Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 6
A Snapshot of Anti-Black Harms
MEDIA AND RACE IN EACH CENTURY
1704
1957
The Boston News-Letter, the nation’s first
continuously published newspaper, is the first paper
involved in the slave trade: It runs a slave ad less
than a month after its founding. The ad, from a local
merchant, seeks a purchaser of “two Negro men” and
a “Negro Woman & Child.” The paper’s publisher, John
Campbell, acts as a broker.
1898
In
North Carolina,
the white-supremacist
publisher and editor of Raleigh’s
Observer,
WLBT-TV, an NBC affiliate, and receives
free airtime since the station’s general
manager is a member of the Council. The
program also receives funding from the
Mississippi state government — which
means that taxpayer dollars from Black
residents help subsidize it.
News &
Josephus Daniels, helps lead a coup
that overthrows Wilmington’s multiracial government
— the only armed overthrow of a local government in
the nation’s history.
1917
After a white policeman attacks a Black woman in
Houston, a riot that kills at least 15 people ensues.
A Black newspaper, The San Antonio
Inquirer, publishes a letter from a Black
woman who praises Black soldiers
involved in the riot.
The government arrests G.W. Bouldin, the paper’s
editor, and charges him with espionage — even though
he was out of town when the letter was published.
In 1919, he receives a two-year prison sentence and
spends about a year incarcerated. Meanwhile, 13 Black
soldiers who participated in the riot are hung, and 41
other soldiers are given life sentences.
6
In Jackson, Mississippi,
the White Citizens’ Council
produces a TV program —
Citizens’ Council Forum
— to “thwart” the fight for
integration. The program airs on
WWW.MEDIA2070.ORG
1995
The Republican-controlled
Congress passes legislation that
ends the FCC’s minority taxcertificate program — which since
1978 had helped increase broadcaststation ownership by people of color from
less than 1 percent to 3 percent.
2017
A Color Of Change and Family Story
Black families
represent 59 percent of
stories about poverty in news
study finds that
and
opinion outlets like CNN and Fox News —
even though they make up just 27 percent
of poor families in the country.