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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

The Appeal - April 16, 1904

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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 16, 1904 Guest post by Caroline Arkesteyn, undergraduate student at Iowa State University.

An article published in The Appeal—a Minneapolis/St. Paul newspaper—on April 16, 1904, described a growing international phenomenon. “‘Don’t Swear’ Campaign of Bay State Preacher Now International' tells of the anti-profanity movement started by Rev. Roland D. Sawyer “in the hope that he [would] raise the morals of mankind by abolishing swearing.” The article brings us through the life of Sawyer who, growing up in Kensington, New Hampshire, “inherited the lot of the average New England country boy.” When a young preacher came to his hometown, Sawyer was enlightened and began to become religiously involved. While considering the toils of sin in his life, he decided that profanity was the largest sinful obstacle to his religious purity.

After going to university to study ministry and spending time as an associate pastor, Sawyer came back to his home town of Kensington and began to use an old church to hold meetings. It was there that he created a very simple pledge to not use profanity: “I, the undersigned, do hereby resolve to use no more profane language of any kind. May the lord help me to keep my resolve.” This pledge and the message weren’t meant to be forceful or offensive; they simply meant to outline how useless and distasteful profanity was in conversation. He and many young people in the town took the pledge, and as Sawyer moved around, the pledge spread. He began to pass along his message—with help from his friends—by handing the simple pledge out to people via small cards and stickers. Then it grew to signs being hung in places where people commonly swore, such as “groceries, [places] where men and boys sit around in the evenings to talk, shops and factories…and schoolyards where little boys swear.” Those who participated in the movement formed an anti-profanity league, which was able to get ordinances passed to ban swearing in some towns. The movement, at the time of reporting had spread so large that twelve thousand people had signed pledges in forty states, two territories, and six countries. Most notably, the president, President Roosevelt, gave his support to the movement with approval of the work the league had been completing.

The content of this article may no doubt be surprising to some and may raise any number of questions. This movement of banning profanity, although written somewhat lightheartedly as a news story, deals with the issue of censorship. It is for this reason that one could find it fitting that this topic was reported on in an African-American newspaper, which was born from a sort of censorship of African-American life from common newspapers. News of censorship no doubt continues to be an issue relevant to the lives of minority and underrepresented groups. If this movement were as much of an international phenomenon today as it was when this article was published, one would expect that we would see incredible backlash. One must ask how these bans on profanity were expected to be governed when profanity is so subjective, with different words being considered “off-limits” or acceptable by different people. The international traction of this movement allows us to recognize how much we have developed since this article’s publishing, but it also begs us to recognize the ways in which we have not.