Jackson Advocate (Jackson, Miss.) 1939-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,087 issues from 1941 to 1963, published in Jackson, Mississippi, digitised for Chronicling America.
The longest running African American weekly in Mississippi, the eight-page Jackson Advocate was founded in 1939 by World War I veteran Percy Greene. Greene’s press experience began when he started the Colored Veteran, the newspaper of the National Association of Negro War Veterans, a group he organized in 1927. He had a stint working for The Mississippi Enterprise (1938-1988?) also published in his home town, the state capitol, Jackson. The majority of his adult life, however, was spent as a full-time journalist publishing “Mississippi’s Greatest Negro Weekly” as he sometimes dubbed the Advocate.
The state-wide Advocate published a mix of local, state, national, and international news; social announcements; cartoons; sports and entertainment news, general interest articles; editorials; and advertisements geared towards its African American readership. One local event, that also made national headlines in 1948 and 1949, was the murder of local barber John E. Conic and the subsequent trial of Lonnie James Nichols who was convicted of the crime. International news often focused on the struggle for racial equality for blacks in African nations. Percy Greene’s weekly column “Up and Down Farish Street” reflected the middle-class values of this vibrant, black neighborhood. Many advertisements were for Farish street businesses although ads for white-owned enterprises increased over time.
In the 1940s, as commercial papers began to replace those published by religious and…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Jackson, Mississippi, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress