Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

The Messages in President Obama’s Spotify Playlist

By Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper 

Now that 2012 is upon us, so is another presidential election. Barack Obama is seeking a second term as the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, and four candidates are currently vying for the Republican Party nomination. There are many strategic decisions which these politicians make to promote their candidacies, including crafting inspiring speeches, offering eloquent answers to interview questions, and creating patriotic backdrops at campaign events. For as long as there have been American presidential elections, one of the candidates’ quadrennial considerations has also been selection of the right music.

President Obama made news on February 9th when he announced his campaign’s Spotify playlist. For those not familiar with Spotify, it is an online music service that streams songs to members of the website. President Obama released his playlist in 2012 in much the same way that he announced his iPod playlist during his 2008 candidacy. Playlists such as this can send powerful messages to the electorate, as they can transmit political ideas or associate a candidate with a notable musical celebrity. With this in mind, let’s have a look at a few of the 28 songs on President Obama’s Spotify playlist.

One of the more notable selections is Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” President Obama previously sang the first few bars of this song at an appearance in the Apollo Theater in New York City on January 19th. Although originally written as a romantic song when first released by Green in the early 1970s, the song’s title and hook offer a powerful message from an incumbent president to the voters: vote for me, so that we can mutually continue along the path we are on now.

A second song choice by President Obama that musically asks for another opportunity to serve the country is U2’s “Even Better than the Real Thing.” In multiple places the overarching message is that the listener will be satisfied by giving the singer one more chance. The song goes on to refer to its audience as the real thing and even better than that. This can be interpreted as a way to “pump up” supporters of the President. Again, like “Let’s Stay Together,” the lyrics of “Even Better than the Real Thing” were clearly originally written with romantic intent, but the key catchy parts of the song can be co-opted to express relevant political messages.

REO Speedwagon’s “Roll with the Changes” exemplifies another important political theme for President Obama. The title of this tune harkens back to one of the President’s major campaign slogans from 2008: Change we can believe in. The lyrics go on to tell the listener that the singer is available when the listener is ready to move along with the changes that lay ahead. The lyrics also tell the listener that the tables have turned, and they imply that the darkest hour has passed. Certainly, one could see this as a message from President Obama that the economy is on the mend and things are getting better because of the changes he has implemented.

The songs a campaign chooses can also be used to thwart the message of the political opposition. One song on President Obama’s playlist that does this is “No Nostalgia” by Ages and Ages. Recently, Republican candidates have expressed a message that the country is on the wrong path, and only they can restore America to its past greatness. The hook of “No Nostalgia” takes aim at this notion, claiming that instead of looking to the past we should concentrate on the promise of what our country is now and can become in the future.

Of course, one must be careful not to read too much into these lyrics and song choices. Still, there is no doubt that President Obama and those working on his reelection campaign thought long and hard about which songs to release. Ultimately, song choice is an important consideration for presidential campaigns. The right song can become a memorable way to express important political messages. On the other hand, the wrong songs can muddle a campaign message, and key song omissions can lead to hurt feelings among those who were musically snubbed.

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About the authors: Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper are the authors of Don't Stop Thinking about the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns.  Benjamin Schoening is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and music director of the Red Cedar Choir in Rice Lake.  Eric T. Kasper is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and the municipal judge in Rice Lake.

One Day It Will All Make (Common) Sense: Common, Conscious Rap, and Right-Wing Critiques of Hip Hop

