This blog post features Alyssah Robinson, one of the Serial and Government Publications Division’s Junior Fellows from the Library’s 2025 Junior Fellows Program. Last summer, Alyssah researched and wrote essays about African American newspaper titles available in the Chronicling America* historic American newspapers database.
In this interview with Robin Butterhof, Digital Conversion Specialist in the Serial and Government Publications Division, Alyssah shares her background, research interests, and internship experience.
Tell us a little about your background. What led you to apply for a Library of Congress Junior Fellows internship?
I recently graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in History with a concentration in African American Studies. I’ve spent the last three years doing a lot of original research using newspapers. In my undergraduate thesis, I used newspapers as a resource to discuss the reaction of critics and the general public to A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and A Medal for Willie by William Branch. My experience doing this research sparked my interest in archives and making history, specifically Black history, more accessible to the public.
As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to work as a research intern at the University of Kentucky’s History Department’s Documenting Racial Violence in Kentucky project. In this internship I used newspapers available on Chronicling America to research the histories and families of victims of racial violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. When the applications for the Junior Fellows program opened and I saw there was a position to work on this project, I knew I wanted to apply. This internship has allowed me to continue to explore Black history, while creating a new challenge of looking at it through a new viewpoint, which is the history of the Black Press.
What project did you work on this summer?
This summer, I worked on the “Researching the Black Press in Chronicling America” project with the Serial and Government Publications Division.
For this project, I researched African American newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries to write 10 essays, each documenting the history of the newspaper, to add context and make them more accessible to researchers, scholars, and the public. I used the Chronicling America database and secondary research materials to discover information to use for these essays.
I wrote essays for these newspapers:
- The Afro-American (Baltimore, Maryland)
- The Black Republican (New Orleans, Louisiana)
- The Colored Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)
- The National Leader (Washington, D.C.)
- The Negro World (St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota)
- The Torchlight Appeal (Fort Worth, Texas)
- The Virginia Star (Richmond, Virginia)
- The Weekly Anglo-African (New York City, New York)
- The Western Outlook (San Francisco, California)
Why did you choose to research these newspaper titles?
I chose these newspapers based on their influence on African American history. I chose newspapers with varying durations, digitized issues, geographical locations, political affiliations, and time periods. Choosing newspapers with such a wide range of factors led to a greater understanding of the Black newspaper industry and the United States overall. Through researching these topics, I was able to learn about a variety of events in U.S. history, such as the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the 1889 Russian flu pandemic, and more.
I did not conduct any preliminary research on the newspapers before selecting them because I wanted to be surprised by what I was able to find. It was very interesting to see the connections between newspapers and how they are often run by family members.
For example, the Afro-American, Bulletin, Colored Tennessean, National Leader, and Weekly Anglo-African were all run by family members at one point.
What is the most interesting thing you found?
The most interesting thing I found was the communication between newspapers about their differences in ideology. This project was the first time I had the opportunity to look at newspapers themselves and something I noticed that I did not expect was the published disagreements between newspapers.
For example, in New Orleans, the Black Republican and Tribune would argue over who was the better newspaper for the local Black community. The Black Republican, which only published in English, stated, “It will be the true organ of the American colored people of Louisiana,” which caused tension with the Tribune, who printed in both English and French. This led to an ongoing battle in which both newspapers published pieces criticizing the other.
In the May 20, 1865, issue, the Black Republican wrote, “It will be conducted by American colored men. It will be printed in the English tongue, the tongue that brought us freedom . . . Through this paper the poor as well as the rich, the freedmen as well as the freemen will be heard.”
This was seen as the beginning of a long dispute between the Black Republican and the Tribune. In the June 30, 1865, issue, the New Orleans Tribune wrote “But after all, perhaps the editors of the Black Republican do not think the interests of the black man would be best subserved by their obtaining the right of suffrage, and that would sufficiently account for the milk in the cocoa-nut.”
Is there anything else you would like to share about these newspapers or your research?
Researching these newspapers has added greatly to my knowledge of the Black press, and I am very excited and honored to have had the opportunity to add to the accessibility of these newspapers to the public. This project has continued to fuel my passion for research in Black history and culture, specifically in newspapers, and I hope that my work this summer can help others discover a similar passion.
Resources
African American Digitized Newspapers in Chronicling America
African American Newspapers Guide
*The Chronicling America historic newspapers online collection is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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