I Got a Story to Tell: Black Voices in Print

Notes: Founded in January 1859 by African American New York–based journalist and book publisher Thomas Hamilton, the Anglo-African Magazine was a key site of African American literary production and political debate. Its list of regular contributors included some of the most celebrated African American writers of the 19th century: Edward Wilmot Blyden, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Martin Delany, James McCune Smith, Daniel Alexander Payne, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Sarah Mapps Douglass. It hoped to create a safe space in which the black public could voice its opinions and concerns without fear of white censure. Six months after the founding of the Anglo-African Magazine, Hamilton introduced its newspaper offshoot, entitled the Weekly Anglo-African. He published the magazine until March 1860, after which its publication was indefinitely suspended, but the weekly ran until March 1861.

Notes: Student-run literary magazine authored by creators at the Atlanta University Center. The AUC, as it’s commonly known, is comprised of five historically Black universities and colleges in Atlanta: Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark University, and Morris Brown College.

Notes: The Black Panther was the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party. It began as a four-page newsletter in Oakland, California, in 1967, and was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It was the main publication of the party and was soon sold in several large cities across the United States, as well as having an international readership. The BPP newspaper became the number 1 Black Weekly newspaper from 1968-1971, selling over 300,000 each week. It contained both national and international news. The paper often featured the work of noted artist Emory Douglas, whose visual art and illustration became a fixture of the publication.

Notes: Drum and Spear bookstore was founded in 1968 in Washington DC by veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Charlie Cobb, Curtis Hayes, Judy Richardson and Courtland Cox. D+S was a haven and meeting place for the DC Black community, a location where Black authored books were sold and Black thinkers would often give lectures and readings. At one point, D+S was the largest Black bookstore in the US and expanded into publishing books as well through Drum and Spear Press; a second store and press was also opened in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in the early 1970s. Drum and Spear closed in 1974 due to financial difficulties.

Comic book published by Africa Rising, member of ANIA, an association of Black independent comic book publishers

Notes: Komal Jackson graduated with honors in engineering from Tuskegee University. Even though six Fortune 500 companies offered him jobs straight out of college, he decided to go back to his community in Yorktown to work in his father’s bookstore. He became a volunteer at the community center, taught remedial reading, math, and science, and did everything in his power to help the youth in his community. But no matter what he did, the problems just seemed to become worse. Jackson eventually decided it was time to get to the heart of the problem as the Ebony Warrior.

Comic book published by Afrocentric Comic Books, member of ANIA, an association of Black independent comic book publishers.

Notes: Heru, Son of Ausar combined elements of African religious traditions and symbolism with the 90’s era depiction of modern African leaders and role models. Not all of the stories were set in the United States either. Heru took place in Kemet, the African name for Egypt in days of old, for instance.

Notes: Published under the ANIA comic imprint founded by Nabile Hage, Roger Barnes, and Roosevelt Pitt in 1993. Ebony Warrior and Heru were part of a wave of Black authored comic book titles from that period. ANIA is taken from a Swahili word meaning “defend” or “fight for”, and it wasn’t one organization but rather a combination of six separate African-American-owned publishing arms. ACB Comics, Hype Comics, Up Comics, Dark Zulu Lies, Omega 7, and Africa Rising all joined forces under the ANIA banner with the intention of moving their stories, featuring Afrocentric heroes and mythology, out of niche stores catering to Black interests and into mainstream comic shops.

Notes: Freedom’s Journal was the first African American owned and operated newspaper in the United States. A weekly four column publication printed every Friday, Freedom’s Journal was founded by free born African Americans John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish on March 16, 1827 in New York City, New York. Russwurm and Cornish placed great value on the need for reading and writing as keys to empowerment for the black population and they hoped a black newspaper would encourage literacy and intellectual development among African Americans. The paper’s support of colonization, however, was unpopular with its readers and subscriptions began to decline. With the loss of circulation in March 1829, Freedom’s Journal was forced to cease publication.

Notes: Print by Kennedy with quotation by Thomas Carlyle. Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is an American printer, book artist and papermaker best known for social and political commentary, particularly in printed posters. Kennedy creates prints, posters and postcards from handset wood and metal type, oil-based inks, and eco-friendly and affordable chipboard. Many of the posters are inspired by proverbs, sayings, and quotes Kennedy locates or potential clients provide.Using hand presses, he “produces large editions of wildly colourful, typographically-driven posters on inexpensive chipboard stock, posters which are often so riotously layered with vibrant colours of ink as to retain a wet iridescence and tackiness years after they were printed. His working method often involves overprinting multiple layers of text ...resulting in no two prints being truly identical.

This pamphlet outlines the rules of the African Society, a Boston group of African Americans organized to provide a form of health insurance and funeral benefits, as well as spiritual brotherhood, to its members. The last page of the pamphlet lists the members of the African Society.

Notes: Magazine publishing articles by gay and lesbian African Americans in the Raleigh and Durham areas. Out in Black Publications was founded in the summer of 1996 by John Hardy, a graduate of North Carolina State University and writer who lived in Raleigh, North Carolina. He funded, edited, wrote, collected stories, and distributed the free first issue of Out in Black by himself at local night clubs, in bookshops, through word of mouth, and through orders made by anyone who was interested in seeing his work.

Notes: Author describes her family's experience with racism and school integration. As a high school student, the author was named lead plaintiff in Clarissa Thompson et al. v. County School Board of Arlington County (June 1956), a school desegregation class action suit filed in U.S. District Court.“It Wasn’t Little Rock” was the response that black students in Arlington, Virginia often gave when asked about their experiences in the newly racially desegregated public schools of the 1960s. To Arlington students, Central High in Little Rock provided the standard for what they might face when integrating their county’s formerly all white schools.

Note: artist’s book. Silk-screened with acrylic ink on 100% rag Coventry 320 gram soft white paper and 100% rag Stonehenge 250 gram cream paper. Ten point Century Schoolbook type hand set and printed on letterpress. The dimensional, house-shaped book unfolds to tell an autobiographical story from the author’s childhood.