|
|
INT: Tell about the beginning of the black press and its pre-Civil War history.
JR: Well, 1827 is the starting date with Freedoms' Journal, founded by two men in New York City who were really, ahm, frustrated with the ways in which African Americans had been, ah, evaluated and covered and spoken of in the white press, you know, and just disparaging, ahm, racist commentary in New York City newspapers is really what led them, ah, to the founding of the newspaper. And, ahm, their -- their whole idea behind Freedom's Journal was to have a voice, an independent voice, an autonomous voice for African Americans. The opening editorial on the front page of Freedom's Journal says, "We mean to plead our own cause. No longer will others speak for us." And this really set the stage for the black press, what it was going to be, ahm, and what the, ah, audience was going to be. It was going to be free black Americans, ahm, for the most part. It was going to be white abolitionists and others who were supportive of -- of black liberation, ahm, and there was going to be an independent press that was going to be run by and, ah, reflective of African American communities. Freedom's Journal didn't last very long, however. The two founders, Russwurm and Cornish were at odds politically with each other. One supported black immigration outside of the United States. The other was firmly entrenched in, ah, American politics and American abolitionism. And they began to -- to argue over that issue and so actually within the year of the founding of Freedom's Journal they had already split up and, ah, this led to spin-offs. And so there were other newspapers that -- that followed Freedom's Journal. So Freedom's Journal, in and of itself, as a newspaper was short-lived, but it set the stage for a thriving black press that's lasted long after that. Ahm, and then we see a number of African American newspapers up to the Civil War. Ahm, most of them are short-lived. They only last for two- three-four years at the most. Most of them are -- they're based in the Northeast, ahm, in New York City and Philadelphia and -- and other communities like that. Ahm, they're staunchly abolitionist, ahm, but they have different political positions. Ah, some advocate the immigration movement. Ahm, some advocate -- the best known, being Frederick Douglas' newspapers, advocate, ah, political
abolition and -- and social change within the United States. Ahm, but they all really struggle for, ahm -- for financial support. They usually have a small readership and so forth. Ahm, and, ah, it -- it's always a struggle for survival in the black press.
INT: Talk about the attitude of the abolitionist press toward black people.
JR: Well, abolitionists certainly were committed to the eradication of slavery, but they weren't necessarily enlightened about black people. They were not necessarily socially conscious. Many of them believed that there was a distinct cultural intellectual difference between blacks and whites. Ahm, most of them were motivated by religious conviction, so they believed that it was anti-Christian to own slaves, ahm, that it was an abomination politically and -- and socially in the United States, but they didn't necessarily believe that black people were their equals. And so, some of the abolitionist movement and the abolitionist press did not necessarily, reflect what was going on in African
American communities. They didn't necessarily, represent the -- the diverse thinking among African Americans during ante-- the antebellum period.
INT: How did the abolitionist press see black people and how does that differ from the black press?
JR: Well, the -- the black press, in fact, was in some respects a response to the abolitionist press and abolitionists. Ahm, the abolitionists certainly supported the abolition of slavery, the eradication of -- of racial apartheid in the United States in certain respects, but they clearly saw distinctions between blacks and whites. And the -- the abolitionist press tended to be quite paternalistic towards African Americans. Ahm, they tried to use stories of slavery, for example, to raise consciousness in the North about the horrors of slavery. Ahm, they tended to either romanticize slave experience or to pick out the particular horrors of slavery. There was very little in the abolitionist press that was about black communities, that was about the daily lives of black people either in the North or the South. There was not a strong representation of the political, concerns of African Americans and the diversity of African American thought in the antebellum period. So this was why the black press was really essential, for African Americans to be able to state their own case and be able to put their platforms before the public, so that people could see the -- the range of thinking in black communities. And it was often quite diverse. There were -- the black press was a platform for all kinds of arguments. Ahm, there was -- it was not a monolithic black community. Depending on people's class and -- and their background and whether or not they were born free or born slave, whether or not they supported immigration or, ah, they were en-- engaged in --in church organizations and so forth, there was a wide range of -- of beliefs about the best course for African Americans.
