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 Fordrespectively 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 groups interests through their newspapers. Yet the author also explains how the newspaper medium itselfthrough illustrations, cartoons, and photographs; advertisements and page layout; and morecould 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.
- | Author: Brian Shott
- | Publisher: Temple University Press
- | Publication Date: Jan 30, 2019
- | Number of Pages: 268 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Paperback
- | ISBN-10: 143991558X
- | ISBN-13: 9781439915585