ABSTRACT
Amanda Frisken discusses the use of sensational images in the black press in America. In a racist society, the segregation of the press was perhaps unsurprising and Frisken shows how resistance to racism at the end of the nineteenth century found expression in the black press. Frisken also gestures toward how the immediacy of electronic communication contributed to a community of like-minded people in the very establishment of something that could be called “the black press.” This chapter discusses the sensational images that the Indianapolis Freeman published at the end of the nineteenth century, including the devastating illustration “A Song Without Words” in response to the diabolical practice of lynching then widespread in the southern United States. Frisken’s examples draw attention to the political efficacy of alternatives to the mainstream press at this time and specifically to the illustrated black press’s response, particularly with imagery, to racism and, importantly, to lynching.