By Reiland Rabaka

Along with Jill Scott, Bill Collins, and Rita Dove, the “conscious” rapper Common (Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.) was featured at a poetry evening at the White House on May 11. His invitation drew criticism from big name Republicans and their media outlets. It is curious that folk who have little or no relationship with rap music and hip hop culture always wanna fix their faces to say something every time hip hop is given its props. It is even more dubious that for many of these same folk African Americans – their history, culture, politics, religion, and music – only seem to register in the negative. This is what we in African American Studies call a “pathological approach to black people,” which is to say, one that views people as problems instead of people with problems. All human beings have problems, right? Even Republicans, right? It is rare to hear anyone outside of the Hip Hop Generation acknowledge the power of poetry via rap music. Few folk are willing to concede that after the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, hip hop seems to be one of the most salient vehicles for self transformation and social change available to twenty-first century youth. Obviously hip hop, as with most great art forms, has its controversies and contradictions. But, to make it seem as though hip hop is the only art form with issues revolving around violence, misogyny, and homophobia is outright disingenuousness. Has anyone ever heard the song-cum-slogan “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll!?” Is rock & roll somehow free from violence, misogyny, and homophobia? I don’t think so (and here I’ll make no mention of Ozzy Osbourne, Dire Straits, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, or Korn, etc.). Think for a moment. When is the last time you have heard heavy-hitting Republicans come out against the violence, murder, misogyny, incest, adultery, and profanity in the work of William Shakespeare (just for fun, see The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, A Midsummer Nights Dream, King Lear, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet)? The Republicans, if I may state it outright, have the wrong rapper this time. Common, like Talib Kweli and Mos Def, is actually one of the more progressive rappers on the scene today. However, I’d be the first to admit that it took him a moment to find his voice and vision. His first two albums, Can I Borrow a Dollar? (1992) and Resurrection (1994) were interesting but rather generic. It wasn’t until he dropped One Day It Will All Makes Sense (1997) that his audience was provided with his unique brand of hip hop shamanism. It would be helpful if Common’s Republican critics really and truly engaged his work before mindlessly diving head first into foolishness and misinterpretation. African American music, as with African American life in general, is full of deep double entendres, and sometimes rappers raise issues to bring awareness to those issues and offer their own unique solutions to our problems. I am critical of hip hop’s cheerleaders just as much as I am hip hop’s hyper-critics. I am attempting to develop a relationship with rap music and hip hop culture that allows me to highlight its positives and its negatives, to both appreciate it and critique it. In closing I should say, President Obama is not the first president to invite an artist to the White House whose work includes references to controversial or, even more, criminal topics, and he certainly should not be the last. Here’s to American democracy. Here’s to freedom of speech. And, finally, here’s to artistic license, even for working-class and poverty-stricken U.S. citizens. God Bless America.

Reiland Rabaka is an associate professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement; Against Epistemic Apartheid; and Forms of Fanonism.

The Publicly Profane Odd Future of the Music Industry

By Elizabeth B. Christian

What’s a headstrong, creative musical artist to do now that the music industry is in freefall, and record labels prefer signing easily moldable youth who can be pre-packaged and marketed to a mainstream audience with a ready-made profit margin? Singing talent is optional as long as you look like a star and will do as your label commands. In fact, labels often balk at originality in a marketplace increasingly based on the bottom line rather than the message in the music.

The music industry of the 21st industry reminds me of a 1973 episode of the iconic sitcom The Brady Bunch in which a record producer offers Greg the role of rock star Johnny Bravo because he “fit the suit,” not because of any musical genius.

Perhaps this type mindset is part of the reason for the epic fail of the industry, suggests Christian Clancy, former Interscope Records executive and co-manager of one of raps’ rising stars. Clancy told Billboard in March that the new business model is one in which artists come from a place of authenticity—and you can feel it in their lyrics and see it in their imagery. They may not produce No. 1 hits overnight, but in time this brand of artists will garner lasting and loyal fans.

Enter: Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA), a group of 11 alternative hip-hoppers who skate, create and debate what direction they want to take their artistry in next. Led by a 19-year-old known to fans as Tyler, the Creator, OFWGKTA is much more concerned about the group’s authenticity than airplay. Thanks to catching the ears and eyes of superstar Kanye West in the summer of 2010, however, airplay and Internet attention have followed.

Clancy, co-manager OFWGKTA, believes the group’s genre-bending, real-world branding is the wave of the future of music. The group formed in 2009 and released its first self-produced album Bastard on its website, oddfuture.com, near year’s end to little fanfare from hip-hop media. The group gave out free albums and recorded and posted a music video for its song French. People started talking and tweeting and Tumblring.

Kanye and Soulja Boy then publicly endorsed OFWGKTA, leading to an appearance in February on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and the release of two iTunes singles, Yonkers and Sandwitches, thus far the only two songs available from the group for retail purchase, selling 12,000 and 6,000 units respectively within the first month.

That, however, is about to change with Odd Future’s Tyler, the Creator’s second album due out May 10, distributed by XL. What most definitely is not going to change, Clancy said, is the group members’ commitment to staying true to themselves and not some corporate music magnate.

