The Leader Enterprise and Press (Fitzgerald, Ben Hill County, Georgia)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
575 issues from 1915 to 1921, published in Fitzgerald, Georgia, digitised for Chronicling America.
B. T. and J. G. Knapp published the first issue of the Fitzgerald Leader in January 1896, just one month after formal incorporation of the “Colony City.” Philander H. Fitzgerald, a Union army veteran and newspaper publisher in Indianapolis, envisioned a planned municipality in the South for fellow veterans. He ultimately selected Georgia’s wiregrass region to establish his namesake city. Like its older competitor, the Fitzgerald Enterprise, the Leader circulated an eight-pages weekly and advocated for publicly owned utilities and women’s right to vote. Politically, the Leader expressly supported the Democratic Party, contrasting with the non-partisan approach of the Enterprise. By Spring 1897, the Leader served as Irwin County’s paper of record, but legal advertising rights frequently changed between the county’s two newspapers.
Due to failing eyesight, B. T. Knapp sold the Leader in November 1898 to R. S. and A. M. Burton, who managed the paper until August 1899 when C. B. and O. D. Lee of the Colony Citizen purchased the publication. They merged the papers as the Citizen-Leader, a title which again changed when Earnest W. Ryman acquired ownership in 1901 and retitled it the Irwin County Citizen. Besides Ryman’s preference for Clarke Howell in Georgia’s 1906 gubernatorial elections, the politics of the Enterprise and Citizen were nearly indistinguishable. The two papers fell in line with Southern “reform Democrats” of the early 1900s, who called for improved schools and…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Fitzgerald, Georgia, 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