The Louisiana Weekly turns 89 with this edition

This week The Louisiana Weekly, one of the longest-running and most widely read publications owned and operated by people of color in the Deep South, celebrates its 89th year of existence.

For nearly nine decades, The Louisiana Weekly has fulfilled its mission as a tool for the enlightenment and empowerment of people of color in the U.S. and around the world. Migrations of south Louisianians to the North and West, displacement by Hurricane Katrina and increased use by communities of color of the Internet have dramatically increased the publication’s national readership. The Louisiana Weekly also has a global clientele, with subscribers as far away as London, Japan and South Africa.

But despite the publication’s growth and evolution, The Louisiana Weekly remains true to its historic mission as an advocate for justice, democracy and equal protection under the law.

Founded by Black businessmen Orlando Capitola Ward Taylor and Constant C. Dejoie Sr. in 1925, The Weekly began during an era of widespread lynchings, domestic terrorism, rigid segregation and blatant racial antipathy. With very few media organizations giving a voice to the oppressed Black masses in the Deep South, The Louisiana Weekly has held too its historic mission of advocating for justice, civil rights, constitutional rights and voting rights of people f color and other disenfranchised groups.

O.C.W. Taylor was a former public school teacher in New Orleans and C.C. Dejoie was president of the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company when The Weekly was established. Its original headquarters were located at 303 Pythian Temple Building. Dejoie used his business, networking and organizational skills to kickstart the publication, recruiting insurance agents to sell newspaper subscriptions and issues of the publication, and utilizing their clients and associates in the community to gather information and issues of importance to the Black community.

The first two issues of the newspaper were printed under the original name of the publication, The New Orleans Herald. The inaugural issue, published on September 19, 1925, chronicled the life of educator and singer Professor John Wesley Work.

The October 10 issue was the first that ran under the name The Louisiana Weekly. The initial cost for an annual subscription rate of $2. Six-month, one-month and single—issue rates were available at $1.25, 20 cents, and five cents, respectively.

On The Louisiana Weekly’s pages, which are currently being stored and preserved for future generations by the Amistad Re­search Center, one can find the history and strivings of Black people in the Western hemisphere, United States and southern Louisiana. Since its founding in 1925, The Louisiana Weekly has covered every major movement for justice, freedom and inclusion in Black America from the integration of the U.S. Armed Forces, Mont­gomery Bus Boycott, Historic Civil Rights Movement, March on Washington, Black Power Move­ment, Million Man March. It has also featured the writings of visionary leaders like W.E.B. DuBois, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., Malcolm X, and chronicled important stories like Hurricane Katrina, the migration of southern Blacks to other parts of the U.S., the birth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in New Orleans, the murder of Emmett Till, Brown v. The Board of Education, the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the freedom struggle in South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., the burning of Black churches across the South in the 1990s, the election of South African President Nelson Mandela, the bombing of the World Trade Center, and the election and re-election of President Barack Obama.

The Louisiana Weekly also played a more intimate role in the lives of its mostly Black readership, publishing stories about the births, graduations, accomplishments, and weddings that take place in Black New Orleans but were routinely ignored for much of the 20th century by mainstream media.

In The Louisiana Weekly, readers still find stories about the struggles of Black people in rural parts of the state of Louisiana, local efforts to integrate Woolworth’s and Mc­Crory’s department stores on Canal Street and articles about important civil rights heroes like the Rev. Skip Alexander, the Rev. A.L. Davis, Ruby Bridges, Oretha Castle Haley, Freedom Rider Jerome Smith and the Rev. Avery C. Alexander.

As the leading Black newspaper in what has often been called “the most African city in America,” The Louisiana Weekly has taken seriously its responsibility to chronicle the struggle, accomplishments, strivings, tenacity, creativity and ingenuity of Black America.

“In this age of claims of post-racial politics and Tea Party tactics, we still see efforts to turn back the clock every day,” Renette Dejoie Hall, the paper’s current president/publisher, said last week. “We see efforts by some groups to weaken the effects of Brown v. The Board of Education, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. We also see incidents like those involving Michael Brown in Ferguson, La., Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, Trayvon Martin in Florida and Wendell Allen, Justin Sipp, Adolph Grimes III, Henry Glover, Ronald Madison and James Brissette in New Orleans.

“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.”

This article originally published in the September 22, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.