Newspapers

Newspaper and periodical publishing constituted a main vehicle for the dissemination of black writing prior to 1877. In as much as African American newspapers print the words of their black publishers, newspapers and periodicals are also a form of black self-publishing. Newspapers, funded by the black community, might also be considered a form of communal self-publishing. While newspapers and periodicals have different publishing conventions than the imprints highlighted in this project, further work to theorize self-publishing outside of books, pamphlets and broadsides is a natural extension of this project. We’ve included a list of African American newspapers pulled from the American Antiquarian Society as a stub for possible future projects.