HONC 320: Slavery and Race in the Americas

Hundreds of titles—all expertly selected from leading repositories. African American Newspapers was created from the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the world. Titles in Series 1 come from the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress, while titles in Series 2 come from the American Antiquarian Society, Center for Research Libraries, the Library of Congress, and New York Public Library. All selections were guided by James Danky, editor of the monumental African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography.

A Richly Detailed Record of the African American Past
African American Newspapers 1827-1998, offers researchers invaluable primary sources for such diverse disciplines as cultural, literary and social history; ethnic studies; and more. Users can compare and contrast African American views on practically every major theme of the American past.

Coverage spans life in the Antebellum South; the spread of abolitionism; growth of the Black church; the Emancipation Proclamation; the Jim Crow Era; the Great Migration to northern cities, the West and Midwest in search of greater opportunity; rise of the NAACP; the Harlem Renaissance; the civil rights movement; political and economic empowerment; and more. Teachers and students will find firsthand perspectives on notable Americans from Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as obituaries, advertisements, editorials and illustrations.

Notable Titles
Afro-Hawaii News (Honolulu, HI)
In addition to starting the 50th state’s first African American newspaper, Afro-Hawaii News founder Howard “Stretch” Johnson spearheaded a campaign to end segregation in Major League Baseball, fought for a state holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. and created the Afro-American Leadership Coalition.
• Includes 55 issues published between 1987 and 1991

Alaska Spotlight (Anchorage, AK)
Following World War II, development and population boomed in Alaska. To give the black community there a voice and an identity, publisher George Anderson created the Spotlight and continued to run it until his death.
• Includes 12 issues published between 1956 and 1968

The Appeal (St. Paul, MN)
One of the leading African American newspapers in the country by the end of the 19th century, the Appeal was reprinted in five states.
• Includes 1,086 issues published between 1903 and 1923

The Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, AR)
Published by civil-rights leader Daisy Bates, the State Press provided unequaled coverage of the 1957 desegregation crisis at Little Rock’s Central High School
• Includes 896 issues published between 1941 and 1959

The Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, UT & Chicago, IL)
Editor Julius Taylor, who founded this Democratic weekly at a time when most African Americans were affiliated with the Republican Party, earned many rivals through his active and outspoken editorials, which were likely to employ such epithets as calling a fellow editor a “pale-faced two-legged dung-hill rooster.”
• Includes 203 issues published between 1895 and 1899

The Cleveland Gazette (Cleveland, OH)
Nicknamed “The Old Reliable” for never missing a Saturday publication in 58 years, the Gazette’s causes mirrored those of managing editor Harry C. Smith. Over the years, Smith used his paper’s influence to argue against segregated schools, minstrel shows and the last of Ohio’s “Black Laws” and for college education and Republican policies. One of the most powerful voices against segregation, the Gazette was the country’s longest running African-American newspaper by World War I.
• Includes 2,588 issues published between 1883 and 1945

Freedom’s Journal (New York, NY)
As the first African-American newspaper published in the United States, the Journal provided regional, national and international information on current events; contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching and other injustices; published biographies of prominent African Americans; and included birth, death and marriage notices as well as job listings in New York’s African American community. Despite its brief run, the Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe and Canada.
• Includes 103 issues published between 1827 and 1829

The Freeman (Indianapolis, IN)
Called “the Harper’s Weekly of the Black Press” the influential Freeman was the first illustrated African-American newspaper.
• Includes 1,458 issues published between 1888 and 1916

The Langston City Herald (Langston City, OK)
Herald founder E.P. McCabe also co-founded the all-black community of Langston, and used his widely-circulated newspaper to expand African American migration to the area. The paper promoted Langston as a refuge for African Americans fleeing persecution in the South and encouraged enterprising families to stake out homesteads on the fertile prairie.
• Includes 56 issues published between 1891 and 1893

The New York Age (New York, NY)
One of the most important African American newspapers in history, the Age features W.E.B. Du Bois’ first publication—a letter to editor T. Thomas Fortune, whose career intersected with that of Du Bois on numerous occasions.
• Includes 126 issues published between 1889 and 1892

The Richmond Planet (Richmond, VA)
Lawyer Edwin Archer Randolph founded the Richmond Planet in 1883, but within a year, the newspaper was in the red and on the verge of collapse. It was resurrected by John Mitchell, Jr. and a group of black teachers who had been fired from the Virginia Public School system. Mitchell, the son of former slaves, helped bring the Planet to the zenith of its popularity in 1895 when he aggressively covered the trial of three black women charged with the murder of a white woman. When the prosecution eventually dropped the charges, the Planet’s role in the outcome was widely acknowledged.
• Includes 7 issues published between 1885 and 1900

