Although Black culture is deeply rooted in oral traditions, print culture has historically been an important way that African-American communities communicated with each other and established distinct identities within the diaspora. It is necessary to study the efforts that were made to document their experiences, as they were frequently misrepresented in media and their communications suppressed. There exists the misconception the African-American literary production is limited to the post-Antebellum era, but first person narratives provided important documentary history of free Black people and enslaved persons in addition to being essential components of campaigns for abolition. The goal of this LibGuide is to present resources available for studying African-American history through journals, newspapers, magazines, and other documents in addition to developing skills for critically reading these publications.
Research Strategies
- African American Newspapers
A guide to African American newspapers held at the Library of Congress and available online.
- Researching Periodicals From the African Diaspora
Databases
- American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection This link opens in a new windowSeries 1 - 5, covering 1691 to 1877. The AAS digital collection with more than 6,500 historical periodical titles documents the life in America from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. A broad range of topics are covered, including science, medicine, agriculture, entertainment, religion, history, women's fashion, literature, and politics.
- Black Life in America This link opens in a new windowThe experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, 1704 to today.
- Independent Voices This link opens in a new windowIndependent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries.
Books
African-American Television News
- Black JournalBlack Journal is an American NET and later on WNET in June 1968.[1] It covered issues relevant to African-American communities with film crews sent to Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and Ethiopia. The program was originally broadcast as once a month, one hour productions.[2] In 1971, the journalist Tony Brown took over leadership and later the series transitioned to commercial television under the name Tony Brown’s Journal. The series later returned to public television in 1982 under the new name.[3] Other executive producers included documentary filmmakers Madeline Anderson, William Greaves and St. Clair Bourne.[1] The show aired until 2008.[4] Black Journal offered a close look at the civil rights movement and Black Power movements of the 1960s and was influential in shaping Black opinion at the time.[5] The show won Emmy, Peabody and Russwurm awards for its coverage of timely issues. WNET and the Library of Congress digitized episodes and contributed copies to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting between 2012 and 2018. [6]
- The black press : soldiers without swordsArchival footage and interviews trace the history of African American newspapers and journalism from the Antebellum period to the Civil Rights Movement.
- Freedom's CallTwo African-American journalists who covered the events of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties return to the deep South where it all took place. The journalists are Dorothy Gilliam, who later became first female African American reporter at The Washington Post, and Ernest Withers, renowned photographer whose photos were published in the black press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Their journey brings back memories of those turbulent times. They travel to Memphis, Little Rock, Oxford, Jackson and the Mississippi Delta. Along the way they stop to meet with Minniejean Brown Trickey, one of The Little Rock Nine, and James Meredith, the first African-American to attend The University of Mississippi. Photographs, newspaper clips and eyewitness accounts brings the heroic struggle alive, a struggle in which these two courageous journalists participated and recorded for posterity.
- Race Against Prime TimeRace Against Prime Time is the only film to scrutinize how television news represents African Americans. This hard-hitting documentary takes us behind the scenes at the newsrooms of the three network affiliates during the Liberty City uprising in Miami which left 18 dead. It provides a classic case study of how the news gets made: what we see - and what we don't. Race Against Prime Time documents how local television newsmen anoint black community spokespersons, characterize whites as victims and blacks as rioters and fail to place the disturbances within the context of and decades of civic neglect. This film reminds us that twenty-five years after the Kerner report decried media prejudice, news reporting remains very much a white view of black realities.
- Tony Brown's JournalTony Brown's Journal is a PBS American talk show hosted by conservative journalist Tony Brown. The program, which began in 1978, was the successor to the series Black Journal, which had aired on the television network's NET and then PBS since 1968 and was produced and hosted by Brown from 1970.
- Untold. Ethel Payne : first lady of the Black pressIf you could put the President on the spot, what question would you ask? As the First Lady of the Black Press, Ethel Payne wielded her first amendment right to ask the tough questions and hold those in power to account.