This Hall of Fame highlights African Americans editors from across the country who shaped the black press nationwide. These editors often endured threats of racial violence and censorship, while some even saw their newspapers destroyed and family members murdered. However, they all persevered and helped spread the news of the Civil Rights Movements, both locally and nationally. These men and women are often disregarded in the national narrative of the Civil Rights Movement and understanding their work and the conditions they endured is important to understanding how public opinion was shaped and information was disseminated.
Note: We are currently in the process of acquiring images for each editor. The site will be updated accordingly.
C.A. and W.A. Scott
William Alexander Scott founded the Atlanta Daily World in 1928 on Auburn Ave. in Atlanta, Georgia. By 1932, the Daily World was Atlanta’s only black newspaper and one of the nation’s first daily black newspapers. At the same time, W.A. Scott began the newspaper chain that became the Scott Newspaper Syndicate.
W.A. Scott was shot and killed outside of his home on February 4, 1934. The shooter was never identified. As a result, Cornelius Adolphus Scott, W.A.’s brother, took over the paper and the syndicate. C.A. Scott watched the Daily World and the Scott Newspaper Syndicate grow in regional and national prominence. C.A. Scott managed the Daily World until his retirement in 1997.
Percy Greene
Percy Greene founded the Jackson Advocate in 1938 in Jackson, MS. Greene was a World War I veteran, serving in the still-segregated United States military.
Greene strongly advocated for equal rights and, as a result, faced violent threats from Mississippi politicians, including Governor Theodore Bilbo. However, later in his career Greene would come to oppose aspects of the Civil Rights Movement, believing that segregation should continue, despite desiring equal rights.
Greene envisioned his paper as diametrically different than the rest of the black press. Though his vision conflicted with the black press, he did bring awareness to African Americans’ lives in the Deep South.
Though Greene passed away in 1977, the Jackson Advocate remains active to this day, making it Mississippi’s oldest black newspaper.
Robert Abbott and John Sengstacke
Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Chicago Defender in 1905. Almost immediately, after its inception the Defender played a major role in bringing African Americans from the South to the North during the First Great Migration (1910-1940). Abbott ensured that the Defender was actively distributed across the South, hoping to influence African Americans to move to the North or West, with more opportunities and less overt segregation.
When Abbott passed away in 1940, he left the Defender with his nephew, John Henry Sengstacke. Under Sengstacke the Defender became more nationally prominent, and he founded its sister publications the Michigan Chronicle and Tri-State Defender, in Detroit and Memphis, respectively, and also purchased the influential Pittsburgh Courier in 1966.
During World War II, Sengstacke also worked with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to admit African American reporters into presidential press conferences. He also served on President Truman’s military desegregation committee, after the President desegregated the military with Executive Order 9981 in 1948.
Emory O. Jackson
Emory O. Jackson was the longtime editor of the Birmingham World, owned by the Scott Newspaper Syndicate. Jackson joined the paper in 1934, writing for its sports section before becoming the paper’s editor in 1941.
Jackson briefly left the World during World War II, to join the United States Army, He returned with a desire that African American soldiers could leverage their service into equal rights and he worked to help his fellow veterans obtain their G.I. Bill benefits.
Jackson was also vocal within the Scott Newspaper Syndicate, with his article series, The Tip Off, where he discussed his opinions on the progress of the Civil Rights Movement and segregation in Alabama.
In addition to his work at the World, Jackson was also a prominent voice in Alabama’s NAACP State Conference
Charlotta Bass
Charlotta Bass, was the California Eagle’s owner and editor. The Eagle was located in California and was one of the western United States’ most important and prominent black newspapers. Bass started at the Eagle after moving to California from the east coast. In 1912, after the Eagle’s original owner, John Neimore, passed away Bass became its editor and eventually owned the paper.
Bass focused on social inequality nationwide and in Los Angeles, advocating not only for African Americans, but Mexican and Asian Americans as well.
Bass was a prominent advocate for the Progressive Party and presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace leading up to the 1948 presidential election. In the 1952 presidential election, Bass was the first African American woman to run for vice president alongside the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Vincent Hallinan.
Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells was a prominent investigative journalist during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While working as a schoolteacher, Wells wrote for the Evening Star and The Living Way, two publications in Memphis, covering local African American issues and concerns. In 1889, she joined the Free Speech newspaper where she exposed how inequitable Memphis’s segregated school district was.
In 1892 Wells was forced to move to the North after a white mob in Memphis burned down the Free Speech’s building in response to her coverage on the lynchings of her friends: Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Steward, who owned the People’s Grocer in the city.
Wells moved to New York briefly, but is best known for her work in Chicago where she continued to expose southern lynching culture and founded several black women’s suffrage organizations.