Reginald Owens, chairman of the department of journalism and Louisiana Tech University, visited campus Thursday to discuss how social and environmental factors affected African-American communication and the African-American press.
The role of the African American press today is, as it was, a diverse one, according to Owens. Grasping the cultural and societal context in which African-Americans lived during the inception of the black press is paramount to the understanding of the ideologies and communications which arose among their community.
Owens expressed that the distinctive nature of the African-American press arose in response to the social structures present in their communities. These structures were created by the oppression which burdened African-Americans during the 19th century and beyond.
Factors which Owens found to be particularly influential among African-Americans included high death rates, lack of employment, higher victimization in violent crimes and higher infant mortality rates.
Interestingly, these conditions had a very high correlation with the amount of press put out by the African-American community. That is, the more these factors afflicted them, the greater the role of the “black press” became.
According to Owens the role of the black press in oppressive times was to protest slavery, influence the civic agenda, promote unity and serve as the watchdog to the mainstream media, which at the time was highly critical of the aims of abolitionists.
Owens and his colleagues refer to the black press publications of those times as the “over-ground railroad,” because given the political agenda of the south, these messages of black freedom had to be smuggled into southern territories by train.
“We are all products of our environments,” said Owens.
At the time of the genesis of the first African-American newspaper Freedom’s Journal, slaves underwent some of the harshest conditions they’ve ever had to endure. The advent of the cotton gin and steam engines led to the mechanization of the cotton industry, and the harshness of working conditions slaves were forced to endure only increased.
In 1827, the year that the last slaves became free in the state of New York, New York City became home to the Freedom’s Journal. This publication sought to publicly denounce the egregious stereotypes about African-Americans which commonly depicted them as either blissfully dependent on whites or dangerous to general society. It also served to bring African Americans together as autonomous, productive members of society with a proud common identity.
Although the African American press is of indispensable historical significance, it is by no means a thing of the past. In the United States, there has been a recent resurgence of the black press both in print and online. The aims of the black press today have shifted to dealing with institutionalized racism like job discrimination, racial profiling and voter discrimination.
Keon Pettiway, a doctoral student in the department of communications and social media and former editor for the Nubian Message, said she enjoyed the presentation and the discussion that followed.
Kierra Leggett, Editor-in-Chief of the Nubian Message, said it is easy students today to forget the struggles students here faced in the early 90’s, but it is important for them to remember and consider them. One of the challenges she said her publication faces is being widely acknowledged as a legitimate newspaper which produces relevant interesting stories about African-American society.
Many challenges faced by the black press today involve appealing to African-American’s sense of identity in the digital world and dealing with the volume of information dispersed in this new, digital age.
