Freedom's Journal: The First African American Newspaper (Photo Image)

FREEDOM'S JOURNAL

The first Black newspaper of record printed in the United States was Freedom's Journal, 

published in New York City in 1827.

National Association of Black Journalists

The NABJ rolled out its red carpet on January 27, 2011 at Washington D.C.'s Newseum, inducting five legendary journalists into the 2011 Hall of Fame and presenting the Ida B. Wells Award Recipient.

NABJ Hall of Fame Inductees 

& Ida B. Wells Award Recipient 

Ed Bradley – CBS News ‘60 Minutes’

Before his passing in 2006, Bradley spent nearly his entire 39-year career with CBS News. At CBS, the man once described as "the coolest guy in the business” rose to the pinnacle of journalistic achievement.

Merri Dee – WGN-TV Chicago

Dee’s 30-year career in Chicago broadcasting and her charitable efforts on behalf of children and victims’ rights make her a standout honoree.

JC Hayward – WUSA-TV Washington

Hayward, reporter and anchor of 39 years at Washington, D.C.'s WUSA-TV holds the national record for a woman anchoring the same evening newscast at the same station.

Eugene Robinson – The Washington Post

Robinson is a columnist and former assistant managing editor at The Washington Post who won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2009. He won for a selection of columns on the 2008 presidential campaign, and also serves as political analyst for MSNBC.

Ray Taliaferro – KGO Newstalk 810, San Francisco

Ray was the first black talk show host on a major market radio station in the country. Taliaferro has literally owned the Bay Area's overnight radio listening audience since 1986 when his talk show moved to the 1 to 5 a.m. time slot. 


IDA B. WELLS AWARD RECIPIENT: 

Walterene Swanston – National Public Radio (NPR)

The annual Ida B. Wells Award honor highlights the achievement of a media executive who has demonstrated a commitment to diversifying the nation's newsrooms and improving the coverage of people and communities of color. Walterene Swanston is the NABJ's 2011 Ida B. Wells Award Recipient. Swanston is a diversity consultant and a retired director of diversity management for National Public Radio. Swanston has a decades-long professional track record as a champion of media diversity. For more than 25 years, she has worked with newspapers, television and radio stations to recruit, promote, train and retain people of color and women.

Information source: Nabj.org

John H. Johnson: The Johnson Publishing Company of Chicago

Photo: John Harold Johnson (b. Jan. 19, 1918 – d. Aug. 8, 2005)

The Johnson Publishing Company, started by Johnson H. Johnson, is among the largest Black-owned businesses in the United States.

THE EARLY LIFE OF JOHN H. JOHNSON

John H. Johnson, founder of Johnson Publishing, was born in Arkansas City, Arkansas in 1918. In 1933, he and his mother migrated to Chicago seeking a better education for the young John Johnson. After graduating from DuSable High School, Johnson worked for Henry H. Pace, then president of Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company.

Johnson was eventually given the task to find news items about Blacks and compile them with news of Supreme Life employee activities for an in-house publication. Johnson developed the idea of collecting articles into a monthly magazine to be called Negro Digest.

In 1942, Johnson used his mother's new furniture as collateral for a $500 loan to mail 20,000 letters to Supreme Life insurance policy-holders offering a $2 charter subscription to the Negro Digest. The overwhelming reply marked the beginning of the Black media dynasty. Other publications launched by Johnson was Tan magazine, a true confessions style publication, as well as Ebony Man, Ebony Jr., and African American Stars.

EBONY AND JET MAGAZINES

Ebony and Jet magazines have been published from Chicago since 1945 and 1951, respectively. In its 40th year of publication, Ebony magazine had reached a circulation of 2,300,000. After which, Johnson began making the list of the richest individuals in the United States. In 1996, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom was bestowed on Johnson by President Bill Clinton.

The company's subsidiaries include Fashion Fair Cosmetics and the Ebony Fashion Fair Show.

Johnson Publishing Company celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2002. The publishing company is headquartered in a free standing building in the South Loop of Chicago at 820 S. Michigan Avenue.

Photo: Entryway to Johnson Publishing Company building in Chicago

Robert Sengstacke Abbott and the Growth of Black News Publishing

Photo: Robert Sengstacke Abbott (b. Nov. 24, 1870 - d. Feb. 29, 1940)

Robert Sengstacke Abbott was born in Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia. Thomas Abbott, his father, was born into slavery in the US, but died when his son was still a baby. In 1869, Robert's mother, Flora Abbott, married John Sengstacke from a wealthy German merchant immigrant family. Robert retained his late father's name and took his step father's name as his middle name.

