The Negro Star
To view all the articles from this newspaper click here.
The articles from the Negro Star in Wichita Kansas during the 1920s seemed to see a complacency towards segregation and papers generally not reporting any incidents of racially motivated violence. By the end of the 1920s, the lynching phenomenon became a central theme of the newspaper and the lynching records start becoming an annual publication which helped paint a picture for the level of aggression towards the African-American communities. In the 1930s, there was a general consensus that celebrating the 4th of July is an important part of the American way of life, but articles start calling for more attentiveness to human rights and violations of personal freedoms of free Americans. Later on during the 1940s and 1950s with the Second World War, racial violence and reports of incidents rose dramatically.
The 1935 article “American Inconsistency,” was an interesting article because it framed the 4th of July celebrations in a negative way, a typically celebrated holiday. R. A. Adams the author of the article brings attention to the struggles that African Americans faced at this time in the United States. For example, he cites the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution regarding their claims about universal equality, but in reality African Americans still face discrimination in the country. Adams explains how those two documents are extremely hypocritical and make mockeries of American society.
“Keep America American” by Ruth Taylor in 1945 is a another interesting article that calls for a return to basic American principles. Taylor calls on the African-American community to demand the basic rights espoused in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution that they were being deprived of. It discusses segregation specifically but what makes it unique is, unlike most articles which separate African American struggles from other groups, it calls for unification based of the founding principles of America.