In spite of the historical conditions of poverty, illiteracy, and
fear that have prevailed in Mississippi, blacks in the state have
struggled to create a viable press that would record their world
view. From Reconstruction to the present, the black press has been
a major institution in the effort to secure freedom and equality.
This work, the first complete treatment of the journalism
experience of blacks in a single state, documents all the known
examples of the black press in Mississippi from 1865 to 1985,
including newspapers, newsletters, magazines, and radio and
television. Born during slavery - when blacks exchanged information
through music, myth, and religion - and growing out of necessity
during the Civil War, the black press in Mississippi developed into
a conservative, marginally relevant institution by the turn of the
century. Julius Thompson examines its period of vigorous growth in
the twenties, its decline during the depression, and its precarious
balance in the 1960s: if black press publications and reporters
appeared to be too conservative, the civil rights movement
denounced them; if they appeared to be too radical, the police, Ku
Klux Klan, and White Citizens' Council abused them, sometimes with
arson, bombings, or beatings. All black journalists had reason to
fear the state's Sovereignty Commission, which could and did curb
and coerce the press. Though more black newspapers existed in the
state in the 1960s than at any time since the twenties, the decade
of struggle took its toll. With the death of Martin Luther King and
the freedom movement's geographic shift to the North, the era gave
way to disillusionment in the seventies. The black press in
Mississippi continuesto struggle, week by week, to stay afloat,
Thompson says, while the white press - competing successfully for
advertising dollars - maintains a generally conservative stance on
the social, political, and economic matters of greatest interest to
blacks. He concludes that the challenge that confronted the black
press in the last century looms into the next.
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