaper that positively reflected the Black community, while also reporting the hard truths happening in our communities on the local, state, and national level,\u201d Houston Forward Times<\/em> Associate Editor Jeffrey Boney declared.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe evolution of the Black Press, the oldest Black business in America, had proprietors take on issues of chattel slavery in the 19th century, Jim Crow segregation and lynching, the great northern migration, the Civil Rights Movement, the transformation from the printing press to the digital age and computerized communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the Plessy vs. Ferguson<\/em> Supreme Court ruling that said no Black man has any rights that a white man must honor, there came a \ufb02ood of Black publications to advocate for Black rights and protest the wrongs done to Blacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\nToday, the Black Press continues to tackle domestic and global issues, including the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on all citizens \u2013 particularly African Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is an important story about the history of the Black Press of America that has consistently been the freedom fighting voice of African people in America and throughout the world for 195 years without waiver or distortion of the truth,\u201d stated NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday, in 2022, the Black Press remains the vital source of news and information for 50 million African Americans,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chavis continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOn this momentous anniversary, the NNPA salutes all the African American-owned newspapers and media companies that are affiliated with the NNPA\u2019s expanding network of over 230 media properties and channels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On March 16, 1827, Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm founded the first Black-owned newspaper in the U.S. They did so because there were no Black voices in the debate over the abolition of slavery. In their first editorial, Cornish and Russwurm wrote: \u201cin short, whatever concerns us as a people, will ever find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[368,1631,1630],"class_list":["post-2592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-black-press","tag-john-b-russwurm","tag-samuel-e-cornish","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2593,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592\/revisions\/2593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}