“These are some of the wrongs and injustices which the negroes are compelled to endure or suffer death–they care compelled to tread upon thorns and thistles without uttering one word of protest . . . .” (Salt Lake City, Utah, Broad Ax, May 2, 1899)

In a myriad of ways, African American newspapers found ways to emphasize the wide range of burdens and barriers facing blacks despite the Constitution’s statement of equal citizenship.  Editorials, poems, and editorial cartoons vividly and explicitly announced the problems that kept blacks as second-class citizens despite presidential statements and constitutional amendments. Despite their loyalty, “quiet and humble” nature, solid citizenship, and advancement economically, “. . . they [were] pursued, harassed, butchered, and killed” in a “reign of terror” (Washington Bee, August 17, 1907).

In an Atlanta Independent editorial in 1917–just weeks after the United States entered the Great War against Germany and its allies–it explained why southern blacks were leaving the South in increasingly great numbers:

“Segregation, Lyncing, Mob violence, Jim-Crow cars, Political persecution, Contract labor, Brutal street car conductors[,] Jim-Crow elevator service, Poor schools, Poorly paid teachers, Burning Negroes at stake, Memphis barbarity, Prosecution for petty offenses in order to grind out convicts for public roads, Low wages, Exclusion for all parks and public recreation places, And the everlasting stigma, that you are a Negro, and for that reason, you are not entitled to the rights of a man.”

African American newspaper cartoonists found various ways of depicting these burdens.  The burdens ranged from general issues to specific incidents, such as the Atlanta riot of 1906.  In some cases, as in the 1906 cartoon below, the cartoonist targeted a particular culprit, from the generic “mobbist” and “South” to a state or national leader. (President Theodore Roosevelt is the ship’s captain.)

In some cases, cartoonists included references to specific southern white leaders (such as Hoke Smith, Ben Tillman, Vardaman, and Thomas Dixon), to the black’s own failings (“The Negro’s own sin” below), and to baseless white fears (“social equality bugaboo”).

Among the burdens faced by African Americans and covered by their press–including in numerous news stories–was whites’ disregard of black socio-economic differences (“No limit to the humiliating conditions no matter what CLASS YOU ARE IN”).

Hope never faded for most newspapers, with encouraging words and images to reflect changes and to promote determination.

And African Americans continually sought strategies for overcoming the barriers in their way.  Who to follow? to whom to listen.  As Rebecca harding Davis wrote for the Atlanta Independent (published in the Savannah Tribune of March 8, 1902):

“‘Aim at the highest,’ cries one. ;’Get a college education; get Greek, mathematics, logic, though you have to earn your bread as a barber or a baker.’
“‘Learn a trade,’ commands another.
“‘Go to the North.’
“‘Go to the South.’
“‘Make friends of your old masters. To follow peace with all men is Christian expedient.’
“‘Fight for your rights! Organize! Drill! Form into companies. Be ready to strike when the hour comes.”

In March 1903, poet James D. Corrothers assured the readers of the Colored American Magazine that “Brighter stars will rise and glisten,/Tho’ their coming seemeth late” (“The Psalm, of a Race”).

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Poems–often by ordinary Americans–focused on “the Black Man’s burden,” as did J. Dallas Bowser of Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1899 he reminded whites:  “When yours–his chances equal,/Give him the fairest test,/Then ‘Hands Off!’ be your motto/And he will do the rest.” “He cannot lift a white man’s load/Without a white man’s chance.”  “The haughty Anglo-Saxon/Was savage and untaught–/A thousand years of freedom/A wondrous change has wrought.

A week earlier, in an age of growing interest in overseas expansion, the Salt Lake Broad Ax reprinted a poem that linked black America’s burdens with those of areas outside the United States

In doing so, the verses by H.T. Johnson reminded readers that they were not new to African Americans and that “Though winked at by the nation,/Will some time trouble breed,” a point made increasingly frequently in editorials, poems, and cartoons.  The trouble would come–despite America’s “battleships and armies”– in “God Almighty’s Justice.”

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