L'Union/Union (New Orleans, LA)
L'Union was a tri-weekly, bi-lingual French and English title published in New Orleans in the years immediately after the port city was liberated by Union troops. It provided an astonishing array of political and literary information aimed toward the city’s cultured black population.
• Includes 96 issues published between 1862 and 1864

The Washington Bee (Washington, DC)
The boldest of several D.C. titles during this period, the Bee’s motto was “Stings for our enemies, honey for our friends.” This widely influential paper was read by African Americans around the world.
• Includes 1,926 issues published between 1882 and 1922

Wisconsin Afro-American/Northwestern Recorder (Milwaukee, WI)
Although this pioneering black title in an overwhelmingly white state didn’t last for long, its mission to solidify the fledgling African American community and attract impoverished southern sharecroppers to the industrial opportunities of the north was carried on by future papers.
• Includes 11 issues published between 1892 and 1893

On Campus Link

For Scholarship, Study, and Personal Research

For academic scholarship, the collection will have broad departmental relevance, showing the personal stories and photos of immigrants, laborers, and newsmakers; documenting the local architecture of homes and businesses; showing images of racism and tolerance; delivering history as observed in real time. The photos are from historical societies, archives, and private collections. The texts are written by local historians—people with deep and personal knowledge of their communities. In many instances, the authors are protagonists in the historical events they describe, with family photographs, primary documents, and other materials that are inaccessible outside of these publications.

Examples of academic disciplines served include:

Sports history, recreation—Major leagues, local teams, and their influences on communities: Metro Detroit Boxing; Gold in the Ozarks; Central Park Zoo; New York City Vaudeville; New York Giants; Hockey in Providence
Architecture and urban studies—How spaces were used in the past: Lost Ann Arbor; Cemeteries Around Lake Winnipesaukee; Railroad Depots of West Central Ohio
Race and gender—Italians in Detroit; Jewish Community of North Minneapolis; The Chinese Community of Stockton; An Oral History of Tahlequah and The Cherokee Nation
Labor and organizational history—Army, Coast Guard, canal workers, nurses, police departments, fire departments, unions, factory conditions: Firefighting in Frederick; Fairchild Aircraft; The Long Island Railroad; Straub Brewery; WNAX 570 Radio
War—New Hampshire in the Civil War; Cincinnati: The World War II years
Religion—The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh

New Tools for Search and Discovery

Alexander Street has indexed the books using a new thesaurus created specifically for this collection. Places, people, dates, events, architectural features, and ethnicities are some of the index terms, making searches such as these easy:

Find African American schools in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Find pictures of coal miners in Kentucky and Virginia from 1900 to 1950.
Find examples of neocolonial architecture in the Northeast and Southwest.
Find pictures and descriptions of college football games in Nebraska in the 1950s.
Find depictions of the Irish American community in Youngstown, Ohio. In all of the Midwest. Compared to the Italian-American communities in these areas.
Find Jewish butchers in Chicago in the 1920s.

On-Campus Link

In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.

This scholarly collection offers unmatched full text coverage of information in many areas of academic study including: animal science, anthropology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic & multicultural studies, food science & technology, general science, geography, geology, law, materials science, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, pharmaceutical sciences, physics, psychology, religion & theology, veterinary science, women's studies, zoology, and many other fields.

Academic Search Complete offers critical information from many sources unique to this massive collection. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals.

On Campus Link

Questions and Answers:

Does Fusion include everything the library has?
No, but it includes so much of what the library has that it will almost always be a good place to start a search.

When would Fusion not make sense as the first place to search?
Some examples:

• If you’re interested in finding only books, or a specific book title, then our library catalog Ignacio might be a more appropriate place to begin.
• If you’re looking specifically for statistical data, or encyclopedia/dictionary entries, or images, it would be better to use databases devoted to those specific types of information.
• If you're looking for a specific Journal title, you should use our Journal Finder.
• I’m very proficient using the subject-specific databases in my field. Is there any reason I should use Fusion?
• Because Fusion will have such broad coverage, it may locate relevant materials published in other fields that you wouldn’t otherwise find in a subject-specific database.

So then why would I want to choose a subject-specific database anymore—can I just use Fusion instead?
Fusion is not replacing any of our subject-specific databases. These databases offer valuable advanced searching capabilities tailored to their subject areas.

On-Campus Link

Using ebooks

On-Campus Link

Includes titles from leading university presses such as Oxford University Press, State University of New York Press, Cambridge University Press, University of California Press, MIT Press, Harvard University Press and many others. Additional academic publishers include Elsevier Ltd.; Brill Academic Publishers; Taylor & Francis Ltd; Sage Publications, Ltd. and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Using ebooks

On-Campus Link