Recent Library Acquisitions

The UC Libraries, in partnership with the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, have acquired digital editions of the two most influential African-American newspapers of the 20th century: the Chicago Defender (coverage: 1910-1975) and the Pittsburgh Courier (coverage: 1911-2002).

Writing about the Chicago Defender, Nikki Taylor, associate professor of history, likens it to “the closest thing to a national paper for African Americans. The Defender is the most significant newspaper in African-American life and history in the 20th century. It provided a space where African Americans could highlight their accomplishments and educate one another about jobs, opportunities, politics, and citizenship.” She added that, “the Defender played a central role in the migration of hundreds of thousands of African Americans to northern cities. In addition, the sheer volume of letters published by African-American servicemen in WWII mobilized civilians to demand that the government extend equal opportunities to African-American military personnel.”

Of the Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier, Tracy Teslow, assistant professor of history, writes that they “attracted some of the most talented black journalists and scholars of their day, including such eminent figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, George Schuyler, and J.A. Rogers. These newspapers include a wide variety of social, political, and economic issues, in addition to short stories, serialized fiction, and cartoons.”

Echoing the richness and variety of these two newspapers, Theresa Leininger-Miller, associate professor of art history, speaks to their importance in conducting the research for her book about the sculptor Augusta Savage: “I could not write this manuscript without the information from these newspapers. Having the database available locally for me, my colleagues, and our students will allow us to produce better-informed scholarship more quickly, and allow us to remain competitive as a research institution.”

The contrast between coverage of events by the white majority press and the African-American minority press is tellingly illustrated by research by Stephen Porter, assistant professor of history, of an episode from the 1950s. Largely ignored by the New York Times and other mainstream papers and magazines, but extensively covered by the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier, an “international firestorm that deeply embarrassed American diplomats” was created when a young Hungarian refugee crossed the color line to enter a historically all-black university in South Carolina, “revealed the close connections between America’s domestic racial problems and the country’s geopolitical imperatives during the Cold War.”

The addition of the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier to library holdings complements the online collection African-American Newspapers: 19th Century parts 1-5 (1827-1876) already owned. In addition, they support other collections of historic African-American journals in the library collections, including: Alexander’s Magazine, Colored American Magazine, The Crisis, and Voice of the Negro, as well as more contemporary titles from the African-American press such as the Journal of Negro Education, Journal of Negro History, and Phylon.

The Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier may be accessed by conducting a title search in the Library Catalog available at http://uclid.uc.edu.

Source Index