For the Jackson Advocate
Jackson Advocate: Source and
Resource
by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
For an
ordinary reader in the twenty-first century, a newspaper is simply a certain
number of pages containing print and photographs. The quality of paper used and
specifics of design or packaging of information allow the ordinary reader to
distinguish a newspaper from a magazine.
The reader is very sure that information in a newspaper must be easy to
read. It must be brief. The headline is the story. A magazine paragraph can have four or more
sentences. The ideal newspaper paragraph
must be limited to three sentences or less.
Brevity is all.
Such
exaggeration makes a point about African American newspapers. Since the
founding of Freedom’s Journal in
1827, many black newspapers have violated the rules of elegant journalism. They have done so out of necessity. They have violated rules and custom in order
to expose the more compelling social, political, and cultural violations of
rights and entitlements which obtain in the United States of America. Since 1938, the Jackson Advocate has been a player in this game. It has violated some of the laws of
journalism and most of the rules of thumb used by ordinary readers. Habitual transgressions have made it a model
African American newspaper for 75 years.
The
primary mission of the black press (newspapers) has been oppositional. The mission has been one of revealing the
facts and events which the so-called mainstream American newspapers have
concealed, minimized, or ignored. In this sense, the black newspapers have been
more transparent or forthcoming in using the function of journalism in everyday
life. At the time of its founding in the
State of Mississippi, the Jackson
Advocate had to do more than merely print the news. Conditions in
Mississippi did not allow the Jackson
Advocate the luxury of imitating the debatable “objectivity” of such
national papers as the New York Times.
It had to be overtly partisan in a closed society where “truth” was a cardinal
sin.
We are
indebted to the late historian Julius E. Thompson for much that we know about
the founding of the Jackson Advocate
and its existence as a vital source of information for black Mississippians and
the rest of the nation. Thompson, who
was relentless in his pursuit of truth, in his research on the facts of African
American history, published three books that are essential for understanding
the history and importance of the Jackson
Advocate:
The Black Press in
Mississippi, 1865-1985: A Directory.
West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1988.
The Black Press in
Mississippi, 1865-1985. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993.
Percy Greene and the
Jackson Advocate: The Life and Times of a Radical Conservative Black
Newspaperman, 1897-1977. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland & Company, 1994.
Thompson’s work is foundational for any future histories of
the Jackson Advocate and of African
American journalism.
One
tidbit of information about the Jackson
Advocate in the 1940s whets one’s appetite to know about the impact of
journalism on the evolving of Mississippi’s history. In Lynchings in Mississippi: A
History, 1865-1965 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007), Thompson
noted that in 1942 Percy Greene bravely “spoke out against the deaths by
lynching of the two fourteen-year-old black boys in Shubuta, Mississippi.” Other black Mississippi newspapers, notably
the Delta Leader and the Mississippi Enterprise, “largely
remained silent on the lynching crisis in Mississippi.” When the brilliant editor Charles Tisdale
became the Jackson Advocate’s
publisher in 1978, he swiftly breathed new life into what had become a
conservative, lackluster newspaper.
Unlike, Greene, Tisdale was a stalwart radical, a true heir of
nineteenth-century nationalists who understood that African American newspapers
served as instruments in the long struggle for freedom and literacy. Until his death in 2007, he ensured that the Jackson Advocate would make special
contributions to the historical record.
Under his leadership, the paper never failed to serve the political,
intellectual, and psychological needs of black Mississippians despite many
efforts to discredit him and to destroy the Jackson
Advocate. Since his death, Alice
Thomas -Tisdale has worked tirelessly to maintain her husband’s legacy in the
face of irreversible changes in journalism and new information technologies. She is dedicated to maintaining the newspaper
as a resource for the future.
Any celebration of the
newsworthy fact that the Jackson Advocate
has survived for 75 years in Jackson, Mississippi must be purposeful. In 2013, the Jackson Advocate should be the central subject of rigorous inquiry
about the past and future of African American journalism
