Resources
Benefiting the public is at the heart of this project. While the press tells us so much about our past, it is largely underutilized in current historical research. With the advent of new technologies, digital archives have broadened the scope of who can access historical information. Now new research on the press can be performed by anyone from family, casual, or academic historians.
The resources below provide any and all researchers with ideas on where to look for newspaper archives, as well as how to begin the research process.
Newspaper Archives:
Newspapers.com: With over 27,000 individual newspapers and claiming to have over 1 billion scanned newspaper pages, Newspapers.com is the world’s largest digital newspaper repository. Prior research needs to be done to understand the backgrounds of each paper, as the descriptions on the site are lacking and often do not distinguish between the black and white press. The archive is also connected to ancestry.com, allowing researchers to connect their family history to any newspaper article relating to or depicting their lives.
- Subscription required: one week free trial, $75 six-month full access subscription
- Can search papers on a country, state, city basis
ProQuest : Largely subscribed to by universities, ProQuest provides access to the extensive archives of famous national newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Defender, etc. As a result of the high cost of access, this service is largely used by academics and students. However, many colleges and universities have public library access with computers allowing non-student researchers to access their collections.
- Subscription required
- Papers are paid for on a select basis. As a result, some colleges have papers others may not have access to
DigitalNC : Housed in UNC Chapel Hill’s library, this collection publishes a wide variety of North Carolinian historic materials, including historic newspapers. While the site has access to rare black newspapers, the collections are very sparse and limited. This scarcity speaks to the difficulties of archiving smaller black newspapers.
- Free to access
- Newspapers available: Charlotte Post, Carolina Times, Freedom’s Journal
Historical Newspapers of South Carolina: Hosted by the University of South Carolina’s library, this site provides researchers with several South Carolina newspapers, many relating to civil rights and African American history. Researchers can look up newspapers by the county in which they operated. Similarly to DigitalNC, the scanned newspapers are not as complete as other collections on this list.
- Free to access
- Newspapers included: Lighthouse and Observer, Palmetto Leader, The Afro-American Citizen, The Charleston Advocate
Chronicling America (National Archives) : With a collection including over 4,000 newspapers from 1756-1963, this National Archives project provides researchers with a great, free starting point to investigate the national press. While the collection does not include as many scanned pages as other prominent databases on this list, it provides a great directory to the archives which hold these papers.
- Free to access
- Can search on a state and date basis
Internet Archive : The non-profit organization seeks to preserve the digital past and make history/the internet more accessible to all people. The site allows for the dissemination of academic materials, though its status is consistently threatened by publishers.
- Free access, account required in most cases
- Largely focuses on modern media, including old webpages, old books, videos, and audio recordings.
Scholarship and Further Reading:
The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
The White Press and Black America by Carolyn Martindale
The African American Press: A History of News Coverage During National Crises by Charles A. Simmons
Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate by Thomas Aiello
The Grapevine of the Black South: The Scott Newspaper Syndicate in the Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement by Thomas Aiello
Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America
Half American: The Epic Struggle of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad by Matthew Delmont
The Employment of Negro Troops by Ulysses Lee
Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II by J. Todd Moye
Fighting for Hope: African American Troops of the 93rd Infantry Division in World War II and Postwar America by Robert F. Jefferson
The Marines of Montford Point: America’s First Black Marines by Melton A. McLaurin
Tips for researching the press:
- Prior research: a basic knowledge of the event you intend to research in the press is invaluable. Knowing the date range, important figures, and location of the event you are researching will make it much easier to locate within a newspaper archives.
- Importance of keyword searching: most newspaper databases have keyword search features that allow researchers to track down articles that mention specific events. Developing a set of key terms during the research process, gained by reading newspaper articles of the time will ease research into the press.
- Set a date range: while keyword searching is invaluable, it can quickly grow unwieldy. As a result, know the date range you want to research and set your results to fit that so you only get articles in the time period you want.
- Understand that terms and language change: At times, past newspapers’ language can reflect terms that have gone out of popularity, either because of cultural changes or awareness of discrimination. However, it is important to realize that the terms of today were not always the terms of yesterday.
- Looking at the work of other researchers: Past research can often give new researchers an idea of where to start, what archives are the most valuable and what categories went into past research. Additionally, it can reveal under-researched areas looking to be filled.
- Understanding the difference between news reports, opinion/editorial pieces, feature articles, and letters to the editor. Newspapers will typically have a page listed for each, with news reports taking up most of the first page.
- Researching a paper’s editor and understanding regional and temporal biases. Similar to the first tip, this involves prior research. However, this research should be more broad and focused on how different groups of Americans regarded certain events. For instance, researching the southern black press will reveal that black editors faced violent retribution and were often less promotive of activism in their reporting.