Building the Black Press is a digital history project about the Black press and the built environment. It focuses on the editorial offices, corporate headquarters and production spaces used by Black-owned and Black-oriented publications from the 19th century to the present day.
This project argues that Black press buildings matter - as sites of historic protest and identity formation, as symbols of Black pride and business success, and as windows into the fluid and often fraught relationship between space, place and race in the modern city.
This project understands the term "Black Press" in a broad sense - one centered on weekly Black 'legacy' newspapers, but which also includes Black consumer magazines, alternative, radical or dissident Black periodicals, and born-digital publications.
It is predominantly, although not exclusively, focused on the Black press in the United States.
This project argues that Black press buildings matter - as sites of historic protest and identity formation, as symbols of Black pride and business success, and as windows into the fluid and often fraught relationship between space, place and race in the modern city.
This project understands the term "Black Press" in a broad sense - one centered on weekly Black 'legacy' newspapers, but which also includes Black consumer magazines, alternative, radical or dissident Black periodicals, and born-digital publications.
It is predominantly, although not exclusively, focused on the Black press in the United States.
Background image:
Negro Newspaper Listings, Negro Affairs Division, Washington, D.C., 1937
Negro Newspaper Listings, Negro Affairs Division, Washington, D.C., 1937