To say Odd Future is rough around the edges would be an understatement. The group voices profanity as often as many of us take breaths. They rap about committing violent and sexual crimes, use homophobic and misogynistic phrasing, and have no respect for anything or anyone with whom they disagree. Still the message resonates with many in the younger, urban generation. And the creativity of the group--profane words notwithstanding--cannot be denied. No other twentysomething musical artists out there can boast of writing and producing their own music, marketing it, doing their own promotional material, and creating and choreographing their own music videos and shows.

It’s a powerful package—headstrong youth whose motive isn’t profit or political correctness.

Now, if this secondary placement of profit after authenticity catches on in the music industry, it would most certainly be an odd future.

Elizabeth Barfoot Christian is assistant professor of journalism at Louisiana Tech University and the editor of Rock Brands: Selling Sound in a Media Saturated Culture.

Next blog: The political branding of country music: 10 years post 9/11

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Today’s Confessional Politics

By Brian T. Kaylor

Twenty-five years ago, the third Monday in January was designated a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. Born on January 15, the Baptist pastor led one of the most significant social movements in the history of the United States, transforming American politics, society, and religion. More than four decades after King’s assassination, the fruits of his work continue to reverberate throughout society. When Barack Obama placed his hand on the Bible two years ago and took the presidential oath of office, it symbolized a partial fulfillment of King’s dream.

However, King’s influence on American politics today extends far beyond opening doors for minorities to find political success. King and the civil rights movement also impacted the relationship between religion and politics. Few political figures invoked God and cited scripture as explicitly and eloquently as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In many respects, King’s civil rights movement—and to a lesser extent the anti-Vietnam War movement that he was also part of—brought religious rhetoric squarely into public policy debates and created a model for later religious activists seeking political influence. King built a movement that urged religious leaders and citizens to leave the church sanctuary and march into the streets. He directly served as a primary instigator for today’s liberal evangelical movement and an inspiration for today’s conservative evangelical movement—even among those who initially criticized his political mission.

Many politicians join religious leaders in pointing to King as justification for infusing God and scripture more heavily into their political discourse. While arguing the importance of connecting one’s faith to one’s policies during the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama pointed to King and other religious-political activists: “Look, Martin Luther King, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, Dorothy Day—we have a long history of reform movements being grounded in that sense, often religiously expressed, that we have to extend beyond ourselves and our individual immediate self-interests to think about something larger.” As Obama correctly noted, King and his movement demonstrated how religious faith can inspire people to make the world a better place. To attempt to excise faith from the public square would be to isolate society from the influences of individuals like King.

Yet, the reverse problem can also develop—one where politicians attempt to become preachers and use the government to enforce their specific sectarian goals. King, the prophet calling out the powerful interests, demonstrated the healing power of faith. But those same aspirations could backfire if used instead by those in power to maintain their positions. In the age of confessional politics in which we live, too often religion is used to gain power and strip minority religious groups of their civil rights. What we need is not necessarily more or less religion in politics, but a different kind. We need the faith that King preached, the faith that shows love for all one’s neighbors, the faith that empowers the down trodden, the faith that fights for justice for all.

Dr. Brian T. Kaylor (www.BrianKaylor.com) is an assistant professor of communication studies at James Madison University. He is the author of Presidential Campaign Rhetoric in an Age of Confessional Politics.

The District of Columbia Obtains Some Relief from Congressional Oversight

By Ronald W. Walters

In the normal cycle of political change that has occurred in national government, the relationship between the District of Columbia government and the Federal government is undergoing a transition as well. As pointed out in Democratic Destiny and the District of Columbia, when Republicans are in power in the Congress, there is far more scrutiny of District affairs in the relevant committees in the House and Senate. Moreover, such scrutiny over City legislation breeds into the process inefficiency and a distortion of local interests acknowledged by local leaders. However, with Democratic control signs of a thaw have recently emerged, an example of which is that the District Budget passed with no riders, which enabled the local government to spend its own money to help poor women pay for abortions and to legalize medical marijuana. By the same token, same-sex marriage became law in the District as many couples immediately took advantage of the new right afforded them. Here, the difference in treatment by party was striking, since when Republican Senator Sam Brownback (Kansas) controlled the Committee in 2006, he threatened to block same-sex marriage if the City passed such legislation. However, this year, Democrats in the House, such as Stephen Lynch (Boston), and Daniel Akaka (Hawaii) in the Senate, head of the respective District Committees, fought off attempts by Republicans to kill the measure.

