We Are Nobody’s Fools: The Radicalization of the Hampton Script from 1930–1959 to Advance Black Activism

Abstract

At Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia, student journalists continued the tradition of publishing the Hampton Script. During this time, the Script covered race, politics, and community building during decades of economic and racial turmoil. Despite publishing on the campus of one of the country’s oldest historically Black universities, the Script departed from the conservative leanings of Hampton and embraced an aggressive tone to advocate for racial uplift and equality. Furthermore, the student editors and writers adopted a mission to actively engage the paper’s audience by delivering news about race, politics, and community solidarity. In doing so, the Script embraced the traditional role of the Black press—that of being the champion for the race and forum for protest.

Notes

1 Hampton Script, December 6, 1933; Hampton Script, January 27, 1940; William H. Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954, Teaching for Social Justice (New York: Teaching College Press, 2001); Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Evolution of the Negro College (New York: AMS Press Inc., 1934), 207. Hampton’s founder, General Samuel Armstrong, a white retired military officer with a reputation for working well with Blacks, was determined to use the college to improve race relations in a post-Reconstruction America. Armstrong created a template of the most effective and sustainable method of educating Blacks who would become “true credits to their race.” The structure and curricula of Hampton were often “shopped” as the grand design that most Black colleges followed in the subsequent years. Since their inception, Black colleges have remained central to their community’s battle for dignity and equality.

2 Hampton Script, May 25, 1940.

3 Hampton Script, December 16, 1950; Hampton Script, February 22, 1930; Hampton Script, December 4, 1957.

4 Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education, 1–50. Scholars agree Booker T. Washington’s time at Hampton (1872–1875) prepared him to assume leadership positions in academia and coveted spots in political circles of influence throughout the country. Hampton graduated scholars who secured jobs that contributed to their local economy, the reputation of the institution, and the effectiveness of a slower, rational path to “uplift” among a historically marginalized people.

5 Richard Digby-Junger, “The Guardian, Crisis, Messenger, and Negro World: The Early-20th-Century Black Radical Press,” Howard Journal of Communications 9 (1988): 263–264.

6 Ibid.; LaShawn Harris, “Marvel Cooke: Investigative Journalist, Communist and Black Radical Subject,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 6, no. 2 (2012): 102.

7 An evaluation was made by the researcher after reviewing 1,300 available newspapers from 1930 to 1959.

8 Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education.

9 Robert Francis Engs, Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 70–85.

10 Colita Nichols Fairfax, Black America Series Hampton Virginia (South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2005), 68.

11 Ibid.

12 Lewis C. Lockwood, The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe (Boston, Massachusetts: The American Tract Society, 2010).

13 Ibid.

14 Pamela Foster (historian and author), email message to author, March 25, 2013. Foster has been involved with the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Inc., (Nashville Chapter) HBCU Newspaper History Project. The group is dedicated to preserving the history of student-run newspapers at Black colleges and universities.

15 Digby-Junger, “The Guardian, Crisis, Messenger, and Negro World,” 264.

16 Harris, “Marvel Cooke,” 91. Their work chronicled the plight of Black “domestics” during the Great Depression in New York. Baker and Cooke’s courage, intellect, and advocacy positioned them as reference points for the Script as it covered the world with the same intensity as the ranks of the Black press.

17 The definition was created through the author’s research.

18 During separate discussions with the researcher between January and June 2015, Hampton University’s archives manager Donzella Maupin and librarian assistant Sonya Basnight both shared with the researcher that there is little known about the student journalists or whether they took their love of journalism beyond the Script. A subsequent interview with historian Pamela Foster of the HBCU Newspaper History Project reemphasized that this is why the work of her organization is important. During the researcher’s time exploring the Script’s archive, information was not available to confirm who the Script students were on campus beyond their role with the newspaper, or whether they pursued journalism beyond their college years.

19 Hampton Script, October 15, 1938; Crystal de Gregory (Black historian), email message to author, April 11, 2013. de Gregory, the director of the Kentucky State University Atwood Institute for Race, Education and the Democratic Ideal, is the founder and executive editor of HBCUstory, an advocacy initiative supporting the future of the nation’s HBCUs by preserving, presenting, and promoting inspiring stories of their past and present.