INT: Why did black papers mushroom after the Civil War until the turn of the century?
JR: There was a dramatic explosion of African American newspapers during Reconstruction -- during a period of optimism. Reconstruction was a time when African Americans were opening businesses. Ahm, they were becoming educated, they were becoming literate. They were part of the -- the commerce of the United States, and they were active in politics. And politics and commerce together create a crying need for newspapers or for the black. And so it sort of went hand in hand. The growth of African Americans, ahm, in the public arena meant the growth of African American newspapers. And throughout the South, as well as the North, these papers were cropping up and they were very representative of the hope and optimism that African Americans had during that period. Once, Reconstruction ended, ahm, the newspapers were able to maintain a foothold where African American politicians often did not. So even during the period of decline for blacks, particularly in the South, ahm, the black press still maintained a -- a position in those communities. They were a vital force for black business and for -- for black organizations and black communities. They did, however, have to be cautious. Ahm, they had to step lightly in many of those communities where Jim Crow really controlled the climate of the South.
INT: Why was Frederick Douglass important as a journalist?
JR: Well, Frederick Douglass was the great statesman and he's really, many might consider him to be the father of African American journalism, ahm, because he saw the importance of the press as a vehicle for political expression. That was essential. Ahm, his newspapers were as important as his oratory. They reached more people, they influenced more people. Presidents read Frederick Douglass' newspapers, although they might not admit it. Senators and congressmen read Frederick Douglass' newspapers. And his newspapers also rallied support around a range of causes, particularly abolition, but other reform movements. So Frederick Douglass made it very clear that if you're going to have a movement, if you're going to have a public voice, and if you're going to advocate for social change, ahm, the press is -- is vital to that effort.
INT: What about Ida B. Wells?
JR: Ida B. Wells, Ida Wells Barnett, ahm, was centrally important for a variety of reasons. One, she was the powerful voice for a critique of the South, of -- of Jim Crow and -- and clearly of lynching. She was a vociferous, courageous journalist, ahm, who took all kinds of risks, was eventually run out of Memphis, ahm, in the quest of her journalism. Ahm, she used the press to expose wrongdoing just like we think of investigative journalists today. She also used the press to rally black migration out of Mississippi and other parts of the Deep South. Ahm, so as a journalist, she -- she was absolutely essential and she really set the stage for very radical, very activist kind of black journalism. And as a black woman, she was also an inspiration because there were so few African American women who had worked in journalism before. And when they did, it tended to be sort of a social service oriented journalism, not the sort of powerful, radical, ahm, you know, vociferous journalism that said, "We won't stand for this. Ahm, and we must change. We must do something about the kinds of violence affecting African Americans."
INT: Talk about John Brown's Raid and the difference between how the black press saw it from the white press and the pattern it set.
JR: Well, the John Brown Raid is an interesting example of the difference or the distinction between the black press and the white press interpretation of public events. Ah, the white press, and particularly the
mainstream press, not the abolitionist, but your basic daily newspapers, ahm, generally condemned John Brown. They saw him as -- as crazed. They saw him as a huge threat to the social order. Ahm, and it was positioned as that. There was great celebration when he was tried and -- and executed, and there was very little sympathy for -- for Brown's position, ahm, and his attempt to try to transform society through a revolutionary act. On the other hand, the black press, while sometimes being cautious about John Brown, certainly endorsed his action. Ahm, they saw it as necessary. It was a period of great desperation on the eve of the Civil War, ahm, and the fact that a white man would take this heroic act on behalf of the slaves was something to celebrate.
The -- the ways in which the black press and white press covered the John Brown Raid, ah, was, ah, indicative of the ways that the different presses were going to cover public events. Clearly the -- there is going to be a different focus, a different interest, and a different community that these two presses speak to. And, ah, the John Brown Raid was symptomatic of -- of the -- the rest of the history of -- of press coverage of white communities and black communities.
INT: How did Booker T. Washington influence the black press?
