Spicy Editorials and Fearless Sayings: The Black Press in West Virginia

Spicy Editorials and Fearless Sayings: The Black Press in West Virginia Betty L. Powell Hart The history of West Virginia's black newspaper press reflects the history of virtually all black newspapers everywhere . It is the story of visionary individuals who saw an unmet need among their people. It is a story of resourcefulness , creativity, bravery, and pride. Early black journalists often operated on sparse budgets, usually on credit, and depended on promises of subscriptions and advertising accounts. Getting and keeping subscribers was an especially critical problem for early black newspapers. A healthy circulation figure that represented a wide demographic range of readers was often the basis of a pitch for advertising sales. T. Edward Hill, the business manager of the McDowell Times, makes a clever and poetic appeal to subscribers in the June 13, 1913, edition of the paper. His "poem" carries the headline, the editor's song: How dear to my heart is the steady sub- [sic] subscriber, Who pays in advance without skipping a year, Who takes out his dollar and adds a bright quarter, And casts round the office an halo of cheer, Who never says "stop it, I can't afford it, Or: "getting more papers each day than I can read," But says: "Send the Times, our whole family likes it— In fact we regard it as a business need." How welcome they are when they step in our sanctum, How they make our eyes fairly dance; How they make our hearts throb, We outwardly thank them and inwardly bless them— McDowell Times subscribers who pay in advance . The threats to a paper's success and perhaps even to the editor's safety included the editor's tackling racially sensitive issues and the subsequent anger and fear aroused in the community. Typically, West Virginia's papers spoke out against racial injustice. Some of the most emphatic editorializing, particularly in the publications appearing between world wars, attacked lynchings, Jim Crow, and unfair labor relations in the mines. In the interest of racial pride and under the protection marginally afforded by the First Amendment, these early papers were remarkably bold in their stance against racism, and they usually received support on such issues from larger nonblack West Virginia newspapers. A look at some of these papers can show much about the cultural concerns of black West Virginians. The Pioneer Press (Martinsburg), established in 1882, is West Virginia's earliest known black newspaper. In its twenty-eighth year, it lauds itself as "the leader in this State and Nation for the grand and noble fight that is being waged 51 for the amelioration of the condition of the Negro." It boasts that: It leads in the quantity of original matter which it furnishes its patrons. It leads in its spicy editorials and fearless sayings. It leads in its general, local and miscellany pages. The Pioneer Times also boasts the largest city, foreign, domestic and general , county and rural and Anglo-Saxon circulation "of any Negro newspaper in the United States." The paper's values are proclaimed as "blazing the way for truth, honesty, piety and frugality, and all other requisites that are necessary for the making of manly men and womanly women of all races." It concludes this column by appealing to its advertisers to enjoy "abundant and profitable returns" from exposure to its "large and intelligent circulation." On its first page, the Pioneer Times typically covered issues of racial interest, usually a letter or editorial commentary on an event already known to readers. The diction is flowery and heavily sentimental in nineteenth-century journalistic style. Very little is reported that does not make some pithy little observation concerning some moral value in the story. The articles offer some news, but are mostly features. The January 14, 1911, edition, for example, includes a letter from a white patron, an article about the origin of the phrase "anecdotal literature," a commentary on treatment of the Panama Canal workers, a feature that plays on clever answers to questions about social issues of the day, a praise of fathers as heads of households, and two fillers, one of which states that "Honesty is the best policy, and always has been...