The Emancipator – A to Z 2018

A to Z Challenge 2018, One Place Study

This year for the A to Z Challenge, I take small social items from The Emancipator newspaper, published  between 1917 and 1920 in Montgomery, Alabama. The items are of marriage, death, travel and movement to other cities – Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. The lives of the people in the community were entwined, as those of any community are. I will try and point out those connections.

The editor, James McCall, was my maternal grandmother’s first cousin. He lost his eyesight while a medical student at Howard University due to Typhoid Fever. Later he and his family moved to Detroit where he published The Detroit Tribune for many years.

Click any of the images to enlarge.

The Emancipator

A National Weekly

This publication is dedicated to the colored people of America, and to all other peoples of America, and to all other peoples fettered by visible or invisible chains. The emancipation of the Negro has only just begun. We have been freed from the bondage of iron chains, but this is only one step in our emancipation. We are still bound and enslaved by the invisible shackles of poverty, illiteracy, sin, sickness and human injustice; and the aim of the Emancipator is to help us as a race and as individuals to free ourselves from these chains. J. Edward McCall

Mr. James Edward McCall, Editor-in-Chief

J. Edward McCall was born in Montgomery, Alabama. He graduated in 1900 from State Normal School in Montgomery, specialized one year in Howard University, Washington D.C. and graduated from Albion College, Albion, Michigan in 1907. He took a special course from Page-Davis Advertising School, Chicago. Also a course in Journalism from the National Press Association, Indianapolis Indiana.

A page from The Emancipator surrounded by some of the people who are featured in the news items for this year’s A to Z.

Links to posts about James McCall

She Was Owned Before the War…
James Edward McCall, Poet and Publishers
The Great Migration in Poetry
Poems By James E. McCall
1940 Census – James And Margaret McCall

26 thoughts on “The Emancipator – A to Z 2018”

  3. Once again you have a theme that’s sure to open a window for me into an area of history I know little about. I love learning about ordinary people’s lives.

  4. This will be a brilliant series! What an inspired choice of theme! The stuff of ordinary lives made moving by the patina of history – and therefore lifted above the mundane.

    All the best for a fun and successful A-Z.

    Nilanjana
    Madly-in-Verse

    1. One thing about doing A to Z year after year is being able to follow fellow A to Zers year after year. I look forward to your posts about Africa.

  7. History through the lives of really, common people. This is the kind of hsitory I like the most. Thanks so much for sharing this on the challenge 🙂

    @JazzFeathers
    The Old Shelter – Theme Reveal – Weimar Germany

  11. A fascinating approach to the A-Z challenge and I can see it as a good idea for other themes. l look forward to reading your posts. I am sitting out of this year’s event, as I am now writing for three blogs which is pressure enough! Good luck!

  13. The description (dedication) on the front page of this hundred-year-old newspaper has so much to say to readers both then and now.

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