20 Theresa Perry, Claude Steele, and Asa Hilliard III, Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students (Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2003), 14. Black citizens have always placed a high value on reading and writing, even when those activities were often illegal or systematically inaccessible. This cultural objective has been facilitated by both the Black press and the Black college press. Underscoring the historic and cultural value of literacy among African Americans, scholars recognize notable slaves such as Phyllis Wheatley, David Walker, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, and countless others who both read and taught other slaves to read pamphlets and newspapers to keep abreast of the anti-slave movement and strengthen a skill set that had immeasurable social currency. Literate slaves emerged as leaders because of their ability to gather information and interpret writings that facilitated all of their desires for freedom.

21 Walter R. Allen, Joseph O. Jewell, Kimberly A. Griffin, and De’Sha S. Wolf, “Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Honoring the Past, Engaging the Present, Touching the Future.” Journal of Negro Education 76, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 263–280, 521–522, 524–527.

22 Ibid.; David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 378. Scholar David M. Kennedy provides an insightful analysis of the importance of a Black literate and public sphere, one that the Black press and Black college press had created, in his discussion of the promise and dysfunction of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. The government-sponsored social reform programs were designed to benefit all US citizens and boost the country’s fragile economy. Since individual states implemented this national program, however, equitable receipt of funding for all residents proved extremely vulnerable to internal and often unchecked discrimination against the most marginal segment of the population: Black citizens.

23 Hampton Script, March 11, 1930.

24 See Jinx C. Broussard, Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Four Pioneering Black Women Journalists (New York: Routledge, 2004), Patrick Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, ILL.: Northwestern University Press, 2006), Kimberly Mangun, A Force for Change: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Oregon, 1012–1936 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2010), Sid Bedingfield, “Beating Down the Fear: The Civil Sphere and Political Change in South Carolina, 1940–1962,” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2014); Amber Roessner and Jodi Rightler-McDaniels, Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018) has been influential in providing a richer and fuller picture of the Black press.

25 Windy Y. Lawrence, Benjamin Bates, and Mark Cervenka, “Politics Drawn in Black and White: Henry J. Lewis’s Visual Rhetoric in Late-1800s Black Editorial Cartoons,” Journalism History 40, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 138.

26 Ibid., White Americans often perceive people in communities with local newspapers as “fuller citizens” because they actively demonstrate the behavior of a committed citizenry and make “more informed political decisions.” Communities with news publications were “full economic” participants in the “American social order.” Primarily because their publications appeared “at [the same] newsstands alongside white newspapers [particularly in the North],” the Black press existed as a medium that, in tandem, fought against social injustices and transformed the socio-political identity of Black women, men, and children “from slave to citizen.” Notably, the Black press exerted its power as a civic leader yet remained committed to publishing stories omitted in the pages of the white press. In doing so, the Black press amplified its voice and the narratives of Black people. This speaks to the students’ motivation to work on the Script. Also, it explains why their campus administration supported this vehicle of student expression.

27 Hampton Script, May 14, 1938.

28 Clint C. Wilson, Black Journalists in Paradox: Historical Perspectives and Current Dilemmas (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 55; Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1983), viii. Advocacy journalism as a form solely focuses on or champions a specific angle without seeking neutrality of opinion. In this study, Hampton Script’s writings often unabashedly advocated for the political and social “uplift” of Black citizens. The Script also lobbied to dismantle the legal, political, and social system that favored white people and racial injustice.

29 Henrietta Rix Wood, “Transforming Student Periodicals into Persuasive Podiums: African American Girls at Lincoln High School, 1915–1930,” American Periodicals 22, no. 2 (2012), 199.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., Wood used Jane H. Hunter and Reed Ueda’s theoretical framework to argue that school-sponsored publications organically cultivate a strong sense of community.

