Newspaper Articles

The press has played an important role in both constructing and communicating what and who is important in communities. That was never more evident that in rural America where there was often a single newspaper with a limited number of subscribers to sustain it. Given a numerically small population of persons of color and the fact that those persons often occupied positions of “lesser status” within those towns, the mainstream newspapers didn’t often contain news about racial and ethnic minorities. Yet, these minority populations maintained active social lives, usually in parallel public spheres due to the dictates of the customs and conventions that encouraged and perpetuated segregation. On occasion, the affairs of the Black community found their way into print when residents managed to get news of import to them carried in the local newspaper. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the race of persons mentioned in stories was usually included as a matter of course. These archives contain newspaper articles that pertain to Knox County African Americans or businesses and organizations operated by them. Items were selected when the race of the subjects were disclosed in the text or the subjects were known to have been members of the local Black community. Relatively short in length, the full text of each article is transcribed in each record. Where legible, an image of the article appears as well.