African American Newspapers to Be Preserved, Made Public in Virginia

Jennifer Vickers holding the Staunton Tribune, a Virginia African American historical newspaper. These papers are now being preserved., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

African-American newspapers to be preserved, made public

Staunton resident sells five rare issues to genealogical society

Oct. 14, 2013

Saving History: Several decades-old African American newspapers from Staunton will soon be on display.

Written by
Michael Neary

STAUNTON — For Jennifer Vickers, the printed word is personal.

Lately she’s been perusing some newspapers, the oldest of which were published about a century ago. But the distance lies only in the years: these papers are filled with stories of her relatives, and they were delivered to the same West Johnson Street address in Staunton where Vickers — fourth generation — lives today.

Vickers pointed to a story from 1916 that depicted a great uncle, Raymond Johnson, who was hit with a baseball and died on the train waiting for treatment. “For me, it makes things come alive,” she said. “It feels like my grandmother’s brother is alive, because I can read how the church reacted when he died.”

Vickers has sold the five African-American newspaper issues, ranging in publication dates from 1916 to 1931, to the Augusta County Genealogical Society. The society is donating them to the Library of Virginia — a move that will become official on Wednesday.

Errol Somay, director of the library’s Virginia Newspaper Project, will deliver a presentation at 1 p.m. in the Waynesboro Public Library about newspapers in the state, with specific discussion about African-American newspapers.

Laten Bechtel, chairperson of the society’s African American Committee, said the Library of Virginia doesn’t have the funding to purchase the newspapers but will be able to preserve and display them.

Somay said copies of African-American newspapers are extremely rare. He said the library has copies of two African-American newspapers in hard copy — the Richmond Planet and the Virginia Star. Both began publication in the late nineteenth century.

Somay said issues of African-American newspapers are particularly hard to find, but he said all newspapers tend to be tough to come by after many years have passed.

“They’re great historical documents, but people threw them away,” he said. “It’s not like a letter by Thomas Jefferson that someone took care to save.”

Vickers said several African-American newspapers existed in Staunton early in the century. The five issues she has today come from two newspapers: “The Staunton Tribune” and the “Staunton Recorder.”

“The Recorder” is intensely local, and the “Tribune” assembles a range of international and local stories, from the Liberia slave trade to local neighborhood stories.

Vickers’ collection has already received attention. A few years ago Deborah Harding was in Staunton to research the life of Willis Carter, a Staunton resident born into slavery who became, among other things, an influential newspaper publisher and teacher.

At that time Vickers had an 1894 issue of the Staunton Tribune listing Carter as the editor.

Both Vickers and Harding were attending a dedication to Carter at Staunton’s Fairview Cemetery. Vickers gave the newspaper to Harding, who brought it back to Harvard.

Harding’s research on Carter was accepted by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and world-renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates is directing the publication.

The papers Vickers has now were published after Carter’s death, and the editor, so far, is a mystery. Vickers has the crisp, fragile papers sealed carefully, and she doesn’t know what’s inside. The papers are so old that any attempt to open them could destroy them. That may change, though, once the Library of Virginia treats the papers.

“We have an in-house conservation lab that works on materials like this,” Somay said, noting that de-acidification processes may help to slow the newspapers’ aging. The paper may be encapsulated in an acid-free polyester film called mylar.

Somay said the library most likely will microfilm and digitize the newspapers. The digitization, he said, would enable the library to make the newspapers available online.

He said the library may have to investigate copyright issues before making them all available online. “The rarity will demand that we will really try to do as much as we can to preserve them and to make them accessible,” he said.

Bechtel said the newspapers provide a valuable and rare glimpse into African-American community life early in the 20th century.

“In doing African-American research there are so few primary sources,” she said. “In this area, African-American history has either been neglected or ignored over the years. There has been very little compiled or written.”

Bechtel presented her case to the society’s board of directors to draw from an African-American fund to purchase the newspapers.

The board ultimately approved.

For Vickers, the newspapers open a whole world that’s not often chronicled elsewhere. “I see a larger community than just Staunton,” she said.

At the same time, the newspapers touch something intensely personal. As Vickers looked at the story about her great uncle’s death, she noticed that it included a poem that someone from her church had written in commemoration.

One line from the poem presented by Ebenezer Baptist Church members especially captured Vickers’ attention. The poem envisioned a place in heaven “where no farewell tears are shed.”

Vickers said she liked the line because it spurred her to recall her mother’s funeral, which she described as a memorable celebration of her mother’s life.

The line provided another example of the way the decades-old newspaper can reach out to a larger world at the same time it strikes up the most intimate of memories.