December 30, 2019
Over the past month or so, there have been a spate of top ten rankings for the past decade. While rankings can be a bit reductive, they can be an incredibly useful device for highlighting important work in a field. Below are a list of 10 books (in no particular order) that offer transformative understandings of the role of the Black Press in the United States.
The Rise & Fall of of the Associated Negro Press (University of Illinois, 2017) By Gerald Horne.
Horne’s book is one of two scholarly book-length examinations of Claude Barnett and the Associated Negro Press (ANP). Focusing on Barnett’s Pan-Africanist work, Horne highlights the ANP’s role in fighting Jim Crow segregation and how this fight ultimately led to the demise of the ANP, one of Black America’s most important sources of news.
Black Radical (Liveright, 2019) By Kerri K. Greenidge
A top New York Times‘ book pick, Black Radical chronicles the life of William Monroe Trotter and his paper the Guardian. Greenidge’s pioneering study calls well-needed attention to the ways that Trotter and his paper made Boston a site of black radical politics. In a skillfully written history, Greenidge expands our understanding of the early twentieth-century Black Press.
Eye on the Struggle (Amistad, 2015) By James McGrath Morris
Morris documents the life of journalist and civil rights activist, Ethel Payne. As the first African American woman to be included in the White House Press corps, Payne tireless wrote for the Chicago Defender and covered events such as the Korean War, Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. Morris weaves a comprehensive narrative of Payne’s life that offers deeper insight into African Americans’ struggle for social justice.
The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation (University of Georgia, 2016) By Benjamin Fagan
The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation is a groundbreaking study of the ways that the early Black Press cultivated the idea that African Americans were “chosen people” and that they played a vital role in black liberation and freedom throughout the world. Fagan explores this discourse in a variety of black newspapers, showing how it was central to the integration of faith into strategies for liberty.
Jam on the Vine (Grove Press, 2016) By LaShonda Katrice Barnett
Barnett’s historical fictional narrative of an African American woman journalist brings more attention to the under-examined contributions that Black women have made to the twentieth-century Black Press. Jam on the Vine is a beautifully written depiction of one black woman’s love for her people and the ways she uses black journalism to call attention to the injustice African Americans faced in the United States.
The Defender (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) By Ethan Michaeli
Despite the well-known importance of the Chicago Defender, Michaeli’s book stands as the sole comprehensive examination of the paper. The Defender recounts the history of the paper and how it transformed African Americans’ lives and changed the course of American history. Recognized by the New York Times for his work, Michaeli sheds greater insight into what made the Chicago Defender, “The World’s Greatest Weekly.”
Black Print Unbound (Oxford, 2015) By Eric Gardner
Much of the scholarship on the Black Press concentrates on secular newspapers. Black Print Unbound is a powerful exception. Gardner explores the development of the Christian Recorder, the official African Methodist Episcopal Church Newspaper during and immediately after the American Civil War. Recovering unknown texts in the paper, Gardner shows how the Recorder and other black papers played an integral role in the creation of African American literary culture.
Let Us Make Men (University of North Carolina) By D’Weston Haywood
Haywood’s book, Let Us Make Men provides a showcase for the ways the Black Press cultivated and shaped black men’s leadership in the twentieth century. Arguing that the struggle for black manhood was synonymous with the fight for racial justice, Haywood deepens our understanding of what was at stake for black newspaper publishers during some of the most crucial times in African American history.
Alone atop the Hill (University of Georgia, 2015). By Carole McCabe Booker and Simeon Booker
While this book is a condensed version of the 1974 self-published autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, the first African American female correspondent to receive White House press credentials, it includes scholarly annotations that provide a deeper historical contextualization of Dunnigan’s life as a journalist. Carole McCabe Booker skillfully edits the memoir to highlight the ways Dunnigan’s work as the chief of the Washington Bureau at the Associated Negro Press provided critical political coverage on a national scale for the Black Press.
The Grapevine of the Black South (University of Georgia, 2018) By Thomas Aiello
Although the vast majority of black newspapers were founded in the South in late 19th century, many Black Press outlets had difficulty surviving in the face of the Jim Crow system. Aiello recovers a little known history of the Atlanta World and the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and demonstrates how it contributed to the development of the modern Civil Rights movement. Arguing that the Atlanta World helped black southerners build a collective identity, Aiello shows how the paper and its founders imagined developing a network of readers outside the South through the Scott Newspaper Syndicate.