| The Black Press II: African American "Firsts" in Print
Russell L. Adams, Ph.D.
The individuals identified
below as "firsts" focused on Black community education via the medium of print.
This list stresses the role of women in the evolution of Black journalism.
First monthly literary
magazine for young African Americans, Joy, appeared in the 1890’s under the
editorship of Amelia E. Johnson
First Black female
newspaper owner, Charlotta Bass, California Eagle, 1912
First Black Socialist
magazine, The Messenger: The only Radical Negro Magazine in America, edited in New
York by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, 1917-1922
First international Black
newspaper, The Negro World, 200,000 copies per issue, published by Marcus
Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, 1919-1925
First Black female
certified war correspondent in World War II, Elizabeth B. Murphy, 1944
First Black female
international affairs reporter, Ethel Payne of the Chicago Defender, who covered
six continents and thirty countries, 1940-1950
First Black female
reporter to cover the U.S. State Department, Alice Dunnigan, 1948
First Black full-time
female reporter, Marvel Jackson Cooke, Daily Compass, 1950
First Black female
editor-in-chief of a national African American newspaper, Hazel G. Garland of the Pittsburgh
Courier, 1974
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