Journalism and Jim Crow is the first extended work to document the critical role of the white press in building white supremacist political economies and social orders in the New South—and the critical role of the Black press in fiercely resisting—from the end of Reconstruction through the first decades of the twentieth century.

The tragic outcomes of this history are still with us and demand our attention.

Using the soft power of news stories, white Southern journalists spread racist ideas that became the post-war ideology of white supremacy and Jim Crow.  But these journalists, particularly the editors and publishers of large urban dailies with ties to the Democratic Party, then the party of white supremacy, exercised hard power, too. They were often straight-out political actors who used their institutional power to shape society to serve their own interests, with little regard for democratic principles and constitutional protections afforded their Black fellow citizens.

They planned political campaigns to wrest power from Black Republicans, white populists, and bi-racial coalitions. They spread anti-Black, anti-democratic disinformation and propaganda. And they even used the tools of racial terror—racial massacres, lynching, convict leasing—to build a near total world of white supremacy. In this world, Black Southerners were not able to vote, serve on juries, hold public office, receive equitable public education, and pursue economic opportunity without white sufferance.

Journalists and news leaders today need to understand how white power and white normativity operate in their own newsrooms. We hope journalists across the country will discuss and learn from the ugly historical truth Journalism and Jim Crow lays bare: white journalists and mainstream journalism have too often served anti-Black, anti-democratic political purposes even as they claimed to be impartial, neutral, and objective.

We hope all readers will think anew about the essential role of journalism in democratic life and how we can reimagine and remake both to serve the ends of democratic expansion, inclusion, truth, and justice.