This article by Ray Dinsmore from University of New Hampshire examined the revival of Boston’s Black Press by examining a local newspaper, the Bay State Banner in 1956, and fills the gap in the study of national Black newspapers by examining local newspapers, rather than national publications.
The Boston Guardian was a pioneer of anti-segregationist press in New England, although the death of its radical publisher William Monroe Trotter in 1934 deeply affected the paper. It nevertheless endured until 1957, but without the unique voice of Trotter the paper was not the same. Just when the anti-segregationist efforts were paying off, the Black community in Boston lost an influential voice.
Much research has been dedicated to the Boston Guardian and Trotter. He was also memorialized by none other than W.E.B. DuBois, a titan of the civil rights movement in The Crisis. DuBois remarked that overcoming racial injustice would require “not one but a thousand lives like that of Monroe Trotter”.
A couple decades later, an aspiring lawyer, Melvin B. Miller heeded these words and on September 25, 1965, the Bay State Banner published its first issue. The focus on the Boston Guardian omits the prestige of the Banner and its superior publication history. Its importance was in sustaining the community and improving the everyday conditions of its readers.
The author argues that the everyday labor of publications like the Banner allowed national publications like the Chicago Defender to resonate with Black communities across the nation. Its function, like those of other local Black publications, is to be a platform of knowledge dissemination and social justice communication, and they also serve in organizing political protests, debating major social justice issues of the day, and providing information on national happenings.
Melvin Miller himself never saw the newspaper as his passion – he rejected the suggestion and said it was something he had to do. To illustrate the difference, he said that Mother Teresa must have rejected the idea that it was wonderful to walk in New Delhi among impoverished people – she did it because she had to.
He was also academically gifted, with marks satisfactory for Trotter’s Alma Mater Harvard, and ultimately graduated from Columbia Law in 1964, and inspired by the Civil Rights Act, started organizing the launch of his newspaper. His father helped to finance the paper, and his Harvard classmate Otis Gates helped to manage the paper, and Boston Globe journalist Bryant Rollins served as the editor.
The first founding issue had writings from the most influential Black individuals in it. Miller was in conversation with Dr. Charles Steward, the man who published Boston Guardian after Trotter’s death, and Steward ordained the Banner as a successor of the Guardian.
In addition to Black individuals like Melvin King, a state representative who decried the segregation in Boston’s school system, an award-winning white author and public school teacher, Jonathan Kozol, also wrote an op-ed, extolling the virtues of the Black community in Roxbury, where he migrated to, experiencing the inequity and racism of Boston’s white community first hand before that.
The paper also nearly collapsed in 1966, but it was saved by the members of the Roxbury community rallying in its support, with 100 members forming “Save the Banner Committee”, urging local businesses to support the Banner. This community-centric effort saved the newspaper.
After nearly shutting down, the Banner came back stronger than ever and with a stronger commitment to solving problems facing Black Bostonians. The late sixties saw a division in the community around the question, whether Black citizens of Boston should enlist for war. A Banner columnist argued that there was no moral obligation to join the conflict.
Not all readers agreed and the words of Senator Edward Brooke carried considerable weight – he argued that Americans had made a commitment to the South Vietnamese people and other people in Southeast Asia. However, Black readers in Boston eventually did turn against the war.
The paper also paid great attention to issues of physical health of its readers, and in addition to that, spiritual health and self-actualization in the form of connection with Black history. The Banner held a weekly column on Black history by Robert Hayden from 1974 to 1979. This history, for the readers, went far beyond trivia. It was an act of self-actualization and spiritual nourishment for the community.
Finally, in March 2023, Melvin Miller relinquished control of the banner, but made sure that the buyers knew the issues facing the community, but it is not yet known whether the Banner will preserve Miller’s guiding philosophy. Nevertheless, the legacy of the newspaper is solidified in Roxbury, Boston, and the Banner is a remarkable chapter in the history of Black press.
The article “Raising the Banner: Melvin Miller and the Revival of Boston’s Black Press” by Ray Dinsmore is in American Journalism. (Free abstract).
You might also want to read a tribute to Melvin Miller from Harvard Magazine.
Picture: Boston skyline by Sandro Gonzalez.
License Unsplash.
