Newspaper Page Text
(CO/mW££>WrtPA6£s )
President’s Message," Frederick
Douglas took James Buchanan to
»*-task. He said Buchanan s "points’’
with unerring certainty, to the South.
"It knows no North, no East, no
West.” He called Buchanan "the
pliant tool of pro-slavery propagan
dists, the subsidiary so southern
despotism, a consummate
hypocrite."
“The Ram’s Horn” was started
in 1847 in response to attacks on
Afro-Americans and activities of the
“New York Sun" (a penny paper).
The "Sun" in 1846 printed editorials
proposing the curbing of Negro
voting rights in New York State.
A Black man. Willis Hodges, wrote
a reply which was printed only when
“he agreed to pay sls and run it as
an ad." Even then the article was
modified. When Hodges protested,
he was told "The Sun shines for all
white men and not for colored men.”
If he wanted the Afro-American
cause advocated, he should found
his own paper. He did and the paper
got up to 2,500 subscribers (a larger
number than Garrison’s better
known “Liberator") before it died
in 1848.
The "New Orleans Tribune,"
started in 1862 by Dr. J. J.
Roudanez, was the first Black
owned daily newspaper. Its fight for
the right to vote for Blacks was bran
, __ ded “a sick vanity” by a white New
Orleans paper. It denounced efforts
of white to drive a wedge between
the light-skinned and the darker
skinned Blacks and successfully op
posed efforts to define quadroons as
“white” —a procedure that would
have set up a South African type
system in the U.S.
Different Viewpoint
The first issue of “Freedom Jour
nal” contained an article entitled “to
our Patrons.” It started:
“We wish to plead our own cause.
Too long have others spoken for
us. Too long has the public been
deceived by misrepresentations in
things which concern us dearly.”
Frederick Douglass started “The
North Star” in 1847 not only to
prove that Blacks could run such an
establishment but also because of
differences in opinion with Garrison
and other abolitionists. Many white
abolitionists, for example, wanted to
dissolve the Union with the
slaveholding states. Douglass could
not see how that would solve the
problem of those Blacks still in
slavery.
Carrier And Preserver Os
Black Culture
Franz Fanon has said that the
'media" are the carriers and preser
vers of our culture and that, for the
most part, they are written by big
Page 8
white men for little white men.
In "Black History. Lost, Strayed
or Stolen.” Bill Cosby comments
that the history of white media is
white on white.
Langston Hughes quotes Simple’s
view of the news as follows:
“Just look at athe front pages of
the newspaper, said Simple,
spreading his nightly copy of the
Daily News out on the bar. "There
is never hardly any colored folks in
front page news except when there’s
been a race riot or a lynching or a
boycott and a whole lot of us have
been butchered up orarrested. Then
they announce it.
In 1827 the editors of Freedom’s
Journal stated that:
“Useful knowledge of every kind
and everything that relates to Africa
shall find a ready admission into our
columns; and as that vast continent
becomes daily more known, we hope
that many things will come to light,
proving that many that the natives
of it are neither so ignorant nor
stupid as they are generally sup
posed to be.”
They backed up this promise by
printing news from Haiti and from
Sierra Leone, by running articles on
Captain Paul Cuffee (a Black ship
owner who traded in Sierra Leone),
on Toussaint L’Ouverture (the
liberator of Haiti whose victories
made the .Louisianna Purchase
possible), and on Phillis Wheatly,
the poet.
Media today has changed to some
degree, no northern newspaper is apt
to tell a Black man, as the editor of
the "New York Sun” in 1846 told
Willis A. Hodges, that "the Sun
shines for all white men and not for
colored men.” No paper is apt to
counsel the people of Rochester to
throw a Black man's printing press
into Lake Ontario and to banish the
editors to Canada -- as the "New
York Herald” did in 1845 when
Frederick Douglass founded the
“North Star”. Newspapers today
aren't apt to print headlines showing
“Eleanor Roosevelt and another
nigger” as papers in Alabama used
Have you given to QIC, SCLC. NAACP or the local Urban League this month?
to run in the 1940’5. But. Tarzan
and Shirley Temple’s good old south
are still seen on TV. and the con
servative press is still apt to depict
lazy Black men as the major
recipients of welfare and to condemn
Black crime without any con
sideration of its cause -- white
racism. The press is still apt to print
in screaming front page headlines the
“slit throat” story of Attica and bury
the truth the next day; and. thereby,
reinforce the rationalizations for
white racism.
The movie image of Black males
\ jßlacfe America
Read Your
Community Newspapers. >
On Friday, October 17, Rev.
Hosea Williams of Atlanta SCLC
(and one of our foremost fighters for
human justice at the side of the late
Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.) was
arraigned for trial on November 20th
on his 100th arrest. This time, the
continued charge is one for "driving
without a license” that would, if con
victed. send Rev. Williams to jail for
have changed from superslow to
superfly, but I’m not certain that this
represents progress.
And even today less than two per
cent of the editorial employees on
the nations newspapers are Black.
And thur, in our minds thus need
for Black Press continues. We need
a vigilent, fighting press, sure in its
Blackness, concerned and
knowledgeable about the facts and
images needed by its community.
This is a Press worthy of our sup
port and each of us must do our best
to preserve it.
A Special Appeal for Rev.
Hosea Williams Defense
Fund
5 years and cause permanent loss of
his legislative seat.
An urgent appeal is being made
for donations to cover legal fees.
Please send contributions of any size
you can afford to:
Rev. Hosea William’s Legal
Defense Fund
775 Hunter Street
Atlanta. Ga. 30314
October November, 1975