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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

Los Angeles Sentinel - April 11, 1968

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April - Archived Posts
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April 1, 1950: Political April Fools’ Day wishes in Pittsburgh Courier.
April 2, 1966: Pittsburgh Courier sports editor Bill Nunn Jr. on Texas Western championship basketball team.
April 3, 1954: Cleveland Call and Post reports on death of nightclub owner and numbers racket king Bennie Mason.
April 4, 1968: The front pages of black newspapers after assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
April 5, 1933: Hamilton Lodge Ball and drag performances in New York Amsterdam News.
April 6, 1972: North Carolina Mutual insurance advertisement in Los Angeles Sentinel.
April 7, 1959: Ads for Lydia Pinkham’s tablets and topics to relieve menstrual and menopausal pain in the Philadelphia Tribune.
April 8, 1939: Norfolk Journal and Guide on controversy over Louis Armstrong’s swing version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
April 9, 197: Hank Aaron’s record breaking 715th home run covered in the Atlanta Daily World.
April 10, 1909: New York Women’s Business Club featured in Baltimore Afro-American.
April 11, 1936: Chicago Defender on a Howard University student bet gone wrong.
April 12, 1947: Jackie Robinson’s Major League Baseball debut covered in the black press.
April 13, 1948: Philadelphia Tribune reports on killing of World War II veteran George Serrell, who refused to sit in a Jim Crow train car.
April 14, 1979: Disco advertisements in the Cleveland Call and Post.
April 15, 1939: Account from a fugitive from a North Carolina prison in the Baltimore Afro-American. Guest post by Daniel Arico, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 15, 1939: Marian Anderson’s landmark performance at Lincoln Memorial reported in Chicago Defender.
April 16, 1904: Anti-profanity campaign reported in The Appeal. Guest post by Caroline Arkesteyn, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 16, 1959: Francois Andre’s male fashion show at Hollywood’s Moulin Rouge in the Los Angeles Sentinel.
April 17, 1915: Ohio Governor Frank Willis blocks exhibition of racist photoplay, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Alex Bishop, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 17, 1943: African-American women protest racial discrimination at Bechtel-McCone-Parsons airplane modification plant in Birmingham, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Lillian G. Page, MA student in history at the University of Memphis.
April 18, 1942: Eleanor Roosevelt calls for equality in speech at the Hampton Institute, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Connor Callahan, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 19, 1958: New York Amsterdam News on dangerous apartment conditions. Guest post by Mark Speltz.
April 19, 1960: Chicago Defender on racial discrimination and student organizing at Indiana University. Guest post by Samuel Carter, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 20, 1929: Chicago Defender on teen runner killed after winning race. Guest post by Trent Cork, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 21, 1953: Washington Afro-American on discrimination in the U.S. Army. Guest post by Katelyn Culver, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 22, 1950: Housing discrimination in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park neighborhood, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Austin Demers, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 23, 1960: White woman in Alabama beaten for dating black men, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Thomas Esposito, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 24, 1954: Chicago Defender on discrimination in Baltimore hotels. Guest post by Mark Fowler, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 25, 1987: Indianapolis Recorder on black student demands at Purdue University. Guest post by Derek Gilman, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 26, 1930: Indianapolis Recorder on movie theater discrimination. Guest post by Ethan Hill, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 27, 1974: Chicago Defender salutes Duke Ellington on his birthday. Guest post by Luke Johnson, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 28, 1962: Police brutality reported in Indianapolis Recorder. Guest post by Samanvay Kasarala, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 28, 1988: Cleveland Call and Post endorses Jesse Jackson for President.
April 29, 1904: Iowa State Bystander reports on practical joke gone wrong. Guest post by Robert Kinser, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 30, 1960: Student protests in Greensboro, North Carolina reported in the Chicago Defender. Guest post by Samuel Kramer, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.
April 4, 1968 3 gallery published 2019-08-20T14:44:19+00:00
On April 4, 1968, the Los Angeles Sentinel published “Martin and Memphis” by columnist A. S. “Doc” Young. Young started with the story of Rosa Parks and described how the Montgomery bus boycott marked the “beginning of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s career an an internationally-renowned leader of the race.” Young praised King’s role in the 1963 March on Washington and his influence on Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. “But, now, it seems, Dr. Martin Luther King misplaced his magic somewhere along the way from 1963 to 1968,” Young argued. “I asked a Negro bookseller for a book about King the other night and he said, ‘Negroes have been shying away from King.’ The book I wanted, the bookseller said, just wouldn’t sell in his store.” Young suggested that King’s stance on Vietnam and the emergence of radicals like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown drew support away from King. “But, King kept doggedly on. There were times, to be sure, when he flirted with threats of violence on the part of others...but, in the main, he maintained his course in a near-straight line. He maintained it, that is, until the other day in Memphis, when a protest march he was leading fell apart. A small number of hoodlum-minded ‘militants’ suddenly decided to get violent, to loot, and to riot. Staging a mini-version of the Watts Riots, they put Martin Luther King to rout. He fled the scene like a defeated warrior...There is fear in Washington, D.C., that the same will happen when (if) King stages his ‘Poor People’s’ protest demonstration...In any event, Martin Luther King said the day after the Memphis blow-up, ‘Riots are a part of today’s society.’ What a terribly-horrible thing of the champion of non-violence to say! Did Mahatma Gandhi ever cop out like that?” Like many white journalists, Doc Young was unsettled by King’s positions on Vietnam and economic rights.

Young’s column was published in the Sentinel the same day that Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The days following King’s murder brought grief and anger to black communities across the country, and many of these emotions were reflected in the black press. Here is a selection of black newspaper covers for the days after King’s death:
- Los Angeles Sentinel, April 11, 1968 (click to view JPG)Chicago Defender, April 6, 1968 (PDF)Chicago Defender, April 8, 1968 (PDF)New York Amsterdam News, April 13, 1968 (PDF)Pittsburgh Courier, April 13, 1968 (PDF)Philadelphia Tribune, April 8, 1968 (PDF)Baltimore Afro-American, April 6, 1968 (PDF)Cleveland Call and Post, April 13, 1968 (PDF)