For Race and Region: A Brief History of the Western Negro Press Association, 1896–1920

This essay analyzes and explains the development and significance of the Western Negro Press Association (WNPA). Operating from 1896 until 1920, the WNPA helped its members forge interstate connections in the Great Plains as they worked together to inform and inspire African Americans, fight for equal rights, and promote professional development. As such, the WNPA serves as an example of a distinctly western version of the numerous African American organizations devoted to protest and uplift in the so-called racial nadir. By recognizing the WNPA’s activity and agitation on behalf of race and region, we get a more complete picture of African American life in the early twentieth-century Great Plains and also a better sense of the broad geographical scope of the black freedom struggle and the important role played toward that end by black newspapers—even those on the national peripheries.