Printed Communities: Race, Respectability, and Black Newspapers in the Civil War Era West

Black editors and journalistic writers in the US West, such as Philip Bell, Peter Anderson, John J. Moore, and Jennie Carter, shaped their communities' views on racial uplift, gender relations, legal claims to citizenship, and other issues. This essay argues that from the 1860s to the 1880s, Black editors produced a shared sense of identity for western African Americans separated by vast distances. Whether in Nevada or British Columbia, Black editors used respectability politics to emphasize what they understood to be personal virtues—like sobriety and industriousness—to combat racist stereotypes. At the same time, seeking to distinguish their claims from those of indigenous peoples as well as recently arrived Asian immigrants, Black editors in the West also linked respectability to their longstanding residency in the nation as well as their adherence to Christianity.