Page:The Voice of the Negro 1919 - Robert T. Kerlin - 1920.djvu/17



colored people of America are going to their own papers in these days for the news and for their guidance in thinking. These papers are coming to them from a score of Northern cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland; they are coming to them from the great border cities—Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis; they are coming to them from every Southern city. Wherever in all the land there is a considerable Negro population there is a Negro newspaper. Little Rock has four, Louisville five, Indianapolis six, New York City ten; the State of Georgia has nine, Mississippi nineteen, Illinois eleven, California seven.

To these numbers must be added the publications of churches, societies, and schools. For example, Mississippi has eleven religious weeklies, eight school periodicals, and two lodge papers, making a total, with the nineteen newspapers, of forty periodicals. And all classes of these contain articles on racial strife, outcries against wrongs and persecutions. You cannot take up even a missionary review or a Sunday school quarterly without being confronted by such an outcry.

As for the prosperity of these periodicals there is abundant evidence. As for their influence the evidence is no less. The Negro seems to have newly discovered his fourth estate, to have realized the extraordinary power of his press. Mighty as the pulpit has been with him, the press now seems to be foremost. It is freer than the pulpit, and there is a peculiar authority in printer's ink. His newspaper is the voice of the Negro.

Into every town and village of the land, and into many a log cabin in the mountains, come the colored papers, from all parts of the country, and these papers are read, and passed from hand to hand, and re-read until they are worn out. What do these papers contain? What is their tone, their spirit? How do they report the happenings of the day—the lynchings of Negroes, the riots, or mob-assaults? What manner of