The Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, Utah; Chicago, Ill.) 1895-19??
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,661 issues from 1895 to 1927, published in Salt Lake City, Utah, digitised for Chronicling America.
Throughout its history, the Broad Ax (Salt Lake City and Chicago) was issued weekly by its founder, publisher, and editor, Julius F. Taylor (1853-1934). Born into slavery near New Market, Virginia, Julius Taylor was the 13th of 14 children of Gilbert and Mary Ann Taylor. Taylor’s parents and older siblings had earlier been sold to different owners but remained in relatively close proximity in the Shenandoah Valley. In the mid-1860s Taylor made his way to Philadelphia and settled successively in St. Paul, Minnesota; Fargo, North Dakota; and Chicago, before arriving in Salt Lake City in 1895. There Taylor founded the Broad Ax, which joined two other black newspapers published in Salt Lake City at a time when there were fewer than 1,000 African Americans in the state.
The first issue, published on August 31, 1895, carries the motto that remained with the paper until it ceased in 1931: “Hew to the line.” Taylor announced that his paper would be “Democratic in politics, advocating the immortal principles of Jefferson and Jackson.” He advocated racial equality, religious tolerance, and support for Free Silver (and, later William Jennings Bryan). As one scholar observed, “a sharp-tongued, Democratic, atheistic, African American editor in Utah in the 1890s stood out as an anomaly” (Michael S. Sweeney, “Julius F. Taylor and the Broad Ax of Salt Lake City, Utah Historical Quarterly 77, no. 3: 205).
With tensions rising between the Broad Ax and the leaders of the Latter Day Saints…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Salt Lake City, Utah, 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