94 years of freedom fighting and counting
16th September 2019 · 0 Comments
The Louisiana Weekly, which turns 94 on September 19, 2019, holds the distinction of being the oldest, continuously published African-American-owned newspaper in the Southeast. For any business, especially a Black publication, to endure nearly a century, speaks to the continuing need for communities of color to tell their own side of the story.
So today, we celebrate, commemorate, and cherish The Louisiana Weekly for being a sentinel, a herald, keeper of our history and culture and freedom fighter. We also applaud The Louisiana Weekly for its persistence during financial storms (many white-led/owned corporations won’t buy advertising in the Black press), for calling out those who would do Black people harm, for chronicling our history, for providing jobs, and for being a good corporate citizen, among other reasons.
The philosophy that underscores the continuing need for this African-American newspaper and others can be found in the old African proverb: “Until lions start writing down their own stories, the hunters will always be the heroes” (Kenya and Zimbabwe).
“As long as we see racial injustice, economic exploitation, public corruption, unconstitutional policing and other practices and policies that violate the human and constitutional rights of men, women and children, we will continue to fight the good fight,” Renette Dejoie-Hall, president/publisher of the Louisiana said of the importance of the Black Press.
Dejoie-Hall, the driving force behind the paper’s longevity in the 21st century, has directed the paper for more than 30 years. In 2018, she received the Press Club of New Orleans Lifetime Achievement Award.
“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly, said John B. Russwurm and Samuel Cornish, freedmen in New York City, in the Freedom’s Journal on March 16, 1827. They began publishing 38 years before slavery ended.
Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the United States, was a weekly four-column publication printed every Friday. Twenty years later, on December 3, 1847, Frederick Douglass published The North Star, in Rochester, N.Y. It was used to not only denounce slavery, but to fight for the emancipation of women and other oppressed groups.
The Louisiana Weekly started its journalism life as the New Orleans Herald on September 19, 1925, under the yolk of oppressive segregation. Co-founders C.C. Dejoie Sr.(Constant Charles) and Orlando Capitola Ward Taylor (OCW) changed the newspaper’s name and published the first edition of The Louisiana Weekly on October 10, 2019.
“First, since it is a newspaper, it should have an adequate amount of real good news, interesting to its readers and bearing upon their lives. Secondly, we believe that editorially, in matters pertaining to the race, a paper should not straddle. There is only one course for a Negro paper to take in matters pertaining to Negro life, and that is the right side. Any attempt to sidestep and to “pussyfoot” is more harmful to the race than anything else. Negro papers are not the property of the individuals who have them in charge, but the property of the Negro public whose interests they should serve… Lastly, we know that there are always papers that must be devoted to special interests…We know that certain societies papers are justified in having their papers for their own special use…Hence we have selected our special group to serve—THE NEGRO PEOPLE OF LOUISIANA. To them our columns are open. For them will be our plans and labor. To them we look for support.” 9/19/1925 (First Editorial)
When the first edition of the newspaper appeared, there were no subscribers. By October 17, the week following the debut of the paper’s new name, The Louisiana Weekly had 4,500 subscribers and numerous advertisers.
The subscription base grew so fast for several reasons:
The “Negro” population in Louisiana desperately needed a newspaper to inform and education them about their communities and the state; a publication that supported independent black businesses, and a newspaper that lead the fight against racial injustice, like the Jim Crow laws passed by racist white state legislators in Baton Rouge.
Four years before The Louisiana Weekly’s debut, during the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1921, the Louisiana Legislature codified voter suppression tactics, including poll taxes and a mandate that voters had to read and articulate the meaning of passages in the U.S. Constitution. The white legislature created laws that violated the constitutional right to have cases decided by unanimous juries, and dedicated revenues for pensions for Confederate soldiers and widows and to maintain a memorial hall for the preservation of relics and mementoes of the Civil War, among other racist laws.
Additionally, the savvy businessmen’s subscription policy was sheer genius. Subscribers to most papers had to pay in advance. But subscribers to The Louisiana Weekly only paid after delivery. Subscriptions were $2.00 per year, $1.25 for six months, and $.20 per month, after delivery.
As a member of the Associated Negro Press (ANP/1919-1964, Chicago), The Louisiana Weekly published content from national and international sources. The ANP was the first African-American news gathering service with African-American foreign correspondents. From 1933 to 1940 the Office of War Information wrote that there were about four million Black readers of Black newspapers.
