A History of African American Newspapers in New England: Connecticut


By Kenneth J. Cooper



The first issue of The Clarksonian appeared in November 1843. By then James W. C. Pennington, its editor, had established himself as a traveling lecturer against slavery. He had been a slave in Maryland but escaped to Connecticut, where slavery had been outlawed since 1784. In Hartford, he served as a minister at Talcott Street Church, then a central institution in the city’s black community. He had been educated at Yale and the University of Heidelberg in Germany.



As a lecturer, Pennington spoke against slavery around the county, the West Indies and Europe. He represented the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society and Union Mission Society. His newspaper appears to have been designed in part to communicate with fellow abolitionists about his travels.



In the premier issue, Pennington published on the front page a long letter to Clarkson reporting on Christian conventions a month earlier in Middletown and a year before, presumably in Hartford. The editor’s missive remarks that the ministers present and Christians in general did not oppose slavery as vigorously as he thought they should, given their religion’s moral code. He clearly associates himself with the wing of the abolitionist movement that believed moral suasion was the way to end slavery, a strategy William Lloyd Garrison pushed in his writings from Boston in his fiery Liberator. Pennington did suggest that opposition to slavery was “gradually laying firm hold on the conscience of the nation.” 



Pennington also echoed Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm, who founded Freedom’s Journal in 1827, when he remarked: “I am still more seriously convinced of the necessity and obligation resting upon colored men to speak and write freely for themselves.”1



The paper probably survived at least into 1844. Pennington may have had a role in another paper sometime before 1852. One account has him as co-editor of an unidentified paper with a James McCune Smith of New York City, with editions alternately published from Hartford and New York.2



The record of the black press in Connecticut does not pick up again for almost seven decades, a huge gap in the historical record.



In 1918, the Hartford Herald was being published. Research done by the Connecticut State Library on the state’s ethnic press identifies the Herald as its first black-owned paper. No copies have been found.3



The next appears in the 1940s, as the Connecticut Chronicle or Hartford Chronicle, which were editions of the Boston Chronicle. George C. Anderson founded and edited the Speed Press in Waterbury sometime before moving to Alaska in 1952.



In the 1960s came the Open Gate News (1961-63), Heritage Hall Crow (1968), and Crow (1969-70), all in New Haven; in Bridgeport, Harambee (1969); and in the state’s capital, Hartford Star (1969-74).



The great flowering occurred in the 1970s: the Harambee Union (1970-76, Bridgeport), Black Voice (1970-71, Waterbury), Greater New Haven Black Coalition Weekly (1971-72), North Hartford Truth (1971-74), People’s Weekly (1972, Waterbury), Hartford Voice (1974-75), Hartford Inquirer (1976-2006), Northend Agent's (1975, Hartford) and Informer (1977-78, Hartford).



Created later were the New Haven Local News (1987-1990), AfroVoice Review (1988-1991, Bridgeport), and Elm City Trader (1991-92, Hamden/New Haven).



Today the weekly Inquiring News, after three decades of publishing, bills itself “New England’s largest African American newspaper.” Reggie Hales, son of founding publisher William R. Hales, changed the name from the Inquirer in 2006. The renamed paper distributes separate editions in Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, and Waterbury in Connecticut and Springfield in Massachusetts. Combined circulation of the five editions has been reported to be as high as 120,000. The paper is based in Hartford.4

With two other black papers, Connecticut's capital is the center of black newspaper publishing in the region.5 The Northend Agent's has been published since 1975, making it the second-oldest paper in the region, after Boston's Bay State Banner. The locally-focused Hartford paper distributes 40,000 free copies a week. Its unusual name comes from the founder and current publisher, John Allen, having once been a business agent for the daily Hartford Courant in the predominately-black Northend of the city.6
 


The West Indian American serves the area's Caribbean community. The paper is the organ of The Council for West Indian Planning and Development, a nonprofit community organization, which founded the monthly in 1992. Circulation is about 25,000.7
 


The Inner-City News has served New Haven since 1990, currently distributing about 25,000 papers a week for free. In 1994, the paper had a Waterbury edition. The founder and publisher, John Thomas Jr., says his father ran a newspaper in New Haven called "Let's Talk Harambee" in the 1970s.8
 


A Bridgeport monthly, Umoja News, founded in 1996, was published at least until 2001.9  In Touch News in Norwalk also appears to have expired.10