by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Sick and tired of having to constantly read racist commentary in the mainstream press of the United States, free Black Americans Rev. Samuel E. Cornish andJohn B. Russwurm started their own paper – Freedom’s Journal.
First published on 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 of record in the United States. At its zenith, Freedom’s Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada.
In addition to covering general news and current events, Freedom’s Journal included editorials denouncing slavery, lynchings and challenged the racist attacks against Black people that appeared in other newspapers.
The paper also contained articles advocating for voting rights, repatriation of Blacks to Africa, covered international news, celebrated Black achievements, offered biographies of prominent African Americans and published vital record listings of births, deaths and marriages in the African-American New York community.
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 linked above and below.
On a January evening in 1988, Doug Williams became first Black quarterback in the National Football League to both start and win a Super Bowl. Williams’ performance leading the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) in Super Bowl XXII remains one of the most significant moments in sports history, a triumph that resonated far beyond the gridiron.
Born August 9, 1955, in Zachary, Louisiana, Williams grew up in an era when the very idea of a Black quarterback leading an NFL team seemed impossible. He honed his skills at Grambling State University from 1974 to 1977, playing under legendary coach Eddie Robinson. At Grambling, Williams passed for over 8,000 yards and 93 touchdowns, leading the Tigers to three Black College National Championships and finishing fourth in Heisman Trophy voting in 1977.
In 1978, Williams made history when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected him 17th overall, making him the first Black quarterback drafted in the first round. Over five seasons with Tampa Bay, he led the team to the playoffs three times, including an NFC Championship Game appearance in 1979.
Despite his success, Williams was significantly underpaid compared to his white counterparts, a disparity he later attributed to racism. After a brief stint in the now-defunct USFL (United States Football League), Williams joined Washington’s team in 1986 as a backup QB. When head coach Joe Gibbs named him the starter for the 1987 playoffs, few could have predicted the historic performance that would follow.
In Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos, Williams delivered one of the greatest quarters in football history, throwing four touchdown passes in the second quarter alone. He finished with 340 passing yards and led his team to a commanding 42-10 victory, earning Super Bowl MVP honors.
When a reporter at Media Day asked Williams, “How long have you been a Black quarterback?” he famously responded, “I’ve been a quarterback since high school, and I’ve been Black all my life.”
Following his historic Super Bowl XXII win, Williams continued playing for Washington through the 1989 season, though injuries limited his playing time in subsequent years. After retiring as a player, Williams transitioned into coaching and personnel roles.
He returned to his alma mater Grambling, serving as head coach (1998-2003, 2011-2013), where he won four Southwestern Athletic Conference championships. In 2010, Williams helped establish the Black College Football Hall of Fame, ensuring that the achievements of HBCU athletes would be properly honored and remembered.
In 2024, Williams was selected as the American Football Coaches Association‘s recipient of the Trailblazer Award as one of the most storied “G-Men” in the history of Grambling State’s program.
After a stint in the NFL as a personnel executive with Tampa Bay, Williams eventually rejoined the Washington franchise in various front office capacities, and currently serves as senior advisor to the Commanders. In a full-circle moment, his son D.J. Williams was named the team’s quarterbacks coach in January 2026.
*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.
Nicknames in the Old West had to be earned, not given. “Stagecoach Mary” was no exception. In 1895, “Stagecoach Mary” Fields became the first Black woman contracted by the postal service to deliver the U.S. mail. With her guns and tough demeanor, Fields unfailingly protected her stagecoach and her mail route from wolves and bandits alike.
Born enslaved in Tennessee in the early 1830s, once Fields was emancipated at the the end of the Civil War, she traveled around working odd jobs until she eventually made her way to a convent in Toledo, Ohio, working as a groundskeeper and game hunter, and eventually moved to Cascade, Montana and did the same at a different convent.
After clashing with several nuns who objected to her smoking, drinking and gun-toting gruffness, Fields accepted a donated stagecoach from a sympathetic Mother Superior and used it to pursue a new line of work in Cascade.
Mary never missed a day in the eight years she had her postal route – when she couldn’t drive her stagecoach through the snow, she would don snowshoes and trek to deliver the mail. After retiring from her postal service, Mary established her own laundry business in town. She died in 1914 and is buried in Cascade.
