The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords is a documentary film which premiered on US television (PBS) in 1999.
The topic is the history of the black press in America during the 19th and the 20th centuries, with special focus on the most important publications as well as the most important editors, reporters and photographers.
Here is some basic information about this film:
** Producer and director: Stanley Nelson
** Writers: Jill Nelson, Stanley Nelson, Lou Potter, and Marcia Smith
** Narrator: Joe Morton
** Available on YouTube
** Language: English
** Subtitles: not available!
** Run time: 85 minutes
The history of the black press in America is told by people who have studied the topic and by people who worked in the business. Here are the names of the participants (listed in alphabetical order):
** George Barbour – journalist
** Timuel Black (1918-2021) – historian
** Frank Bolden (1912-2003) – journalist
** Wallace Burney – African American
** Earl Calloway (1926-2014) – journalist
** Chester Commodore (1914-2004) – cartoonist
** Evelyn Cunningham (1916-2010) – journalist
** Phyllis Garland (1935-2006) – journalist
** Dora Harris Glasco – African American
** Walter Gordon – former newsboy
** James Grossman – historian
** Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908-1998) – photographer
** Vera Jackson (1911-1999) – photographer
** Vernon Jarrett (1918-2004) – journalist
** Robert R. Lavelle (1915-2010) – on the staff of The Pittsburgh Courier
** Edna Chappell McKenzie (1923-2005) – journalist and historian
** Christopher Reed (born 1942) – historian
** Jane Rhodes – historian, University of Illinois Chicago
** Edward “Abie” Robinson - journalist
** John Sengstacke (1912-1997) - publisher
** Patrick S. Washburn – historian, professor emeritus, school of journalism, Ohio University
Archive footage is used between the talking heads. Archive footage is used to support and supplement the statements made by the participants. Archive footage is used when the narrator is speaking.
The film is divided into five chapters. Here are the headlines and a few words about each chapter:
Chapter 1
No longer shall others speak for us
This chapter explains how the history of the black press begins in 1827
Chapter 2
Standing up for the race
This chapter is mainly about one publication:
The Chicago Defender
Chapter 3
A separate world
This chapter covers the time between World War One and World War Two
Chapter 4
Treason?
This chapter is about the black press during World War Two and the Double V Campaign:
Victory Abroad and Victory at Home
Chapter 5
Putting itself out of business
This chapter covers the decline of the black press since the 1950s
Conclusion
What do reviewers say about this film?
On IMDb it has a rating of 63 percent, which corresponds to a rating of 3.2 stars on Amazon.
On Amazon there is at the moment only one rating and not a single review (which is odd). The single rating offers five stars (100 percent).
On Rotten Tomatoes it has a rating of 60 percent, which corresponds to a rating of three stars on Amazon. This rating is from the general audience. There is not a single rating from a professional critic (which is odd).
What do I think? This is, in my opinion, an important work about an important topic.
If you ask me, the ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes are too low. Far too low. I understand the positive rating on Amazon and I agree with it.
I want to go all the way to the top with this product. I think it deserves a rating of five stars (100 percent).
PS. Stanley Nelson, the director of this film, was born in 1951. He is the director of several documentary films about civil rights in the US, including the following:
** The Murder of Emmett Till (2003)
** Freedom Riders (2010)
** Freedom Summer (2014)
** The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015)
REFERENCES
# 1. Books
A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press During World War II by Patrick S. Washburn (1986)
The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights by Carl Senna (1993) (1994)
The African American Press by Charles A. Simmons (1997) (2006)
Mary Ann Shad Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century by Jane Rhodes (1998)
Black Newspapers and America’s War for Democracy, 1914-1920 by William G. Jordan (2003)
The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom by Patrick S. Washburn (2006)
Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America edited by Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bodingfield (2021)
# 2. Film and Video
Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice
(1989)
Ida B. Wells: A Chicago Stories Special
(2021)
Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches
(2022)
# 3. Items available on the Internet
(a) The PBS website has a special page devoted to the history of the black press.
Here you can find information about the most important black newspapers:
** The Chicago Defender
** The California Eagle
** The Afro-American
** The Pittsburgh Courier
Here you can find biographies about the most important persons who worked for the black press in the past
** Charlotta Bass
** Robert Lee Vaughn
** John Henry Murphy
** Robert S. Abbott
** Frederick Douglass
** Ida B. Wells
** Gertrude Mossell
** Oliver Harrington
Here you can find biographies of modern journalists
** Paula Walker Madison
** Susan Taylor
** Ed Bradley
** Jill Nelson
** Margo Jefferson
** Ellis Cose
** Joel Dreyfuss
** Brent Staples
** Alexis Scott Reeves
(b) The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting
School of Journalism and Media
University of North Carolina
(c) Double Victory
The African American Military Experience
National Museum of African American History
(An exhibition with many separate items)
(d) Caroline Rolland-Diamond, “A Double Victory? Revisiting the Black Struggle for Equality during World War Two,” Revue Française d’études Américaines, volume 137, issue 3 (2013) (pages 94-107)
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The Black Press:
Soldiers without Swords
(1999)
*****
The Black Press:
Soldiers without Swords
(1999)
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Stanley Nelson
American documentary filmmaker
(born 1951)
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