JR: Well, Booker T. Washington's influence on the black press was both political, but a lot of it was economic. Booker T. Washington realized fairly early on as he was extending his influence around the country, that the black press was the best way to reach African Americans, both in small communities and in urban centers. Ahm, and he was not beyond, ahm, taking over African American newspapers that he saw as being useful instruments to get his message across. The classic example is T. Thomas Fortune's newspaper in New York, The New York Age. Ahm, and -- and some people would argue that he, ahm, particularly took on or tried to take over newspapers that had been critical of him or that he saw in opposition to him in some ways. But over time, Washington, ahm, purchased financial interests in a number of black newspapers and/or, ahm, he, ah, exerted a great deal of both political and economic pressure on black newspapers, ahm, that he saw as being very useful for his own cause.
INT: What time period is this and what effect did he have at that time?
JR: Well, Washington was really interested in the black press at the turn of the century, really the early, ahm, 1900s, and this was a period of great growth and -- and strength for African American newspapers. And this was --seemed particularly useful and -- and essential for -- for Washington. For Washington, the black press was symbolic of the great potential for African Americans, ahm, to be able to have a voice in their communities and be responsive to their communities. On the other hand, he was a very powerful influence. Ah, there were very few black newspapers that were going to cross him, that were going to openly contradict his points of view, ahm, and -- and he, ah, influenced a variety of areas. People who would write for the black press. He influenced to some extent advertisers and who was going to sell advertising to the black press and where it was going to be circulated. Ahm, Washington, ah, wielded a tremendous amount of power, ahm, in black communities during that period.
INT: And how did that end?
JR: Eventually Washington's power began to wane and then he died. And the loss of Washington meant the loss of his influence on the black press. But there were very few other large public black figures like Booker T. Washington who would come afterwards that would have that kind of -- in influence in black journalism.
INT: Tell me the story of Charlotta Bass and her coming to California.
JR: Well, Charlotta Bass was born during Reconstruction in the South, in South Carolina, and lived for a few years, ahm, in the East, and was having health problems when she was in her 20s and her early 30s. And a doctor recommended that she move out to California. And she -- it was part of the -- the reason that so many people came to Los Angeles. They came to LA for health cures and for the warm weather and so forth. So she landed in -- in California and she was looking for work and, ah, she started selling subscriptions to The California Eagle -- for The California Eagle, ahm, which was the -- the dominant black newspaper in California at the time. And she was just making a few dollars a week and this sort of supplemented her -- her savings. And, ah, that was all really she knew about, ah, about newspaper journalism.
INT: How did she get to running the paper?
JR: Well, The California Eagle was typical of most African Americans papers. It was really run by one person, ah, Neimore, who was the -- the founder and the publisher and the editor of everything of the paper. And he had a couple of people selling subscriptions for him and doing some of the other office work. And Charlotta Bass was part of that group and -- but she clearly, ah, was bright and energetic and -- and committed, ah, to -- to free expression and the goals of the newspaper. Ah, when Neimore fell ill, ahm, just two years after Charlotta started working for him, he called her to his bedside and asked her if she would be willing to take on the editorship of -- of The California Eagle and to, ah, carry on the --the mission that -- that he had begun 30 years earlier with the newspaper. And, she was a reluctant convert to this job. Ahm, she wasn't at all sure that she could do it and she basically promised him just before he died that she would do the best she could. Ahm, so that was sort of a --a qualified agreement, but it began the 40-year career for her as a publisher and editor and -- and journalist, and activist in the Los Angeles community.
INT: Talk about the importance of Bass and the Eagle in the LA community.
JR: Well, The California Eagle was the -- a dynamic force for social change for African Americans in California. First, it -- it really recruited African Americans to Los Angeles very much as The Chicago Defender did in Chicago, ah, many years later. It was the place that -- that helped African Americans settle in the community. It told people how to get jobs. It told people how to get housing. It helped people actually settle in Los Angeles and make it a community. And then it was a community voice. Everything that went on, the church suppers and the community organizations and the political debates, were all
discussed in The California Eagle. Ahm, and Charlotta Bass, as the head of that newspaper, was in the forefront of all of these activities. She was the one that shaped it. But Charlotta Bass was also an activist. She wasn't just content to be, ah, a business person and a journalist. She wanted to see change and as discrimination began to become more widespread in California, she really used the newspaper as a platform for social change. And she used The California Eagle to fight against discrimination in housing and in real estate and in employment and a variety of other issues that were affecting blacks in Los Angeles throughout the early part of the century.
