The Citizen (Berea, Ky.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,228 issues from 1899 to 1922, published in Berea, Kentucky, digitised for Chronicling America.
Conceived as a publication to entertain, inform, and uplift its readers, the Berea Citizen was inseparable from the evolving purpose of its sponsor, Berea College. From its founding in 1855 as the first interracial and co-educational institution of higher learning in the American South, Berea College was intended to serve as a counterpoint to the injustices of racial inequality and poverty. First published in 1899, the Citizen functioned as an account of college life and a source of information about the surrounding community. Most of the four-page issues carried international, national, and state news, notices of events involving students and alumni, and columns devoted to domesticity and agriculture. Stories of the pernicious influence of alcohol and the merits of temperance were also common, as was a recurrent examination of Mormonism’s supposed “errors.”
It was the paper’s role as a recruitment tool for white students, however, that most shaped the paper’s content. For almost three decades, the Citizen was the voice of William G. Frost, Berea College President from 1892 to 1920. With President Frost’s tenure, the college’s mission shifted significantly. As the school’s newspaper made clear, the previous emphasis on African-American education had been displaced. Indeed, during Frost’s tenure, the portion of African-American students at Berea declined precipitously from 52% to 16%, a proportion Frost believed more “suitable” because it more accurately reflected…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Berea, Kentucky, 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