The Louisiana Weekly also covered local politics, business, church, society, education, sports, and entertainment news stories back then, the same as it does now.
Today, The Louisiana Weekly is read globally, across the U.S., from California to New York, to Japan, China, Africa, France and other countries. Today, The Louisiana Weekly is a member of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the successor to the ANP; the Louisiana Press Association, the Louisiana Black Publishers Association, the Associated Press and has access to national and international content.
During its infancy, The Louisiana Weekly provided jobs and, combined with the newspaper’s affordable advertising rates, the publication had the positive effect of expanding the African-African business base and, subsequently, the city’s middle class.
Looking back, there is clear evidence that segregation was not a bad thing for African-Americans here.
The Louisiana Weekly came to life during segregation and the aftermath of the Red Summer of 1919, where riots broke out over the high number of Blacks who were being lynched nationwide and the newspaper stood on the precipice of the Great Depression. It witnessed the beginning of white flight, KKK marches, and reported on the antics of white supremacists who couldn’t let go of the “Lost Cause.”
The Louisiana Weekly was born into a racially hostile environment and took advantage in a city that whites were beginning to desert in favor of rural life. It became the keeper of our culture, the glue that held our figurative African village together, and it became a sustainer and promoter of African-American entrepreneurship, education, and a proud institution that lauded the accomplishments of its people.
Both founders came to the venture as educated men with a flair for entrepreneurship.
Publisher C.C. Dejoie Sr. invested $2,000 to launch the venture. Dejoie was president of the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company but he also invested in a variety of other business, including a Black-owned oil company in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.
One of seven children born to Aristide Dejoie and Ellen Cumberland, C.C. inherited his entrepreneurial spirit from his father. Aristide Dejoie was the president of the New Orleans Chapter of the Negro Business League, an organization founded by Booker T. Washington. He served as city assessor and two-terms as a representative in the Louisiana Legislature. He helped to merge several Black mutual aid and benevolent societies into the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company and became the principal owner in the company. Aristide Dejoie also invested in several family businesses, including pharmacies, undertaking companies, and the Dejoie Cab Company.
CC Dejoie Sr. was educated in the New Orleans Public Schools and earned a degree from Southern University A&M.
OCW Taylor, The Louisiana Weekly’s founding editor, graduated from Wiley College and Columbia University. He spent 42 years in the public school system as a teacher and administrator. He launched a public relations and media firm, was the first Black radio and television personality in Louisiana, served as a state agent and reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender. He was also the southern representative for the ANP and JET Magazine correspondent for 20 years. Taylor also published the Crescent City Pictorial, a magazine with photos of African Americans in New Orleans during the early 20th century.
The Louisiana Weekly‘s first office was in Suite 303 at the Pythian Temple building, located at 234 Loyola Avenue (then Saratoga Street) on the corner of Gravier. The Pythian Temple was erected in 1909 by Smith Wendell Green, a former slave turned wealthy grocer and insurance magnate. Green was the Supreme Chancellor of the Knights of Pythias and a NAACP executive committee member.
If The Louisiana Weekly was the print version of the African-American village, the Pythian was a physical manifestation of a unified black community. It housed African-American professionals, doctors, lawyers, musicians, insurance companies, and more. The Temple Parisian Roof Garden, on the roof of the building hosted jazz legends such as Sidney Bechet, a dance hall and movie theater. Booker T. Washington is said to have visited the Pythian Temple; probably for a meeting in The Louisiana Weekly’s office.
C.C. Dejoie Jr. and Henry Baxter Jr., C.C. Sr.’s, sons took over operations of The Louisiana Weekly in 1965. They covered the civil rights movement, the founding of the SCLC in New Orleans, the historic Black Panthers conflict, black cultural, political, civic and sports events. They covered African-American luminaries but also the everyday unsung heroes/ heroines of the Black community.
Today, Renette Dejoie-Hall and her son Christopher D. Hall continue the legacy and mission of the newspaper founded by her grandfather, C.C. Dejoie Sr.
“With the president of the United States using terms like ‘fake news,’ to undermine the media, dismantling civil and voting rights, attacking women’s reproductive rights, gutting federal agencies that serve the nation’s most vulnerable citizens and declaring war on non-white immigrants,” there is little time for the Black Press or media organizations in general to sit idly by and do nothing,” Dejoie-Hall concludes.
This article originally published in the September 16, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
