The Citizenship Project

The Early Black Press | Tennessee Voices Lifted | NPT

Episode 2 | 29m 46s | Video has closed captioning.

One of the rights African Americans gained as a result of the Civil War was the right to free expression. Rather than rely on the newspapers of the day to carry their stories and the stories they were interested in, Black Tennesseans started their own newspapers. Over the years, these papers were read by black and white Tennesseans alike.