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African American newspapers (also known as the Black press or Black newspapers) are news publications in the United States serving African American communities. Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm started the first African American periodical, Freedom's Journal, in 1827. During the antebellum period, other African American newspapers sprang up, such as The North Star, founded in 1847 by Frederick Douglass.
As African Americans moved to urban centers beginning during the Reconstruction era, virtually every large city with a significant African American population had newspapers directed towards African Americans. These newspapers gained audiences outside African American circles. Demographic changes continued with the Great Migration from southern states to northern states from 1910 to 1930 and during the Second Great Migration from 1941 to 1970. In the 21st century, papers (like newspapers of all sorts) have shut down, merged, or shrunk in response to the dominance of the Internet in terms of providing free news and information, and providing cheap advertising.[1][2]
- ^ Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, eds. The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Greenwood, 2001), pp. 216–230. ISBN 978-0313298387
- ^ Simmons, Charles A. The African American press: a history of news coverage during national crises, with special reference to four black newspapers, 1827–1965. McFarland, 2006, p. 2. ISBN 978-0786403875