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ALL THE BLACK PRESS NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT...
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Here is a great little news report from American Newsreel on the Black press in America. It was originally published in 1953 as part of One Tenth of a Nation, a series of newsreels created during 1953 and 1954 which aimed to celebrate "the achievements of Black Americans in a variety of fields." A number of other newsreels in the series are available to view through the Library of Congress' Digital Collections. The quality of the footage isn't great, but it nevertheless provides a rare and illuminating video insight into the comings and goings at a number of the nation's most prominent Black publishing enterprises, including the Baltimore Afro-American, the Los Angeles Sentinel, and Johnson Publishing Company. It's interesting to see how the narrator of this clip links the respective achievements of many publication to their physical plants and offices. This is perhaps most notable through the descriptions of the Johnson Publishing offices at 1820 South Michigan Avenue, which the company had moved into just a few years earlier. "Luxurious editorial offices are eloquent testimony to the success of this publishing venture, but the surroundings don't interfere with business..."
Here are some interesting images of the former Afro-American publishing plant at 628 N. Eutaw Street in Baltimore. The are part of a larger series of photographs included in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), currently housed at the Library of Congress. HABS is a vast archive which documents notable achievements in architecture, engineering and landscape design in the United States, ranging from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Its been going since the early 1930s - part of a set of cooperative agreements between the National Parks Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector - and to date has produced more than half-a-million drawings, photographs, and written histories. Back to the Afro-American building: there is some conflicting data on exactly when the paper vacated the property, but it seems to have occured somewhere between 1990 and 1993. The date at which these images were taken is also unclear, although I would guess it was pretty soon after the newspaper left. From looking on Google Maps it appears that the main building no longer exists, leaving images such among the last memories of a Black publishing plant that was once once of the largest in the nation.     |