The Courier-Index (Marianna, Ark.) 1917-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
659 issues from 1917 to 1930, published in Marianna, Arkansas, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Courier-Index, located in Marianna, is a consolidation of two well-established papers in Lee County, the Marianna Index and The Lee County Courier. Located along the L’Anguille River in the delta, the city’s economy was based in agriculture, particularly cotton production. Marianna had an early influx of people, many coming from the Carolinas, but the county’s population ceased to grow as rapidly with the onset of the Civil War.
L. M. Benham founded the Marianna Index, the older of the two papers, on a Saturday in August 1874. Benham published the paper using hand-set type and a hand-fed press. The debut issue stated, “We intend to have a paper that the people of our county will not be ashamed of, and that all, someday, may feel proud of it.” After only a few months of publication, Benham sold the paper to Hutton, Anderson & Co., and H. N. Hutton became the publisher. It was sold several more times before the final transfer in 1917 to H. M Jackson, who purchased both the Marianna Index and the Lee County Courier, combining them two years later to form the Courier-Index.
The Marianna Index covered a wide range of topics on a seven-column layout that included poetry, editorials, and general essays, as well as national news. Subscriptions to the paper were advertised at $2.50/year and the general mission of the paper was to “defend the truth, support what is right…oppose all cliques, clan or leagues, or anything else that tends to corrupt the ballot box.” The city of…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Marianna, Arkansas, 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