Though African Americans have served as foreign reporters for almost two centuries, their work remains virtually unstudied. In this seminal volume, Jinx Coleman Broussard traces the history of black participation in international newsgathering. Beginning in the mid-1800s with Frederick Douglass and Mary Ann Shadd Cary—the first black woman to edit a North American newspaper—African American Foreign Correspondents provides insight into how and why African Americans reported the experiences of blacks worldwide
In many ways, black correspondents upheld a tradition of filing objective stories on world events, yet some African American journalists in the mainstream media, like their predecessors in the black press, had a different mission and perspective. They adhered primarily to a civil rights agenda, grounded in advocacy, protest, and pride. Accordingly, some of these correspondents—not all of them professional journalists—worked to spur social reform in the United States and force policy changes that would eliminate oppression globally.
By examining how and why blacks reported information and perspectives from abroad, African American Foreign Correspondents contributes to a broader conversation about navigating racial, societal, and global problems, many of which we continue to contend with today.
Jinx Coleman Broussard teaches media history and public relations in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. She conducts research on the black press and is the author of Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: Four Pioneering Black Women Journalists.
June 7, 2013
280 pages, 6 x 9
978-0-8071-5054-2
Cloth, $45.00, ebook available
