Mediating America : Black and Irish press and the struggle for citizenship, 1870-1914

Until recently, print media was the dominant force in American culture. The power of the paper was especially true in minority communities. African Americans and European immigrants vigorously embraced the print newsweekly as a forum to move public opinion, cohere group identity, and establish American belonging. Mediating America explores the life and work of T. Thomas Fortune and J. Samuel Stemons as well as Rev. Peter C. Yorke and Patrick Ford--respectively two African American and two Irish American editor/activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historian Brian Shott shows how each of these "race men" (the parlance of the time) understood and advocated for his group's interests through their newspapers. Yet the author also explains how the newspaper medium itself--through illustrations, cartoons, and photographs; advertisements and page layout; and more--could constrain editors' efforts to guide debates over race, religion, and citizenship during a tumultuous time of social unrest and imperial expansion. Black and Irish journalists used newspapers to recover and reinvigorate racial identities. As Shott proves, minority print culture was a powerful force in defining American nationhood. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Battling for Belonging When Print Was King 16 Part I. The Irish American Press: Exiled Editors Forging New Borders of Belonging 30 1. Patrick Ford and the Writing of Irish America 36 2. Father Peter Yorke: A Publisher-Priest in the Fault Lines of American Identity 71 Part II. The African American Press: Flexibility in the Fight for Freedom 102 3. Forty Acres and a Carabao: T. Thomas Fortune, Newspapers, and the Pacific’s Unstable Color Lines, 1902–1903 108 4. J. Samuel Stemons’s One-Man Press: The Act of Newspapering in Black Philadelphia, 1906–1907 145 Conclusion: Wired for Connection—and Conflict 174 Notes 186 Bibliography 224 Index 240 "Mediating America explores the lives of four African American and Irish American editors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--Father Peter C. Yorke, T. Thomas Fortune, J. Samuel Stemons, and Patrick Ford--and how they understood and advocated for group interests through their newspaper presses"-- Provided by publisher