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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 42. The Negro Press - 4. The Controls of the Negro Press - 5. Outlook
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Chapter 42. The Negro Press 923
As no studies of the finances and controls of the Negro press have been
made, it is impossible to present a factual statement on this point. One
important thing seems clear, however: the financial controls do not con-
cern its stand on the racial question. In this main issue of the Negro press,
it is free. Few white business enterprises have any interest in toning down
the Negro protest.*’ It may be expected that, on the contrary, a white firm
which bribed a Negro paper to favor its interest in some particular respect
would rather want the paper’s expression of the Negro protest to be
accentuated in order to preserve confidence on the part of its readers.^*^ The
same holds true, on the whole, of political parties in the North and a few
places in the South which pay in cash for support from the Negro papers
before elections.^®
As Negro newspapers specialize in Negro news, they become dependent
upon the agencies which provide such news. A Negro newspaper covers its
own locality. Some few can afford to send staff writers to places where
important national events are occurring and to have regular correspondents
in certain main centers. But for the rest, all Negro papers must depend for
their news on syndicate and organizational releases. There are a number of
Negro news agencies: some giving their services for nothing, some exchang-
ing news for free advertising space, and some asking a small fee.^® Before
every election they tend to increase in number and efficiency. The main
agency is the Associated Negro Press, in existence since 1919.®® The
N.A.A.C.P. sends out its own news releases every week, and they are
important for the Negro press.
5. Outlook
The importance of the Negro press for the formation of Negro opinion,
for the functioning of all other Negro institutions, for Negro leadership and
concerted action generally, is enormous. The Negro press is an educational
agency and a power agency. Together with the church and the school—and
in the field of interracial and civic opinions, more than those two institu-
tions—it determines the special direction of the process through which the
Negroes are becoming acculturated. The Negro press causes, on the one
hand, an intense realization on the part of the Negroes of American ideals.
On the other hand, it makes them realize to how small a degree white
Americans live up to them.
As the educational level of the Negro masses rises, as those masses
become less dissimilar in culture from other Americans, as the isolation
between the two groups increases under voluntary withdrawal on the part
of the Negroes, as race consciousness and race solidarity are intensified, as
the Negro protest is strengthened, and disseminated even among the lower
* Negro businesses will rarely have such an interest, either, and few Negro businesses
could afford to spend money on it, anyhow.
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