What this suggests is a mood of the Congress and the Obama administration to grant the District government more autonomy over its affairs. Constitutional controls are still operative that gives Congress ultimate veto power over District legislation and the local representative, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, still cannot vote on the floor, but can vote and sponsor measures in committees. Nevertheless, the Delegate has sponsored two bills that could legally expand City autonomy by allowing measures passed locally, such as the Budget and other proposed laws to go into effect immediately, rather than waiting 60-90 days for Congressional review.

This is a grand opportunity to expand local home rule powers because of the change in political cycles has also ushered in a President who is sympathetic to such changes. On the campaign trail, President Obama said that he would sign such measures into law if they were to reach his desk, meaning that they were not his first priority and that, as such, he probably would not campaign for them, but that if passed through the Congress he would be supportive. Perhaps this era could result in some of the perfecting changes in the original Home Rule legislation that could move District citizens close to the exercise of normal democratic rights and the City toward a more efficient process of governing.

Ronald W. Walters is director of the African American Leadership Institute and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, the author of Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics, and the co-editor of Democratic Destiny and the District of Columbia: Federal Politics and Public Policy.

During Black History Month, Consider the Black Atlantic

By Beatriz G. Mamigonian

February is Black History Month in the United States and in Canada; later in the year, in October, it is celebrated in the UK. Many other countries have dates to mark events related to slavery in their past and the African cultural legacies in their cultures. As a result, books, exhibits, conferences, TV shows, memorial markers, and school activities raise public awareness about themes that often remain at the margins of the school curricula and the mainstream media.

Praising the contribution of African descendants to the building of the various nations they belong to, recounting tales of resistance and survival amid oppression and exploitation, and keeping cultural traditions alive are certainly very important. However, to consider only Black History themes shaped by national borders is to miss out on a great opportunity to put one's history into perspective and find often forgotten connections.

We should not assume a common identity among African descendants throughout the world. However, the concept of Black Atlantic offers a framework to deal with the shared histories and complex links among the experience of African descendants in the modern world without freezing identity or keeping within national boundaries. The idea of Black Atlantic rejects the Eurocentrism embedded in the analysis of the emergence of the modern world as a European achievement. It considers that the slave system was central to the making of an integrated economic, social, and cultural space joining the various shores of the Atlantic, but also that it was significant because of its human consequences. As a massive forced migration that displaced people within Africa and dispersed millions of them across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, the slave trade fuelled chattel slavery and left a legacy of race discrimination.

Recently, the "Black Atlantic" framework has been used as an alternative reading of modern history, a counter-narrative that addresses the cultural transformations, resistance, and struggles that peoples of African descent waged against enslavement, exploitation, racism, and other forms of oppression. This is the perspective adopted in The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500-2000, a collection of biographies edited by Karen Racine and myself, newly published by Rowman & Littlefield.

The collection takes readers to a unique choice of places, periods, and themes. The chapters span the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries, covering and weaving together the colonial Americas, pre-colonial and colonial Africa, and the more contemporary experience. The persons whose life histories are depicted in the collection were, with two exceptions, voluntary or involuntary migrants across the Atlantic themselves, thus experiencing the cultural encounters and the challenge of identity that placed them within this collective experience. Their lives were marked by change and fluidity. Among them, we find Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Anglicans who were always in contact with people who professed faiths other than their own. Their labor experience was quite diverse: from the watched routine of a rural slave to the mobility of being a cook in a slave vessel, from the waged industrial position in the Soviet Union to the precariousness of an illegal migrant’s work as a domestic servant. Some of them gained prominence among their peers: among them, we find Alonso de Illescas, a maroon leader in sixteenth-century Ecuador; Philip Quaque, a missionary in West Africa; a number of intellectuals and activists; and Romare Bearden, a renowned artist. Music, an essential element in the lives of Africans and their descendants, can be heard in the background throughout the book: Catholic prayers surely brought consolation to Gregoria Lopez, Harry Washington overheard the plantation slaves singing work songs, drumming and dancing animated the cabildo celebrations Buenaventura Lucumi attended, jazz inspired Bearden's work, drums and berimbau gave rhythm to the capoeira movements of Mestre Pastinha. The biographies presented in the book give a sense of how individuals took part in the cultural transformations and the struggles to overcome adversity that made up their shared history. In doing so, they call us all to move beyond our histories shaped by national borders and to consider the experience of African descendants from the perspective of the Black Atlantic.

