The posting online this winter of some 1 million newspaper articles published over the past century in the historic AFRO-American newspaper is being hailed by academics as a major development in expanding the general public’s grasp of Black life in America largely ignored by non-minority focused news organizations for decades.
“This is a big deal,” says Howard University history professor Dr. Daryl Michael Scott. “The Afro-American was a chronicle of Black life in the 20th century. Its writers were very in touch with national issues and the power players coming out of Washington. You can’t get any bigger than this. It’s like The New York Times putting all of its archives on line for free.”
The online archives represent the completion of a 10-year project between the Afro-American and Google. Previously limited by its scarce availability on microfilm, taking the archive online will offer users a gold mine of historical insight.
The Web site, www.afro.com/archives, marks the first time a historically Black newspaper has placed its archives online with free access to the public, said publisher and attorney Jake Oliver, great grandson of the publishing company’s founder, John Murphy.
The archive, drawn from the pages of the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., issues of the newspaper, offers a Black perspective on stories that were either ignored by the mainstream press or were reported with a biased, anti-Black slant. Among the stories are some of the seminal moments in Black history, including accounts of the Scottsboro Boys Trial, the Tuskegee Airmen and coverage of the Little Rock Nine.
The paper frequently published a Klan Watch series, detailing the lynching of Blacks in the South, including who was killed and, often, how. There were stories protesting racial segregation in the military and detailed reports from Italy during World War II about the comings and goings of Black American soldiers stationed there.
Oliver says the online posting of the archive is near completion and, when done, will include nearly all of the AFRO’s back issues, including those of its Richmond and Philadelphia editions.
