The Louisiana Weekly celebrates its 99th anniversary
16th September 2024 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
On September 19, The Louisiana Weekly will celebrate its 99th anniversary of covering stories focused on New Orleans’ African-American community.
Originally founded under the moniker The New Orleans Herald in 1925, The Louisiana Weekly was launched to fill what its founders – C.C. Dejoie Sr. and O.C.W. Taylor – recognized as a void in local news coverage of the city’s Black community. Upon its inception, the paper opened its headquarters in the Pythian Temple Building on Loyola Avenue.
By Oct. 17, 1925, in order to stand apart from other publications that also had “herald” in their names, the paper which already had garnered 4,500 paid subscribers, changed its name to The Louisiana Weekly.
“Louisiana Weekly was founded because the stories of people of color were not being told on a day-to-day basis by the established local papers,” said local civil rights attorney and Louisiana Weekly board member Ernest Jones. “What was going on in our community was simply not important to them. And when they did put it in, they put it in a pretty horrible light.”
When the two began publishing the paper, Dejoie Sr. was managing his family’s company, the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company, and Taylor was an educator in New Orleans’ public school system. Their goal was to publish news that put Black culture, life and well being at its center.
For the past 99 years, it has remained at the forefront of civil rights and social justice journalism, covering a range of issues affecting the New Orleans Black community from the experiences and contributions of African-American soldiers during World War II to the Voting Rights Act and integration of schools and public spaces to the election of the United States’ first Black president.
“This community had no voice,” said Renette Dejoie Hall, granddaughter of C.C. Dejoie Sr. and current president and publisher of The Louisiana Weekly. “He (Dejoie) wanted to give a voice to the voiceless.”
The publication remains a labor of love as well as a family affair.
After C.C. Dejoie Sr.’s passing in 1971, the role of publisher went to C.C. Jr., his eldest son and namesake, who held the role until 1993. That year, C.C. Jr. was succeeded by his younger brother, Henry Dejoie Sr., a World War II veteran, who held the position until his passing in December 2007.
Throughout the years, the paper has proved to be a valuable chronicler of African Americans’ struggle for civil rights. Donald E. Devore’s 2015 book “Defying Jim Crow: African American Community Development and the Struggle for Racial Equality in New Orleans, 1900-1960,” emphasized The Louisiana Weekly’s importance in New Orleans’ lengthy battle against segregation.
“The weekly newspaper maintained continuous coverage and commentary on issues such as discriminatory voter registration practices, unresponsive white political leaders, the corrosive effects of incivility of white citizens, police misconduct and racial segregation,” Devore wrote.
When Henry Sr. died at the age of 82, Hall, his daughter, became the publisher. She began working for the newspaper at the age of 8. She would ride her bike throughout Pontchartrain Park – the historic African-American community and her childhood neighborhood – delivering copies of The Louisiana Weekly. In high school, she became an avid reader of the paper.
Her family’s house was also a meeting place for important members of the Crescent City’s African-American community. Even if Hall didn’t always participate in these talks, she was always listening.
Over the years, The Louisiana Weekly has endured natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, and market changes brought about by the Internet. The Gentilly area, where the paper is based, sustained heavy flooding during Katrina, but the paper continued to publish online so New Orleanians could keep abreast of issues facing the African-American community even if they were temporarily displaced due to the storm and the levee failures. Hall worked out of Houston to keep the paper afloat. It returned to print copies in October 2005.
While The Louisiana Weekly maintains its digital presence through its website and social media channels, Hall emphasizes the importance of print media. She said that people who rely on the internet and social media for news should remember where those outlets get their news from: print journalists.
“If there wasn’t print media, you wouldn’t have anything to read on Twitter or Facebook,” Hall said. “It (social media) just regurgitates what print media reports on.”
Jones emphasized that even though times have changed, The Louisiana Weekly’s sense of purpose remains constant. That purpose is what has helped it endure for so long.
“It is the paper of record for our community in New Orleans,” Jones said. “It has never lost its focus on social justice issues.”
Jones said The Louisiana Weekly’s service is not just for New Orleans residents. It allows people worldwide to learn how African-American people in New Orleans reacted to and experienced historic events like integration and Hurricane Katrina.
When asked what plans she has for the future of The Louisiana Weekly, Hall refuses to get too far ahead of herself. She simply says she has plans to celebrate the paper’s 100th birthday next year.
This article originally published in the September 16, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