Beatriz G. Mamigonian is professor of history at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. She is the co-editor of The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500–2000.

The Opportunity Gap: Racism in Education

By Julie Landsman

Instead of looking at the difference in test scores between white students and African-American and Latino students as part of an achievement gap, how about thinking about it as a reflection of an opportunity gap. It seems to me that all students are entitled to an opportunity to have an education that reflects their lives and cultures, their literature and history. Everyone has a story. Everyone has their own rituals, their own world-view. If students do not feel visible, if they are not reflected in the curriculum, on the walls, in the media centers, in the visitors who come to speak to them, then they are not receiving the same opportunity to learn as white students, who still find their lives visible in the texts and lessons taught by an overwhelmingly white teaching force.

Combining the unwelcoming, and discouraging effect of a classroom that excludes them, with the lack of resources many students of color possess given our history of racism and its connection to present day poverty, there must be no question that many students of color today are working without the same opportunities as many white students. To compare test scores of a young man with a family computer at home, a college education provided for by his parents, a school with a full science lab and many AP courses, a building that is clean and safe and with teachers who look like him, to those of a young man who goes to school in a building with no computer lab, few books in the media center, (if there is a media center) and class sizes of over 40 students per hour, is a false comparison. Combining racism and poverty, it seems self-evident, that the problem is not in the child, but rather in the system that perpetuates the lack of opportunity many urban students of color experience.

I believe every student must have the opportunity to attend a school where she sees herself everywhere in the building and in the readings and in the high expectations of demanding classes and firm teachers. In order to close the gap white teachers need to begin by thinking of each of these children as their own child, not as someone else’s child, and thus seeing each of their students as someone who has the same brilliant potential to achieve as their own.

In order to close the real gap, gifted programs. AP and IB classes must reflect the population of each school system and not continue to be white enclaves. Such a move would go long way to eliminating the re-segregation of students once they are enter the school room door. Each student, white, black, poor, rich, middle class, must have the opportunity for small class sizes, resources, textbooks, science equipment, in order to provide comparable opportunities for all students. When we can put the onus of the problem on the system that continues to disenfranchise students of color through institutional racism and economic disparity instead of on the low test scores of the children, then we will be one step closer to closing the real gap in education—the opportunity gap.

Julie Landsman is a retired public school teacher and consultant on multicultural education and building inclusive classrooms and is the author Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Racism.

The Greatest (Black) Generation

By Maggi M. Morehouse

The black “Citizen Soldiers” who participated in the “Good War" also form part of the “Greatest Generation," yet they continue to be invisible in the general histories of World War II. Why have representations of World War II—books and films—overlooked the multitude of black experiences and voices? How can we “save the black privates” from obscurity? If we can agree that World War II was a watershed event that affected all Americans, then we must add in the narratives of the black Americans who served in the armed forces. I suspect one of the main reasons we overlook the history of black Americans during the war years is because the story is a complicated one—one filled with moments of glory as well as moments of shame—and many more moments of simple everyday life. It is a difficult job to include the story of a group of people who were excluded from American life. Still, World War II affected black Americans as deeply—perhaps more deeply—than white Americans. We need to complicate the narrative of World War II to include, not occlude, the black experience.

The black Americans who served in one of the two segregated infantry divisions during World War II were changed by their experiences in the war. The changes individual men experienced were not uniform, but each man's life was altered as a consequence of serving in the segregated Army. Black infantry combat soldiers from the 93rd Infantry Division fought the Japanese enemy on the island jungles of the southwest Pacific. The 92nd “Buffalo Soldier” Division routed the German enemy from the shores of the Italian Mediterranean to the peaks of the Italian Apennines, and finally they liberated the country village-by-village. On American shores black combat soldiers also fought an enemy, an old, intractable enemy—racism. All three theaters of war had long lasting effects on the participants.

