Category: The AFRO’S  Beginnings: 1892-1917

To mark the AFRO’s 125 years of continuous publication, we have gone through our extensive archives to find the most compelling and informative articles the paper put out with an eye to highlighting unsung heroes and the AFRO employees who have made this paper what it is today. From the musings of Col. Midnight in […]

The newspaper that for 125 years has focused on informing and igniting African American communities around the country got its start on August 13, 1892. The early AFRO-American Newspaper was edited by the Rev. William Alexander, founding pastor of the Patterson Avenue/Sharon Baptist Church, originally located on the corner of Presstman and Carey Streets in […]

1892                             Activist Ida B. Wells begins her anti-lynching campaign with the publication of Southern Horrors: Lynch Law and in All Its Phases and a speech in New York City’s Lyric Hall (Photo Credit: Public Domain) Operatic soprano Sissieretta Jones becomes the first African American to perform at Carnegie Hall. 1893                             Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs […]

Joe Gans (1874-1910) – Boxer Joe Gans was born Joseph Gant in 1874 in Baltimore, Md. He fought from 1891 to 1909 and is known as the first African American World Boxing Champion of the 20th Century. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968) – Artist Meta Vaux Warrick was born in 1877 in Philadelphia, Pa. to […]

Violence against African American and within their communities was never more prevalent than the years after Reconstruction. This is the atmosphere in which the AFRO American Newspaper developed under the tutelage of John H. Murphy, Sr. Murphy and his reporters would travel far and wide to report on violence committed either through vigilante justice such […]