*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.
You may have heard of Black astronauts like Mae Jemison, Charles Bolden or Victor Glover, but do you know about the first African-American astronauts or what they contributed to NASA’s space program?
Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory were the first three African-Americans in space. They were also NASA classmates in its famous “Class of 1978” – the first class to train women as astronauts (Sally Ride) as well as the first Asian-American man (Ellison Onizuka).
Guy Bluford graduated from Penn State and joined the Air Force in 1964 to become a pilot. Bluford was deployed to Vietnam and flew over 140 combat missions. After Vietnam, Bluford remained in the Air Force, using his skills to train future fighter pilots. In the 1970s, Bluford earned advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and eventually became chief of the Air Force’s aerospace laboratory.
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, one of the unsung champions of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was the only woman to serve as Executive Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC) and was known for her verve and willingness to take on anything or anyone.
Kwame Ture (fka Stokely Carmichael, one of the original SNCC Freedom Riders) once said of Ruby, “She was convinced that there was nothing that she could not do… she was a tower of strength.”
Ruby was arrested several times and served 100 days in prison, voluntarily adopting SNCC’s “Jail-no-Bail” strategy to keep bail money from further funding racist police departments.
Ruby participated in multiple sit-ins in Atlanta as part of the Atlanta Student Movement while she attended Spelman College, joined the Freedom Riders, was attacked and beaten in Montgomery, and in Atlanta worked to integrate hospitals after lunch counters were successfully desegregated.
At one hospital demonstration, the receptionist told Ruby and her fellow protestors to leave when they came through the white hospital entrance. “Besides you’re not sick anyway,” the receptionist added. Ruby walked right up to the desk, looked the receptionist in the eye, then vomited on the counter and retorted, “Is that sick enough for you?”
Former SNCC leader and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond remembered that when SNCC staff was preparing to board a plane for Africa in 1964 to observe the success of the nonviolence technique, an airline representative told them the plane was overbooked, they were being bumped and would have to take a later flight. This angered Smith-Robinson so much that without consulting the rest of the group she went and sat down in the jetway and refused to move. (They were given seats on the original flight.)
Smith-Robinson also created theSojourner Truth Motor Fleet for SNCC to make sure the field staff always had cars available.
Only one year after Ruby succeeded James Forman as SNCC’s Executive Secretary, she died from cancer at 25 – a devastating loss to her movement colleagues and SNCC itself. On the headstone at her Atlanta grave site are words appropriate for both her life and SNCC: “If you think free, you are free.”
In 2017, Smith-Robinson’s nieceKeisha Lance Bottoms was elected Mayor of Atlanta.
*[This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]
[*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History” founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]
Robert Smalls was the first Black man elected to U.S. Congress during Reconstruction, but of course his incredible story and accomplishments did not begin there. Smalls was born into slavey in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina and started his journey to national prominence by daring to escape slavery during the Civil War.
Smalls, like many other enslaved people, was made to work for the Confederate forces. Menial labor such as grave digging, cooking, digging trenches, etc. were the most common jobs, but some enslaved people were used in skilled labor positions. Smalls, who could navigate the waters in and around Charleston, was used to guide transport ships for the Confederate Navy.
On May 13, 1862, Smalls convinced several other enslaved people to help him commandeer a Confederate transport ship, the CSS Planter, in Charleston Harbor. Smalls, in a captain hat and using Confederate hand signals, sailed from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. Naval blockade. By doing so, Smalls gained freedom for himself, several other enslaved people and also for his family.
Illus. in: Harper’s Weekly, v. 6, 1862 June 14, p. 372. (via PICRYL Public Domain)
Smalls’ example of cunning and bravery helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept Black soldiers into the U.S. Army and Navy. Smalls became Captain of the same boat for the Union Navy and helped free enslaved peoples as he fought and outwitted the Confederate Navy several more times during the duration of the War.
After the South surrendered, Smalls returned to Beaufort, S.C. and purchased his enslaver’s house, which was seized by the Union in 1863. His enslaver sued to get it back, but lost in court to Smalls.
