Race News
Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century
By Fred Carroll.
Champaign, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 2017, 264 pp.
Reviewed by Bill Kovarik
If the greatest single power among African Americans in the 20 th century was the press, then its history certainly deserves more research, and historians will find Fred Carroll’sRace News to be a valuable contribution to a still threadbare historical record.
In a compelling and accessible narrative, Race News tells the story of the political and professional evolution of the African American press and the difficult search for journalistic identity and effectiveness at a crucial moment in history.
The book focuses on four generations of journalists in the early to mid-20 th century, starting with W.E.B Dubois and the Niagara movement and continuing with Harlem Renaissance writers who promoted the ideal of complete social equality. For a time, the African American press flourished in spite of the Depression and wartime censorship. Yet, as it became more important on the national scene, it faced increasing outside pressures and inner turmoil
over ideals and tactics.
A major questionRace News addresses is how members of the African American press managed the conflict between commercial success and middle class respectability, on the one hand, and the more radical agendas of the alternative press on the other. By the 1940s, Carroll argues, the alternative press had essentially won and its ideas were folded into the commercial press. But censorship and white backlash undermined this emerging unanimity, leaving both wings of the African American press struggling to survive as it faced rising costs and media competition that diminished the white press in the 1960s and 70s.
Race News makes a major contribution by placing well known journalists and publishers into a broader mosaic of rapid social change. These include Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois and Robert S. Abbott. Race News also includes stories of long-neglected journalists like J.A. Rogers, John Edward Bruce, Wallace Thurman, and George Schuyler.
Among the compelling stories is that of Ida B. Wells’ investigation of the East St. Louis riots in July 1917, twenty-five years after her first heartbreaking stories about lynchings in Memphis. Wells interviewed black refugees and gave a detailed account of the events leading up to the riot, which killed, she estimated, 40 to 100 people. She learned that community leaders had asked for protection a month before the attacks, and she accused city police and state militia of participating in the riot rather than protecting the people. But, using the war as an excuse, the military censored her work, only part of the story was told. (P 33)
Censors also came after Cyril Briggs following a May, 1918 editorial in the New Amsterdam News that asked why any black man would fight for the US. Forced to leave the News, Briggs startedThe Crusader to promote communist views and “Africa for Africans.” (P 47) And G.W. Bouldin, a black editor in San Antonio, was jailed after writing about the Houston riot of 1918 led to the executions of 19 black soldiers. It was better, he said, “to be shot for having tried to protect a Negro woman than … [to] die fighting to make the world safe for a democracy you can’t enjoy.” (P 37)
After WWI, even occasional attempts at reconciliation did not help. For example, a commission investigating the Chicago riot of 1919 asked the African American press to muffle its militancy and educate their readers about “adjusting themselves … into more harmonious relations with their white neighbors.” (P 43) Race News also chronicles the ongoing national debate in the 1930s and 40s over the pace of change, providing perspective on white conservatives like Westbrook Pegler and Virginius\ Dabney on the one hand and black editors like William Walker of the Cleveland Call and Post on the other. “Appeasement Negroes and dishwater whites” were attempting to destroy the
African American press, Walker warned in 1943, because it was the most formidable weapon in the fight against discrimination and segregation. “Destroy the Negro press,” Walker warned, “and you will destroy Negro progress.” (P 104)
Race News also provides insight into the spectrum of reporting about major national events such as the fights over integration in the South and the assassinations of black leaders showing differences between the commercial and the alternative press. Covering the assassination of Malcolm X, the commercial black press explained his influence as making the work of Martin
Luther King more acceptable. The alternative press, however, reacted with deep sorrow and anger. Liberator publisher Daniel Watts accused the white press of gloating over his death, and warned that the black freedom struggle was doomed unless moderate leaders like King heeded warnings from Malcolm X.
Race News is an essential and thoughtful exploration of a crucial epoch, blending meticulous research into a compelling narrative. Students will be inspired by stories about long neglected journalists and publishers, while historians will appreciate the complex portrait of a fulminating struggle at the heart of the African American experience.