Covering a Two-Front War: Three African American Correspondents during World War II

Abstract

This article examines the largely unrecognized area of African American foreign correspondence during World War II, and it looks at local reporting about the conflict in order to ascertain how the black press framed the war. The Norfolk Journal and Guide, one of the most respected African American newspapers of the time, sent three journalists overseas to cover the war. This article provides a comprehensive textual analysis of editorials and articles in selected issues of the Journal and Guide between 1940 and September 1945 in order to ascertain how the newspaper framed the conflict. Findings indicate that the contributions and perspectives of the newspaper and its war correspondents reflected the intense African American domestic struggle for recognition, inclusion, and equal rights. In this two-front war, coverage chronicled discrimination against as well as contributions of African Americans, a reporting that used many of the techniques of establishment journalism but was driven by a different agenda. The study suggests the existence of a richly nuanced field of study, foreign reporting by non-establishment journalists.