Smalls learned to read and write during this time, and after going into business to service the needs of freedmen, Smalls was elected to the State House of South Carolina. While there, Smalls authored state legislation to provide South Carolina with the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He also founded the Republican Party of South Carolina.
In 1874, Smalls was elected the first Black member of U.S. Congress. In backlash to his election, his opposers began gerrymandering across South Carolina to start tilting seats back to white men.
Conservative Southern Bourbon Democrats, who called themselves the Redeemers, also resorted to violence and election fraud to regain control of the South Carolina state legislature. As part of wide-ranging white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years prior in connection with the awarding of a printing contract.
Smalls was pardoned as part of an agreement by which charges were also dropped against Democrats accused of election fraud. But the scandal took a political toll, and Smalls was defeated by Democrat George D. Tillman in the senate election in 1878, and again, narrowly, in 1880. Smalls successfully contested the 1880 result and regained the seat in 1882.
In 1884 he was elected to fill a seat in a different district. He was nominated for Senate but defeated by Wade Hampton in 1886. Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75 and was buried in his family’s plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort.
According to curators at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smalls’ family went on to be very successful, and there is a Robert Smalls lecture at the University of South Carolina every year.
The monument to Smalls in the churchyard is inscribed with a statement he made to the South Carolina legislature in 1895:
My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.
Born in 1875 in Virginia to formerly enslaved parents who were never taught to read and write, Carter G. Woodson often had to forgo school for farm or mining work to make ends meet, but was encouraged to learn independently and eventually earned advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Harvard.
It was at these lauded institutions of higher education where Dr. Woodson began to realize these new educational opportunities for Negroes were potentially as damaging as they were helpful, if not more so, as much of the curriculum was biased and steeped in white supremacy.
In 1916, Dr. Woodson helped found the Journal of Negro History with Jesse E. Moreland, intent on providing scholarly records and analysis of all aspects of the African-American experience that were lacking in his collegiate studies.
As Dr. Woodson researched and chronicled civilizations in Africa and their historical advancements in mathematics, science, language and literature that were rarely discussed in academic circles, he also criticized the systematic ways Black people post-Civil War were being “educated” into subjugation and self-oppression:
“The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race.”
In 1926, Dr. Woodson began promoting the second week of February as Negro History Week. He chose this week in February intentionally, as it overlapped the birthdays of abolitionist activist Frederick Douglass (February 14) and President Abraham Lincoln (February 12) aka “The Great Emancipator.”
“Donayle Lunawas the first Black woman to be on the cover of Vogue. Why don’t we know more about her?”
This pointed question from the recently released trailer for Donyale Luna: Super Model will hopefully no longer be relevant after the feature-length documentary about Luna’s life and career debuts on HBO September 13.
Born Peggy Anne Freeman in Detroit, Donyale Luna went on to revolutionize the fashion industry in the 1960s and 1970s, becoming the muse to some of the foremost photographers of the 20th century until her untimely death at the age of 33 in 1979.
Though Luna was one of the first Black models who graced the covers of both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in Europe, today, most people have never heard of her.
Directed by Nailah Jefferson, produced by Melissa Kramer, Isoul H. Harris, Melanie Sharee and executive produced by Jonathan Chinn, Simon Chinn, Jeff Friday, Dream Cazzaniga, participants in the doc include Luna’s daughter, Dream Cazzaniga, husband, Luigi Cazzaniga, supermodels Beverly Johnson and Pat Cleveland; Vogue global editor-at-large Hamish Bowles; photographers David Bailey, David McCabe, and Gideon Lewin; and many more.
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN founder and Editor-in-Chief
Well, here we are, once again. Forty seven years after February was officially recognized by the U.S. government as Black History Month, and ninety seven years after Negro History Weekwas founded by Carter G. Woodson, “The Father of Black History.”
We are also, once again, deeply distressed by the murder of a young Black person (Tyre Nichols) at the hands of police officers. The fact that the officers and the police chief are Black this time around doesn’t complicate but instead amplifies the grotesque, stark, ironically colorblind reality of systemic racism — it is a pernicious construct of power and oppression that can be upheld or enforced by anyone of any color or gender or creed.
