The Semi-Weekly Leader (Brookhaven, Miss.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,256 issues from 1905 to 1922, published in Brookhaven, Mississippi, digitised for Chronicling America.
Benjamin Turner Hobbs began his newspaper career as a printer’s apprentice to ambitious Robert Hiram Henry, proprietor of the Newton Weekly Ledger (1871-75). A move to Brookhaven, the seat of Lincoln County located in the longleaf pine belt of southwestern Mississippi, required Henry to rename his journal the Brookhaven Ledger. Taking advantage of his employer’s third move, this time to the state capital, Jackson, Hobbs purchased Henry’s “office outfit.” Seeking to acquire the Ledger‘s county readership, he established the four-page weekly Brookhaven Leader (1883-91). Hobbs subsequently moved his newspaper to Jackson in 1892 and renamed it the Mississippi Leader (1892-95).
For Hobbs, the transition to the state capital was not as successful as it was for his colleague Henry, whose State Ledger (1883-88) is still published today as the statewide Clarion-Ledger (1941-current); due to financial difficulties, Hobbs quickly returned to Brookhaven. In August 1895, the title was changed to the Leader, and by 1903 it was published twice weekly, even though the title didn’t change to the Semi-Weekly Leader until two years later.
The Brookhaven Leader identified itself as Democratic in politics, and for a time its motto was “A Government in the Interest of the People;” however, Benjamin Hobbs’s passion was Prohibition. In fact, his motive for moving the paper to Jackson was to promote his cause to a broader audience. When that venture failed, the business was reorganized into the…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Brookhaven, 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