In honor of Black History Month, the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program would like to highlight some of the African American newspapers available in our digital collections! These newspapers range from historic titles such as The New Age (1896-1905), to contemporary papers such as The Skanner and the Portland Observer.
The New Age (1896-1905), an African American owned paper published by A.D. Griffin, highlights the active Black community in Portland’s history. A.D. Griffin was an avid Republican during his period as publisher of The New Age, and many of his editorial pieces discuss the political involvement of Portland’s Black community.
Oregon Historic Newspapers is seeking to digitize additional Black-owned and operated newspapers in Oregon’s history. The titles we are currently hoping to digitize are The Advocate (1923-1933), The Times (1911-1912), the Portland Inquirer (1944-46), the Oregon Mirror (1962), and the Portland Challenger (1952-1953). If digitized, these titles, as with all newspapers digitized by ODNP, would be freely accessible to the public and could be browsed and searched by keyword online. In addition, all content could be downloaded as a PDF or JPEG file and saved for future reference or research purposes. If you are interested in the digitization of any of these titles, please contact us here!