The Guardian (Boston, Mass.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
943 issues from 1939 to 1957, published in Boston, Massachusetts, digitised for Chronicling America.
On November 9, 1901, the Boston Guardian was first published in Boston, Massachusetts. William Monroe Trotter and George Forbes, former publisher of the Boston Courant and a reference librarian at the Boston Public Library, were the publishers. Trotter was the editor of the newspaper from its beginnings until his death in 1934. It was a weekly publication, coming out on Saturdays, that was aimed primarily at Boston’s African American community, though eventually it had significant readership across the United States.
The paper’s content reflected Trotter’s political views, championing a militant advocacy for civil rights for African Americans, in stark contrast to racial accommodationists such as Booker T. Washington. The newspaper was stridently non-partisan, endorsing Republican and Democratic political candidates solely based on their views on civil rights for African Americans.
As civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1940, “The Guardian was bitter, satirical, and personal; but it was earnest, and it published facts. It attracted wide attention among colored people; it circulated among them all over the country; it was quoted and discussed. I did not wholly agree with the Guardian, and indeed only a few Negroes did, but nearly all read it and were influenced by it.”
Trotter, a Harvard graduate and the son of a member of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment from the Civil War, notably visited the White House to personally take President Wilson to task for…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Boston, Massachusetts, 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