We need to engage in a new conceptual framework when undertaking studies of World War II. It is inadequate, and to me boring, to continue with this trend of battle stories and hagiographies without adding in the narratives of all Americans. I am encouraged by the outpouring of recent publications that give voice to the legion of women, blacks, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and Latinos who participated in the war effort. These new multicultural accounts—in the words of Navajo “code talkers,” black women WACs, black veterans and wives, “Rosita the Riveters,” interned Japanese families, and Puerto Rican combat soldiers—illustrate the multitude of stories and voices that have been largely overlooked. This new multicultural picture of World War II is the most realistic portrait of the American people; not that insipid, white warrior with his vapid homemaker wife image that has been constantly replicated within popular culture ad nauseam. These new texts demonstrate why these stories should not be ignored—the participants are all part of the American mosaic. These monographs complicate the narrative of World War II by addressing the pervasive and persistent “whitewashing.”

Maggi M. Morehouse is the author of Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II and assistant professor of history and director of the honors program at the University of South Carolina, Aiken. 

Freedom’s Journal receives Honorable Mention

              Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper, by Jacqueline Bacon, received an Honorable Mention from the 2007 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. This award commends works published in a given year which extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power. For more information about Freedom's Journal, please visit our website http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/ISBN/0739118935.

More Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: How did the newspaper cover slavery? 

A: Freedom’s Journal exposed the cruelties of slavery and the ways that enslaved people fought their oppression. Articles by the editors and contributors countered common proslavery arguments and the assumptions—scriptural, economic, and political—on which they were based. A significant number of articles explored judicial decisions that considered slavery’s reach onto “free” soil when slaves accompanying traveling masters to non-slave states sued for their freedom, from the 1772 British Somerset case to cases from various regions of the United States that explored the power of slavery throughout the nation and set the stage for more well later known decisions such as the Dred Scott case. 

Q: Did the newspaper help free slaves?

A: For obvious reasons, Freedom’s Journal did not publicize specifics about the underground channels for assisting fugitives. However, Russwurm offered help in the newspaper to runaways by notifying them about locations where they would be unsafe because of slave hunters, the devious methods used by those who would capture them, and the names of captors and their accomplices. Freedom’s Journal also publicized efforts by individuals and organizations who aided free African Americans who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery or whose loved ones had suffered this fate, allowing African Americans and white allies to seek assistance in specific cases and free particular victims. Slaves could also be freed through the controversial (but sometimes effective) method of purchasing their freedom, and such initiatives were publicized in the newspaper, such as the campaign to free the children of Reverend George Erskine, a Presbyterian minister and former slave who had been manumitted in 1815, and the poet George Moses Horton. (Although at least some of Erskine’s children obtained freedom, the effort to buy the liberty of Horton failed.)

Q: How did Freedom’s Journal influence American abolition and the history of American journalism? 

A: Freedom’s Journal established connections among African-American leaders in different cities; created a force of writers and activists whose impact on American abolition was crucial, such as David Walker and Samuel Cornish, who went on to edit other newspapers and served on both the Board of Managers and the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and publicized the arguments against colonization and slavery and for black freedom and civil rights that convinced white reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison to support abolition. Because one of the goals of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> was to encourage debate on important subjects, we discover in the pages of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> discussions of issues that white abolitionists did not take up until subsequent decades, such the role of women role in reform and in the public sphere, the use of physical resistance and extralegal action, and the reliance on or rejection of political institutions. 

Q: What is the significance of Freedom’s Journal for African-American newspapers of today?

A: Freedom’s Journal established the power of the black press as a tool in building community and fighting oppression. Numerous newspapers can be considered the legacy of Freedom’s Journal, from Frederick Douglass’s North Star, which began publication in 1847, to the Chicago Defender, which from 1905 to today has played a key role as a source of information and a forum for discussions of issues relating to people of color. As various historians and journalists have noted, the issues raised in Freedom’s Journal have been discussed in the African-American press in various forms since its publication, and the principles upon which it was founded remain relevant. As did Freedom’s Journal, African-American newspapers continue to report stories that are ignored in the mainstream white-dominated media, to interpret news in ways that make it relevant to people of color, to educate and empower, and to critique the nation and challenge it to live up to its ideals.