First Black Daily Newspaper Founded
by: Dr. Clint Wilson
Thirty-seven years after the first Black newspaper in America was founded in New York City (Freedom’s Journal, 1827) the Black press reached another milestone with the launching of the New Orleans Tribune, destined to become the race’s first daily news publication.
The Tribune’s roots can be traced to another landmark event that saw the first Black newspaper published in the South. That was L’Union (the Union) a paper published in both French and English beginning in 1862 during the Civil War.
After L’Union ceased publication in 1864, Dr. Louis C. Roudanez, a wealthy Black physician, bought its printing equipment and issued another bilingual newspaper called La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orleans – the New Orleans Tribune. The Tribune debuted on July 21, 1864 as a tri-weekly and became a daily organ in October that year.
The Tribune was a champion of equal rights for Blacks and called for an end to discrimination in employment, education and voting privileges. Dr. Roudanez was vice-president of New Orleans’ Freedmen’s Aid Association and the following excerpt from the Tribune attests to its work.
“The Freedmen’s Aid Association will meet this evening, and will have under consideration several important propositions. Up to this time the interests of freedmen or more generally of the colored people have been very imperfectly protected. Efforts have been made by the competent authorities; but however sincere these efforts were, they have not been adequate to the urgency and the difficulties of the situation. All over the state, the Freedmen are threatened in their lives, robbed of their liberties and deprived of the fruits of their toils and labor.
… In many parts of the state, a system of terror has been inaugurated, to keep down the Freedmen; several have already been murdered and many more will be if we do not resist. The right of self-defense is a sacred right. We read in the American Constitution that it is an immunity of its citizens of the Republic that they can bear arms. Assassins are not brave; and a few cases of self-defense followed by the punishment of the would-be murderers, would be sufficient to plunge into a solitary terror the slavocrats of the parishes. These people must be taught to respect the lives of their fellow citizens. But, to avert the recurrence of murder and ambush it would probably be sufficient to send a few companies of colored troops into the worst parishes. The presence of our armed brethren, wearing the United States uniform, would do a great deal toward bringing the slaveholders to their senses. The black regiments carry with them the vivid and forcible image of the revolution, i.e. of the elevation of the downtrodden race to the level of citizens . . .”
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