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Chronicling America
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Newspaper The Black Republican (New Orleans [La.]) 1865-186? Weekly Black Republican

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About The Black Republican (New Orleans [La.]) 1865-186?

The Black Republican of New Orleans, Louisiana, began on April 15, 1865. It was published every Saturday by the Black Republican Newspaper Association. The editor was Reverend Stephen Walter Rodgers, named as Rev. S.W. Rodgers in the newspaper. Rodgers was born enslaved yet had learned to read, which was illegal at the time. He was freed in 1852, just before Louisiana tightened restrictions on manumission before outlawing the practice completely in 1857.

The prospectus—published in the April 15, 1865, issue—sought an audience of newly freed Black people, stating, “Through this paper the poor as well as the rich, the freedmen as well as the freemen will be heard.” The prospectus also noted that the newspaper would be published only in English: “It will be printed in the English tongue, the tongue that brought us freedom.” These statements touched on the tension with the leading Black newspaper of the time, the New Orleans Tribune/Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans. That paper printed daily, except for Mondays, in English and French. The Tribune‘s audience included the French-speaking, African American Creole community; this community was more likely to be educated, multiracial, and free before the start of the Civil War. The two newspapers would continue to have a tense relationship, with the Tribune writing on June 30, 1865, “I can with sincerity say to the Black Republican: Why find fault with your neighbors? Is it the object you condemn? That cannot be…”

To distribute news and information to an often-illiterate audience, the Black Republican encouraged attendance at meetings where the paper would be distributed without charge. The newspaper focused on community service by including a section titled “Freemen’s Letters in the Bureau of Free Labor,” which included lists of people who had letters to be picked up from loved ones trying to locate them after being separated by slavery or the war. The newspaper also included an “Information Wanted” section that attempted to reconnect families, as with the following note from April 22, 1865: “Robert F. West seeks to find the whereabouts of his two sisters, Mrs. Sarah Carter and Mrs. Emily Thompson, who belonged to a Mr. Grubbs, near Waterford, Virginia.” In addition to facilitating community engagement and uniting families, the Black Republican ran notices for schools and churches to encourage attendance.

The Black Republican soon ceased operations due to a lack of a solid commercial base and insufficient financial support through advertisements. Additionally, a year’s subscription cost its readers five dollars, and a single issue was ten cents, which proved too expensive for its newly freed audience. Its closure left the New Orleans Tribune as the sole African American newspaper in New Orleans.

Note: A portion of the issues digitized for this newspaper were microfilmed as part of the Miscellaneous Negro newspapers microfilm collection, a 12 reel collection containing issues of African American newspapers published in the U.S. throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Creation of the microfilm project was sponsored by the Committee on Negro Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1947. For more information on the microfilm collection, see: Negro Newspapers on Microfilm, a Selected List (Library of Congress), published in 1953. While this collection contains selections from more than 150 U.S. newspapers titles, for further coverage, view a complete list of all digitized African American titles available in the Chronicling America collection.

Provided By: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

About this Newspaper

Title

  • The Black Republican (New Orleans [La.]) 1865-186?

Other Title

  • Weekly Black Republican

Dates of Publication

  • 1865-186?

Created / Published

  • New Orleans [La.] : Black Republican Newspaper Association, 1865-

Headings

  • -  African Americans--Louisiana--Newspapers
  • -  African American newspapers--Louisiana
  • -  New Orleans (La.)--Newspapers
  • -  Orleans Parish (La.)--Newspapers
  • -  African American newspapers
  • -  African Americans
  • -  Louisiana--Orleans Parish
  • -  Louisiana
  • -  Louisiana--New Orleans
  • -  United States--Louisiana--Orleans--New Orleans

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly
  • -  Volume 1, number 1 (April 15, 1865)-
  • -  Title from masthead.
  • -  Microfilmed by the Library of Congress for the Committee on Negro Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.
  • -  Latest issue consulted: Volume 1, number 6 (May 20, 1865).

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • AN
  • Newspaper

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83016563

OCLC Number

  • 9908183

ISSN Number

  • 2835-0774

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

The Black Republican New Orleans La. -186?. (New Orleans, LA), Jan. 1 1865. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83016563/.

APA citation style:

(1865, January 1) The Black Republican New Orleans La. -186?. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83016563/.

MLA citation style:

The Black Republican New Orleans La. -186?. (New Orleans, LA) 1 Jan. 1865. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83016563/.