The Southern Courier

The Southern Courier was a weekly newspaper published in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1965 to 1968, during the Civil Rights Movement. As one of a few newspapers to cover the African-American community in the South, it provided its readership with a more comprehensive view of race relations and community, and is considered an important source for historians.[1]

History

Preparation

In 1964, two students had traveled to Mississippi to cover and assist in the Civil Rights Movement. Peter Cummings, a staff member of The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University's student newspaper, and Ellen Lake, formerly of the Crimson and then a student of journalism at Radcliffe College, were dismayed by the censorship in the Southern papers and the sensationalist reporting of civil rights activities. They conceived of a newspaper which would cover issues not reported on in the Southern newspapers.[1]

The project was announced in The Harvard Crimson. The idea was to form a newspaper that would provide news about civil rights activities and protests in the Southern United States, which, the paper argued, was frequently underreported or censored by Southern editors before it was put on the wire. Conversely, Northern newspaper had little distribution in the South. A newspaper that gave "a full and accurate account of the [Civil Rights] movement, its goals and tactics," with "fair reporting", would both provide better information about the South and simultaneously "advance the movement in the Negro community", and "would go far toward knitting the various Negro communities of the South together". Money was raised from private sources ($68,500 being the initial goal), since the editors did not expect to receive tax-exempt status given the controversial nature of such a paper; thus large foundations would not be able to contribute.[2]

Foundation in Atlanta, move to Montgomery

The paper was a multiracial effort, and its reporters were asked to integrate into the areas they covered as much as possible, without being either unattached "drive-by" journalists or involved community activists. Michael S. Lottman was its editor in 1965, and again from 1967-68.[3]

It was to be based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and was run by Harvard students, including a number of students from The Harvard Crimson.[2] They went to Alabama in 1965 "to report stories that the local and national press wouldn't touch"--most importantly, stories about the black communities in Montgomery and its surroundings. The paper was started with $30,000 of seed money and reporters were paid $20 a week. The plan was to have separate papers for individual states, and while at first it was based in Atlanta, where the six-page paper was printed; later it moved to Montgomery, Alabama, a city which was the focus of much attention since the Selma to Montgomery marches.[4]

Its president was Robert Ellis Smith, a Harvard grad who had worked at the Detroit Free Press and had become anxious about the state of the country after a Southern racist killed John F. Kennedy, Jr; he called up Michael Lottman, a Harvard grad who was born in Buffalo, New York, but raised in the Midwest. He had edited The Harvard Crimson while in college, and had gotten a job at the Chicago Daily News; he was vacationing in Florida when the Selma to Montgomery marches took place, and Smith called him to invite him to work on the Courier.[5]

Other editors and writers for the Courier included Stephen Cotton, originally from Chicago and later a student at Harvard's law school, editor for the Crimson, and co-organizer (with Denis Hayes) of the first Earth Day events;[6] and Marshall Bloom, who had gotten arrested in Selma in 1964 and later enrolled at Amherst College before founding the Liberation News Service with Ray Mungo.[7]

Financial demise

The Courier never managed to sell enough copies to fund the paper: it cost ca. $10,000 per month to produce, but paid subscriptions only brought in $300 per month. A $60,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in 1967 gave the paper another year, but in the end funding dried up, in part because the Vietnam War attracted more attention from donors in the late 1960s. On 7 December 1968, the last papers were printed.[1]

Legacy

Many of the Courier's staff went on to work in law, public service, journalism, and for various non-profit organizations devoted to social justice. One of the Courier's staff photographers was Jim Peppler. The photos he took for the paper are archived at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. A reunion was held in 2006 at Auburn University in Montgomery, on the occasion of the annual Clifford and Virginia Durr Lecture Series.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Kirkland, Scotty E. (2015). "The Southern Courier". Encyclopedia of Alabama.
  2. 1 2 "Support the Southern Courier". The Harvard Crimson. 20 April 1965. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
  3. ↑ "A Brief History". The Southern Courier. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ Fee, Stephen M. (April 12, 2006). "Hope Alongside Hatred". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  5. ↑ Greenhaw 195-96.
  6. ↑ Rome 79-80.
  7. ↑ Stevens 31.

Bibliography

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