The Ohio Black Press in the 19th Century

Welcome

The Ohio Black Press in the 19th century, centering African American and Black diasporic experience, uses data from the surviving newspaper issues to understand the communal life of early Black residents in Ohio. Three categories–topics (“what the subscribers read”), quoted periodicals (“what the editors reprinted”), and advertisements (“what the advertisers sold”)–were considered, as they appear consistently throughout all the papers in this project. The Palladium of Liberty exceptionally offers more data sources, as the newspaper lists its subscribers and agents, which allow us to observe the geographical network of Black communities such as national and state Colored Conventions beyond its base city, Columbus. The datasets on the Black newspapers in 19th-century Ohio, offered on this site, are designed to enrich on-going studies of early African American literature and Black print culture, with a focus on Black citizenship.