INT: How did the black press fight against 'Birth of A Nation?"
JR: The black press was in the forefront of the African American protest against "Birth of A Nation". Here was the first feature length motion picture movie. Ahm, it
was being hailed as a -- as a commercial success and -- and a piece of technical genius. And African Americans were the ones to rally around opposition to the film and its racist images. And black newspapers, ahm, from The California Eagle, ahm, right there in Hollywood, to newspapers all across the country really raised the specter of how heinous this film was and how damaging it was to black communities. The NAACP launched a substantial critique of "Birth of A Nation" and they published in The Crisis and in the black newspapers across the country. And it really helped to --ahm, to rally opposition to the film and to raise people's consciousness around the country about the problems with "Birth of A Nation."
Charlotta Bass really had the foresight to understand that the motion picture industry was going to, ahm, be dominant in the LA landscape even in the 'teens and the 1920s. And she also realized that African Americans had a stake in that. They -- they could find employment in the motion picture industry. They also had a stake in a images of African Americans that were going to be disseminated in films and so she tried her best, ah, through The California Eagle, to have an influence on the movie industry.
INT: What was Charlotta Bass like as a politician?
JR: Charlotta Bass was no different from other newspaper publishers turned politicians. The only difference was that she was black and she was coming from a small periodical rather than a major daily newspaper. But the work that she did, the activist work that she did at The California Eagle really launched her into the political spectrum in Los Angeles. She, ahm, became particularly involved with the Progressive Party in the late 1940s and early '50s, and ran for Congress on the Progressive Party ticket and, then ran for the city council on the Progressive Party ticket, and then, in 1952, when she was well into her 70s, she became the Vice Presidential candidate for the national ticket of the Progressive Party. Ahm, and so she was right in the midst of the important political debates of that time.
INT: Did she ever win any of these elections?
JR: Charlotta Bass never won an election. She was always in fringe parties and third party politics, ahm, and, ah, Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s was not prepared to elect a black woman to a high elected office.
INT: Inaudible
JR: Charlotta Bass' vision of California, and particularly of Los Angeles, was that it was going to be an oasis for African Americans away from the South, that it was going to, ahm, not replicate the Jim Crow social policies and the, ahm, segregation of the races that most of the
black migrants had experienced at some point in their lives. She really saw the, ah, California landscape as a new frontier. And many of the people, both black and white
and -- and other groups who came to California, thought that California was going to be new, it was going to somehow be different, ahm, and, ah, there was going to be a new range of -- of social relations here. Ah, what happens, of course, is that very quickly by the 1920s, many of the same social patterns that manifested themselves in the Midwest and the South, ah, moved to California. Ahm, there were restrictive covenants in housing, ahm, lots of employment discrimination. The Ku Klux Klan was -- was in Los Angeles and harassed The California Eagle, ahm, on many occasions and threatened Charlotta Bass, in particular. So she was fighting many of the same demons that black newspaper publishers and editors were fighting all over the country.
INT: What were some of the problems of the black press in the '20s, '30s, and '40s.
JR: Well, some of the things that made the black press successful at the beginning of the century were also sources for problems. The fact that the black press, papers, like The Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh -Courier, developed good commercial skills also meant that they had many of the problems that we associate with -- with newspapers. They, ahm, focused on a lot of sensational stories. They tended to cater to the middle class very often. They focused a lot on advertising and commercial enterprises, not necessarily always dealing with the social problems and the social concerns of black communities, at least as much as those communities would like. The newspapers were also a product of the people who ran them. So papers that had different political outlooks articulated by the publishers and editors, ahm, often, ahm, did not reflect the political sentiments of the communities that they sought to represent. So there could be lots of divergent points of view. African Americans might support one policy and their newspaper did not necessarily go along with that.
INT: Talk about the Double V Campaign.