32 Ibid., To further underscore Wood’s research, Charles E. Coulter explains that the Black press’ approach to journalism helped Lincoln High School students create a “parallel community.” Black citizens minimized the atrocities of segregation by establishing their schools, organizations, businesses, and newspapers, but they also fought for inclusion in the mainstream world. Coulter maintains that the Lincoln students, in particular, championed the “New Negro” philosophy of self-reliance, racial unity, and pride while developing a Black middle-class mindset valuing education and independence. Coulter called the “New Negro” of this era, a “more politicized, more assertive, and more militant….” Black person. He insists this label described Black citizens in Kansas City, and throughout the country, in the early twentieth century. This ability to create the sense of a transformed parallel-community generated great anticipation for the work of the Black press. It convinced many of these Black high school students to become journalists for their college newspapers and, perhaps, beyond.

33 Hampton Script, October 1, 1938.

34 Hampton Script, December 15, 1951; Hampton Script, December 16, 1950.

35 Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901, reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1995), 11–30.

36 Hampton Script, December 4, 1957.

37 bell hooks, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Massachusetts: South End Press, 1981), 3.

38 Digby-Junger, “The Guardian, Crisis, Messenger, and Negro World,” 264.

39 Pamela Foster (historian and author), March 25, 2013.

40 Hampton Script, February 12, 1949.

41 Hampton Script, April 5, 1930; Hampton Script, January 31, 1931.

42 Hampton Script, April 9, 1932.

43 Jason Morgan Ward, Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

44 Hampton Script, December 3, 1932.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 Hampton Script, February 11, 1933.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Hampton Script, March 11, 1933.

52 Hampton Script, October 20, 1033.

53 Hampton Script, February 12, 1938.

54 Hampton Script, May 14, 1938.

55 Hampton Script, March 9, 1940.

56 Hampton Script, October 4, 1941.

57 Hampton Script, October 22, 1954.

58 Hampton Script, October 19, 1956.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Clayborne Carson and Kris Shephard, ed., A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 2001), 7.

63 Hampton Script, January 27, 1940.

64 Ibid.; Hampton Script, December 6, 1933.

65 Hampton Script, April 22, 1933.

66 Ibid.

67 Hampton Script, December 6, 1933.

68 Paula F. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 44.

69 Hampton Script, October 24, 1936.

70 Ibid.

71 Hampton Script, December 17, 1941.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Paul Alkebulan, The African American Press in World War II: Toward Victory at Home and Abroad (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014).

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018).

78 Patrick S. Washburn, “J. Edgar Hoover and The Black Press in World War II,” Journalism History 13, no. 1 (Spring 1986). Historian Patrick Washburn has written extensively about the Double V Campaign that the Pittsburgh Courier introduced in February 1942. As America entered World War II, the Courier vigorously advocated for their country to defeat the Japanese, Germans, and Italians, but also against the systemic racism at home that kept the armed forces segregated and treated Blacks as inferior citizens. The “V” stood for victory at home and away. According to Washburn, other Black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, supported the Courier’s Double V Campaign. By the summer of 1942, more than two hundred thousand people had sent five cents to the Courier to support the country’s win and this sojourn to racial equality.

79 Amy Helene Forss, Black Print with a White Carnation: Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star Newspaper 1938–1989 (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 83.

80 Hampton Script, April 17, 1942.

81 Hampton Script, January 26, 1946.

82 Washburn, “J. Edgar Hoover and The Black Press in World War II,” 27.

83 Hampton Script, January 12, 1946.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 Harlan, Booker T. Washington.

87 Hampton Script, March 13, 1948.

88 Hampton Script, May 19, 1934.

89 Hampton Script, February 9, 1935.

90 Robert Michael Franklin, Liberating Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African-American Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 68.

91 Hampton Script, October 20, 1932.

92 Hampton Script, October 15, 1938.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid.

95 Hampton Script, November 5, 1938.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 Hampton Script, February 11, 1950.

99 Hampton Script, March 26, 1958.

100 “About Hampton University,” Hampton University, August 28, 2020, https://www.hamptonu.edu/about/.

101 See Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads (South Carolina: The History Press, 2010).

102 See Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2003).

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Notes on contributors

Sheryl Kennedy Haydel

Sheryl Kennedy Haydel is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Communication and Design, Loyola University, New Orleans. Her research examines the role of the Black collegiate press in the pursuit for civil rights and the use of social media today for both branding and activism.