Twin City Observer (Minneapolis, Minn.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,003 issues from 1943 to 1963, published in Saint Paul, Minnesota, digitised for Chronicling America.
Twin City Observer and the Saint Paul Sun were sister newspaper titles published weekly between the 1940s and the 1970s, offering coverage of the Twin Cities African American community. The two were distinct from the other African American newspapers published in Minnesota at the time because of the Republican political views of their publisher and editor, Milton G. Williams.
Williams moved to the Twin Cities in 1918 and worked for about two decades in finance, as a stock salesperson for the W.B. Foshay Co. and as a loan officer for the Atlas Finance Co. In 1931, he served as advertising manager for Timely Digest magazine, and briefly worked in the Minneapolis Spokesman and St. Paul Recorder newspaper office after their founding 1934. In the late 1930s, Williams began his newspaper career in earnest, working as a reporter and columnist, sports editor, and advertising salesperson for the African American Twin-City Herald and its successor, Twin-City Leader.
Williams published the inaugural issue of Twin City Observer in Minneapolis on May 7, 1943. It began with a four-page, six-column format, and it expanded to seven columns in 1945. In 1948, it moved to a tabloid format with eight pages of five columns each. Coverage comprised local, national, and international news and commentary specifically related to African Americans and their communities and interests.
Williams began publication of the Observer‘s sister title, the Saint Paul Sun, on October 11, 1951. The two titles…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Saint Paul, Minnesota, 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