JR: The Double V Campaign was the invention of The Pittsburgh Courier to respond in some respect to the reluctance on the part of many African Americans, ah, to really sign up to the war effort. At least in the early days of the war there was a lot of differing opinion among African Americans about the war. Many African Americans were pacifists. Some, ahm, were more hawkish and -- and others were simply ambivalent. What was in store for black people to -- to take the risk and join up and -- and to go overseas and to fight in the US military? So The Pittsburgh Courier developed a variety of strategies to -- to really respond to that ambivalence in the black community. On the one hand, ahm, they wanted to whip up some patriotic interest and -- and patriotic fervor around the war, but, on the other hand, they wanted to link, ahm, the war with the quest for equal rights and equal justice at home. So the Double V Campaign, ahm, was a clever strategy to do that. And they did this. They developed a cartoon, ahm, and then they had slogans in the newspaper and it spilled off into a variety of other, ahm, strategies.
INT: Talk about how the Courier is following the people on this issue?
JR: The -- the Courier clearly sensed that the black community, their black constituency, was not as supportive of the war effort as -- as they would have liked or they would have expected. Ahm, perhaps this is a classic example of the difference between the editorial policies of a black newspaper and the will of the black community. Ah, in this instance many members of Pittsburgh's African American community and around the country, ah, were very ambivalent about World War II. And so this was really a case where community sentiment dictated, ahm, the strategies that a newspaper was going to use and the creation of the Double V Campaign had everything to do with that. This was The Pittsburgh Courier's attempt to respond to that ambivalence in -- in African American communities. How could they, ahm, get the war effort, ahm, articulated and
promoted but at the same time, ahm, really acknowledge the concerns of -- of African Americans?
INT: Did Bass' political affiliations get her in trouble in her later years?
JR: Charlotta Bass' Progressive politics got her into a lot of trouble and really, ahm, made a dent in her readership and in her circulation during the '50s. She was associated with many figures on the left, including people like Paul Robeson, and, ahm, she, ah, red-baited quite early on. She writes in her memoirs that the FBI trailed her and read through all of her, ah, correspondence and -- and, ahm, clipped articles from her newspaper, and really hounded her for many years -- never because she actually declared that she was a communist, but because her activism was so clearly critical of US government policies that it was constituted as being too radical and red inspired and so forth. So she, ahm, really became one of the, ah, black activists of the period who --who was red-baited not only by the FBI, but the, ahm, Post Office at one point launched an investigation of her and wanted to revoke the mailing privileges of The California Eagle, and after several months of investigation, the Justice Department finally backed off and said, no, they that really didn't find any reason to suggest that she was engaged in un-American activities.
INT: Talk about Abbott and Hearst
in the development of this new type of journalism.
JR: What began to occur in places like Chicago early in the 20th century was a parallel development between, ahm, the black press as a commercial enterprise and white mainstream papers owned by people like William Randolph Hearst. Ah, they were also creating newspapers that were sort of populist that -- that were interested in meeting the needs of the masses, ahm, and articulating, ahm, their social concerns, but at the same time were strong, viable commercial enterprises. They were making money and they were making serious money and they were expanding and they were creating jobs and they were supporting advertising and businesses in their communities. And Abbott was a part of -- as much a part of that movement as many of the -- the large, ah, white publishers of the time. And he helped to -- ah, to really build, the, ahm -- the community of -- of African Americans in Chicago from a business standpoint.
INT: What was the impact of black cartoonists?
JR: Oh, black cartoonists in the black press were
-- were absolutely essential. Starting back at the late
19th century, political cartooning was a really powerful way to -- to articulate an opinion, ahm, without both getting into trouble in the editorial pages and to really, ah, go to some extremes. A lot of times editors and reporters who didn't feel that they could really say what they thought about the President on down, could manifest that in editorial cartoons. And that was certain true, ah, in black newspapers. We see, ahm, a black press and black cartoonists who are able to pick out the specific characteristics of the black community and -- and the ways that black people talked and thought about these issues and the ways in which they saw policy makers and politicians and big businessmen. So it was another very essential way for the black press to really represent the thoughts and the needs and the specific dynamic of African American communities.
INT: What happened to the black press?
JR: The black press declined for a lot of complex reasons. One of the key ones is that, ah, magazines, in particular, began to take over much of their market. So one of the things that we see with the -- the decline of black newspapers is that almost at the same time the rise, ahm, and the prosperity of African American magazines. And one of the reasons why that occurs is because, ah, the mainstream, by the 1960s, is doing a somewhat better job of covering black communities. Ahm, they recognized that blacks are a viable market, particularly in large -- large urban centers like New York City and Chicago. Ahm, they want black people as readers. They want those black advertising dollars. And so they begin to respond more to the black public. And so black Americans for the first time have choices. They can buy The New York Daily News in New York City or The Chicago Tribune in Chicago and read at least something about their community and their leaders and their interests and concerns in a way that they hadn't found that 20 years earlier. So there was less of a need, ahm, increasingly, for black newspapers, particularly the traditional black newspapers. The magazines, on the other hand, focused primarily on -- on arts and entertainment and on sort of the cultural world of African Americans, and that, ahm, was something that still specific enough, ah, that black Americans would turn to Ebony and Jet and other magazines and subscribe to them. So the -- the black press really began to find a downward, ah, surge because of those reasons.
INT: What did papers like Mohammed Speaks and the Black Panther paper represent?
JR: One of the things that we see happening at the late 1960s is the rise, at least briefly, of a much more radical voice in the black press. And we see that particularly in the Black Panther newspaper and Mohammed Speaks and a number of other smaller, ahm, radical underground newspapers. And in a lot of ways they harkened back to the 19th century. They're -- they're radical, they're uncompromising, ahm, they are speaking a voice that is strictly for African Americans and -- and specific African American communities. They're interested in, ahm, organizing. They're provocative, and they don't back down in their criticism of quite racism and white oppression. Ahm, this was a far cry from the way that most black newspapers responded to these issues in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. And these papers found a substantial
audience, at least for a short while. But by the early 1970s a lot of the -- the vitality of the radical black press really diminished, although the Black Panther and Mohammed Speaks were published for -- for many years after that.
INT: Do you think that the black press is the best record of black people's hopes, dreams, et cetera?
JR: The black press is a marvelous repository for the history of African Americans. Ahm, it has everything in it. It has every detail from our political ideas, our hopes, our dreams, correspondence and letters, ahm, to each other, to the kinds of food we ate and -- and the products we used, you know, the clubs that we had and the hotels and the music and the entertainment. Literally everything that is representative of African American culture can be found in the black press. And, ahm, it's a -- it's marvelous in both centuries to -- to look at it and get a sense of what our communities were like.
INT: Talk about what the black press meant
because you had all these black people together.
JR: The heyday of the black press will probably never be reproduced in exactly the same ways because it really focused exclusively on the interests of the black community and brought together the greatest minds -- ah, W.E.B. DuBois and the great writers and James Weldon Johnson and all of the political activists, ahm, that we can think of today with the celebrities and all of the cultural activities that were going on in black communities. Ahm, so you could really get everything. If you were black and in the 1940s in New York City, The Amsterdam News gave you so much of what you needed to live your life and participate in your community and in your world. And that just simply isn't the case, ahm, today with -- with the black press, and, frankly, with most newspapers. They just simply don't serve that purpose any longer.
INT: How did the black press compare to other ethnic presses?
JR: The -- the black press was always a -- I would say a sort of a larger and more expansive ethnic press for most of its history. It attempted to encompass a variety of things. It was activist, it was commercial, it was social, ah, in black communities. Ahm, the ethnic presses for other communities often tended to focus on, ah, specificities of a culture. So, they would be published in two languages. Many of them were bilingual, for example. Ahm, they might have a particular religious focus. Ah, they might have a particular focus around labor interests or a community interest -- and they were there, just like the black press, to serve the interests of their communities. But the black press grew in a way that most of the ethnic presses did not. Today perhaps we see the same thing happening, ahm, in the latino press. That's probably the best example. We see explosions of latino newspapers and magazines and radio stations and television stations, really responding to the specific needs of those communities.
(END OF INTERVIEW)
|