From 1892 to 1896, Robert studied the printing trade at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). By 1898, Robert earned a law degree from Kent College of Law in Chicago, Illinois. He practiced law in Gary, Indiana, Topeka, Kansas, and Chicago, Illinois. Ultimately, he decided that he could better battle the system of white supremacy racial injustice through the mass media instead of the courtroom. Robert put down his law books and picked up his printing press. He would report the challenges and successes of African Americans, news that was important to their lives.

THE CHICAGO DEFENDER NEWSPAPER

With reportedly as little as 25 cents capital, Robert began the most widely-circulated Black newspaper in the United States. The Chicago Defender newspaper became the medium to voice the concerns of African Americans in Chicago. The newspaper made many outstanding contributions to journalism and ultimately to Black history. 

Image of Chicago Defender headline.

Established in November 29, 1905, the Chicago Defender would become the longest running African American newspaper publication in Chicago. The exchange of information from North to South -- through both the Chicago Defender and correspondence between relatives -- accelerated the Great Migration of African Americans to Chicago, resulting in an increase of 150% in the population of Black Chicago between 1910-1920.

City officials in Arkansas town seek ban on Chicago Defender newspaper.

The Great Migration of African Americans from U.S. southern states to Chicago was in part fueled by the Chicago Defender's voice against injustice and grand accounts of northern living at the onset of the U.S. industrial revolution. Originally housed in a converted synagogue from 1920 to 1960, the Chicago Defender rapidly developed into both the country's premier source for news of the northern migration of African Americans.

Chicago Defender typesetters prepare community news for mass distribution.

Black Pullman Porters, who were prosperous and well respected in the African American communities, became the Defender's national "delivery  men," distributing the newspapers to many southern towns. The newspaper became an important communication tool between Black Chicagoans and their relatives in the southern states. 

"My friends made fun of me," Robert is reported to have said about the tremendous opposition to his establishing the Chicago Defender. "They thought it was foolish of me to anticipate success in a field in which so many men before me had failed...but I went on fighting the opposition of my adversaries and the indifferences of my friends. I emerged victorious but battle-scarred."

The historic home of Robert S. Abbott

(4742 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive in Chicago)

In 1929, Robert established the Bud Billiken Club and with David Kellum established Chicago's Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic. He resided in Chicago until his death from Bright's Disease in 1940. His home, established as a National Historical Landmark in 1976, was located at 4742 S. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive in the Bronzeville community of Chicago. He left the Chicago Defender newspaper to his nephew John Henry Sengstacke. 

After more than 100 years of Black publishing history, Chicago Defender's 2007 issue headlines local politics.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett: A Fearless Black Journalist and Anti-Lynching Crusader

Photo: Ida B. Wells Barnett (b. July 16, 1862 – d. March 25, 1931)

Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on born July 16, 1862 and would become a fearless anti-lynching crusader and renowned African American journalist in the Americas.

IDA B. WELLS IN MEMPHIS

Wells attended Rust College and Fisk University before coming to teach in the Memphis public school system. While in Memphis, Wells wrote for the Free Speech weekly newspaper. She was also an avid diarist in her early years and Miriam DeCosta-Willis edited some of her diary writings as The Memphis Diaries of Ida B. Wells (Beacon Press, 1995). In 1891, Wells was banned from teaching with the Memphis public schools because her articles spoke out against racial injustices and more particularly the lynching epidemic.

Wells became editor of the Free Speech newspaper in Memphis and began her anti-lynching activism, specifically challenging the notion that Black men were being lynched because they raped white women. Reacting against an expose she wrote about the activities of a lynch mob, the Memphis printing offices of the Free Speech were torched and Ida was threatened with lynching. Wells fled Memphis for New York and worked on the staff of the New York Age newspaper edited by T. Thomas Fortune.

IDA B. WELLS BARNETT IN CHICAGO

Photo: Ida B. Wells Barnett's home in Bronzeville, Chicago, Illinois;
Address: 3624 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr.; Year Built: 1889

In 1895, Wells married attorney and Chicago newspaper owner Ferdinard Barnett. Her political and social activism continued in Chicago. At the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, she and Frederick Douglass campaigned for the establishment of a pavilion to honor the accomplishments of Black Americans. She wrote and distributed a pamphlet entitled "Why the Colored American is Not in the World's Columbia Exposition" at the foot of the Statute of Columbia at the Corner of Cornell and Hayes Drives in Chicago. That same year Wells began writing for the Conservator, Chicago's first African American newspaper.

 

Wells is noted as one of the 25 outstanding women in Chicago's history. One of Chicago's housing projects was named in her honor. Ida B. Wells Barnett's former home in Chicago is located at 3624 S. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and still stands in this famed Bronzeville community. Her Chicago home was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.