by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is about Freedom’s Journal, the first Black-owned newspaper founded in 1827 #onthisday by Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm. It’s based on the Wednesday, March 16 entry from the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022:
You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):
SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Wednesday, March 16th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing. It’s in the category of Black Firsts we call, “It’s About Time”:
Fed up with reading racist commentary in the 19th century mainstream press, Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm started their own paper – Freedom’s Journal.
Founded March 16, 1827, in New York City — the same year New York State abolished slavery — the four-page weekly was the first Black-owned newspaper in the United States.
It denounced slavery and lynchings, advocated for voting rights, covered international news and celebrated Black achievements.
Although Freedom’s Journal folded in 1829, shortly before Russwurm emigrated to Liberia, its two-year existence helped spawn at least 40 similar papers over the next four decades and kicked off the long standing, time-honored tradition of the Black Press in America.
To learn more about Freedom’s Journal, you can check out the digitized archive of all 103 issues of the paper on wisconsinhistory.org, as well as other sources provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing. Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
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Sources:
- https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/newbios/nwsppr/freedom/freedom.html
- https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030455/
- https://americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/items/show/93
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/3559045
- https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/bios/samuel-cornish.html
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Freedoms-Journal#ref1200859
- https://maap.columbia.edu/place/29.html
- https://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/subject-guides/africana-resources/john-brown-russwurm/index.shtml
- https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.252
[Photo: Samuel E. Cornish, l, John B. Russwurm, r, via uniquecoloring.com]
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