The Cleveland Gazette was founded by journalist Harry C. Smith 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.