Harry C. Smith
<p>Harry C. Smith founded the <em><a title="Cleveland Gazette" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/197">Cleveland Gazette</a> </em> in 1883, a year after he graduated from high school. Under his editorial control, the <em>Gazette</em> was a staunch advocate of African American civil rights. Smith was elected to the Ohio state legislature in 1894 and served three terms in all. As a legislator, Smith introduced civil rights legislation in 1894, and in 1896 he successfully shepherded a strict anti-lynching bill into law (the Smith Act) that served as a model for other states. Smith published the <em>Gazette</em> until his death in 1941.</p>
owproject
2013-11-07 15:25:59
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Cleveland Gazette
<p>The <em>Cleveland Gazette</em> was founded by journalist <a title="Harry C. Smith" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/196">Harry C. Smith</a> in 1883. Smith was a supporter of the Republican Party in Ohio, and the paper reflected his unrelenting advocacy of African American civil rights. The paper’s success was largely due to what early journalism historian I. Garland Penn called the “vigorous and able editorial writings of Mr. Smith.” For a long time, the paper was the nation's longest-running African American weekly, published every week for nearly sixty years, earning it the nickname “Old Reliable.” The paper folded in 1945, four years after Smith’s death in 1941.</p>
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2013-11-07 15:06:20
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"The Accused Men"
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">When six white men gang-raped </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">an African American woman in Columbus, Ohio, the </span><a title="Cleveland Gazette" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/197"><em style="font-size: 13px;">Cleveland Gazette </em></a><span style="font-size: 13px;">published their profiles on its front page, providing something rarely seen in mainstream </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">newspaper accounts of interracial rape in the 1890s—the faces of white sexual criminals. </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">African American journalists </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">and cartoonists created such imagery t</span><span style="font-size: 13px;">o challenge the double standard in reporting, </span><span style="font-size: 13px;"> and emphasize the past and contemporary sexual violence against </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">African American women carried out by white men.</span></p>
owproject
2013-07-02 04:34:37
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"Horrible!"
<span style="font-size: 13px;">In spring 1894, the </span><a title="Cleveland Gazette" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/197"><em style="font-size: 13px;">Cleveland Gazette</em></a><span style="font-size: 13px;"> published this rare lynching image to protest </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">the murder of Roscoe Parker, in West Union, Ohio. The paper includ</span><span style="font-size: 13px;">ed a simple pen-and-ink drawing of Parker’s lynched body—with the white mob </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">sketched in the bottom left of the frame—but placed Parker’s portrait higher up to emphasize his</span><span style="font-size: 13px;"> humanity and retain dignity. The Ohio lynching made clear that lynching </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">was a national problem, not confined to the South, and a federal response was </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">necessary to quell the violence.</span>
owproject
2013-06-27 06:08:05
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