ABSTRACT
Historically, Black media have always been important sites of discursive activities and public engagement in the wider sociocultural contexts of political struggles and community building. For instance, in the 19th century, Black newspapers were at the forefront of antislavery and emancipation movements. They fostered critical deliberations and civic dialogue on issues that were of common concerns to Black publics. In the contemporary era, Black media still remain important sociocultural and political institutions in the contexts of Canadian multiculturalism mosaic. Apart from being alternative subaltern public spheres, they are strategic training ‘grounds’ for many young and veteran Black Canadian journalists. Through their hybridized form of civic and cultural journalism, they chart the connections between notions of citizenship, public service ethos, and communal identities in the mediated context of the Canadian nationhood. But, quite strikingly, within the broader discussions of Canadian journalism history and evolution of media in Canada, the role and contributions of Black press are conspicuously absent. This neglect or lack of consideration in the scholarship is not limited to Black media alone; it also extends to other nonmainstream media such as Aboriginal and native press in Canada. This is also reflected in many mass communication and journalism programs’ curriculum and course syllabi where the social history of journalism mainly begins from the era of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press and ends with web 2.0 and Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Facebook media’ with minimal or zero attention to nontraditional mainstream media that do not fit into the canon of the “elite journalism.” Against this backdrop of the scholarship gap, this chapter examines the development of Black media in Canada, as well as provides an analysis of the multifaceted roles of early Black newspapers and their contributions to journalism as a cultural act. Of particular interest is these early newspapers’ journalistic orientation of public service and social responsibility albeit ideological lens of “black consciousness.”
