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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

Cleveland Call and Post - August 26, 1961

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August - Archived Posts
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August 1, 1940: Los Angeles Sentinelcalls for abolition of poll tax.
August 2, 1958: Ghanian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah welcomed in Harlem, reported in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 3, 1939: Clark University octet performs at Seventh World’s Poultry Congress and Exposition in Cleveland, reported in Call and Post.
August 4, 1983: Los Angeles Sentinel profile of Janice Darling, owner and fitness director of Sweat Shop in Culver City.
August 5, 1939: Singer Maxine Sullivan prepares for jazz version of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” photo in New York Amsterdam News.
August 6, 1966: Advertisement for news carriers in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 7, 1909: Tenth Cavalry returns to New York City from Philippine Islands, reported in Baltimore Afro-American.
August 8, 1936: Jesse Owens dominates the 1936 Berlin Olympics, reported in Chicago Defender.
August 9, 1975: Chester Commodore editorial cartoon on black unemployment featured in Pittsburgh Courier.
August 10, 1946: World War II veteran Maceo Snipes killed for voting in Georgia, editorial in New York Amsterdam News.
August 11, 1964: Mothers of slain civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner at funeral, reported in Philadelphia Tribune.
August 12, 1972: “Page One Miss” Betty Jean Thomas in Chicago Defender.
August 13, 1955: “On the Divorce Docket” column in Cleveland Call and Post.
August 14, 1947: Los Angeles Sentinel welcomes Zetas, Kappas, Sigmas, Doctors, and Witnesses to city for conferences.
August 15, 1966: James Brown and Muhammad Ali ride in Chicago Defender’s Bud Billiken Parade.
August 16, 1975: Dawn Magazine supplement in Pittsburgh Courier and Baltimore Afro-American.
August 17, 1932: Langston Hughes and two dozen African-American artists stranded in Moscow after film project is cancelled, reported in Atlanta Daily World.
August 18, 1917: Great Migration in the Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 19, 1911: Lynching of Zachariah Walker in Pittsburgh Courier.
August 20, 1931: Philadelphia Tribune advertisement boasting about paper’s printing technology, staff, and service to citizens of Philadelphia.
August 21, 1943: East Bronx merchants screen Stormy Weather, weeks after Harlem riot, reported in New York Amsterdam News.
August 22, 1950: Black troops in 24th Infantry Regiment fighting in Korean War, reported in Atlanta Daily World.
August 23, 1924: Dr. Robert Russa Moton speaks in Chicago, covered in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 24, 1939: “Dark Night” protest against discriminatory practices by Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light, reported in Los Angeles Sentinel.
August 25, 1917: National Medical Association moves annual meeting from Memphis to Philadelphia in response to lynching of Ell Persons.
August 26, 1961: Fifteen-year-old Preston Cobb Jr. sentenced to death in Georgia, reported in Cleveland Call and Post.
August 27, 1977: New York Amsterdam News highlights what Elvis Presley took from black musicians.
August 28, 2001: Philadelphia Tribune mourns death of Aaliyah.
August 29, 1953: Philadelphia Tribune announces engagement of pianist Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone).
August 29, 1960: NAACP Youth Council stages “wade in” at Rainbow Beach, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Nick Juravich, Ph.D. candidate in the department of History at Columbia University.
August 30, 1930: Riot breaks out at National Baptist Convention, reported in Baltimore Afro-American.
August 31, 1963: Philadelphia Tribune on the death of W.E.B. Dubois and a white mob harassing a black family for moving into all-white neighborhood in Folcroft, PA.
August 26, 1961 On August 26, 1961, the Cleveland Call and Post ran a front page picture of fifteen-year-old Preston Cobb Jr. with the caption “This Boy Must Die!” An all-white jury in Jasper County, Georgia, found Cobb guilty of killing Coleman Dumas, a seventy-year-old white man who owned the farm where Cobb and his mother lived and worked. The judge sentenced Cobb to death in the electric chair. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund appealed Cobb’s conviction for several years and were successful in getting the death sentence reduced to a life sentence. In October 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and reversed the life sentence on the grounds that black residents of Jasper County, Georgia, were blocked from serving on juries. The court ordered that Cobb be retried with a new jury drawn from an integrated panel. Before this new trial Cobb accepted a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilt to a charge of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. I was unable to find any information on what happened to Preston Cobb after 1968.

Preston Cobb Jr.’s case received extensive coverage in the black press, including this article, “Must This Boy Die?” by Trezzvant Anderson in the Pittsburgh Courier.