So, how do we reconcile the two — the celebration of Black people and their achievements while constantly experiencing injustice, inequity and increasingly, erasure?
As Editor-in-Chief of Good Black News, a site which for over a decade has literally been dedicated year-round to the celebration of Black people and their achievements, I have been wrestling with this question for a while, particularly in the last eight months.
After the murder of 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY by a white supremacist in May 2022 and the continued downplaying of racially-based domestic terrorism, I felt depleted and bereft. Of hope, of faith, of purpose. It didn’t seem to matter how much Black people achieved or prospered or protested or suffered in America — we couldn’t even buy our groceries in peace.
And once again, the narrative of the “lone, mentally unstable shooter” was trotted out. One person was (rightfully) punished, but the racist political and economic system he embraced in its most violent extreme? It remained (and remains) steadfastly in place. As did the onus remain on the shoulders of Black people to be seen as worthy of basic human rights.
America quickly got back to the business of forgetting and moving on, even after experiencing only two years before what seemed like a watershed moment of racial reckoning after the police murder of George Floyd.
But here were are again today, literally TODAY, with civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump saying during his call to action during Tyre Nichols’ funeral: “Why couldn’t they see the humanity in Tyre?… We have to make sure they see us as human beings worthy of respect and justice!”
We do?
I’ll admit in many ways, I understand where Crump is coming from. “Show the humanity” has essentially been the GBN operating philosophy since 2010 — to create a site and space where we can see and celebrate our humanity, while offering access to anyone else who wants to take a gander.
But now, in 2023, I must push myself to dig deeper and firmly challenge why it should it ever be the responsibility of any human being to convince any other human being of their humanity. To state the obvious, once, and for all:
BLACK PEOPLE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.
If the words above are not inherently understood to be true, why is that? Why does this have to be shown? Proven? Over and over and over again?
My answer, also obvious, is that they don’t. Not ever.
So, while I absolutely respect and still intend to celebrate the legacies of people such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poitier and the like, going forward I also need for GBN’s Black History Month and GBN in general to engage more actively in the interrogation and disempowering any systems, institutions or public policies that do not recognize or uphold this truth and all the basic rights that should flow from it (e.g. respect, freedom, safety, equality).
Maybe I’m not giving enough credit to GBN in its past and present form — I acknowledge that GBN has been helpful and appreciated by many for the way we offer information via the lens of celebration and positivity.
What I’m aiming to add to our existing ethos is more critical thinking and opinion about cultural topics and cultural content, boosting political, economic and social policies that are truly about protecting, serving and uplifting Black people, and working to upend those that don’t.
The College Board creates and administers the AP program. Join us in demanding that they:
Reject the narrow interpretation of Florida law that contradicts principles of academic freedom and autonomy in determining what to teach in classrooms.
Take swift action to make sure Florida does not modify the curriculum of the proposed AP African-American Studies course designed with the help of respected Black scholars, but rather, maintains the integrity of the proposed curriculum.
Florida’s current agenda of political interference in the AP African American studies curriculum directly conflicts with the values of equity, fairness, and justice. Our students deserve better.
Additionally, I want to highlight Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Projectseries now streaming on Hulu as well as promote the excellent “Intersectionality Matters” podcast by law professor Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw whose name is among the writers expunged from the AP African American studies curriculum.
I also want to give props to Beyoncéfor officially announcing her 2023 Renaissance World Tour! A definite bright spot on this first day of Black History Month, the efforts Beyoncé and her team are making via the Verified Fan system and its tiers of engagement (first priority given to the BeyHive!) to ensure real fans get access to tickets over usurious resale entities is for sure worth a shout out.
Frankly, I am tired of us being caught out there, and I want GBN to do more, offer more, share more and speak out more. In our tweets, reels, stories, posts, playlists, comments — however.
Maybe I’ll get it wrong sometimes, but with deep love for this community as my true north, may my faith, purpose and hope never again be broken.
In Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos, Williams delivered one of the greatest quarters in football history, throwing four touchdown passes in the second quarter alone. He finished with 340 passing yards and led his team to a commanding 42-10 victory, earning Super Bowl MVP honors.
Social scientist and dean of largest University faculty excited to seize “moment of possibility.”