Did you know that forms of neo-slavery emerged after the Civil War that terrorized Black men, women, and children for generations? Learn about convict leasing and how it shaped the U.S. criminal justice system with tragic outcomes for Black Americans across time.

Wealthy white industrialists used convict labor and debt peonage to build his tourist empire and the modern state of Florida—and covered up these brutal, racist labor practices in the Florida newspapers they controlled. They successfully fended off a massive Justice Department investigation and whitewashed history, too.

Henry Grady, celebrated as the most famous spokesperson for the New South and the brilliant managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s, was also the chief architect of white supremacy in the South. He defended convict leasing to build the wealth of the men in his political ring; he covered racial terror lynchings with disturbing levity; he popularized the idea of “separate but equal” that became the constitutional basis of Jim Crow in Plessy v. Ferguson; and he convinced white Southerners and Northerners alike to disenfranchise Black citizens. The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia still bears his name.

For the 93rd episode of the Journalism History Podcast, hosted by Teri Finneman, Kathy Roberts Forde discusses her co-edited book, Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America.

Young Black activists and their allies in Georgia have been trying to remove the name of Henry Grady, white supremacist New South spokesperson and managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s, from schools, including the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, and his statue from downtown Atlanta.

Remember the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, and the role of right-wing news in seeding the ground? Learn about historical precedent. Sadly, this kind of event is hardly an anomaly in the American experience.

White publishers and editors used their newspapers to build, nurture, and protect white supremacy across the South in the decades after the Civil War. At the same time, a vibrant Black press fought to disrupt these efforts and force the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America (U Illinois Press, 2021) centers the press as a crucial political actor shaping the rise of the Jim Crow South.

Read this if you want to understand why complaints about the advocacy journalism of Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, are so wrong-headed. She is part of a long tradition of Black journalists who fought white supremacy and tried to build a more democratic, pluralistic America.

The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment marked a turning point in U.S. history. Yet 150 years later, its promises remain unfulfilled.

Learn about the long arc of Reconstruction—and its continuing relevance today in the struggle to achieve racial justice and liberal democracy in the United States.  Robert Greene II reviews Henry Louis Gates’ book Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow in The Nation.

In this review of Walter Johnson’s book The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States in The Nation, Robert Greene II showcases Johnson’s argument that the history of the city of St. Louis has been one of empire-building, racism, and efforts to build a just, inclusive democracy.

Printing Hate is a remarkable student reporting effort led by the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Student reporters researched and reported on the historical role of white newspapers in aiding and abetting racial massacres and lynchings—and the enduring outcomes on communities today. The students were from the University of Maryland, Howard University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, and the University of Arkansas.

When President Trump claimed election fraud after losing the 2020 presidential election, and his right-wing news media allies repeated his lies, they used anti-democratic political tactics white supremacists used in the 1890s to steal elections and disenfranchise Black voters.