The First African American Newspaper in California

Last week we hosted the program Workshop: Digitized Black Newspapers (see the end of this post for a recap), so we've been exploring the history of the earliest African American newspapers from San Francisco. 

Mirror of the Times

According to the Library of Congress, Mirror of the Times was the first African American newspaper printed in California. It came into existence as the need for a Black newspaper became evident as a result of the Colored Conventions that began happening in California in 1855 and to serve as an organ of the fight for Black testimony rights and education. Jonas H. Townsend was an important leader for the 1855, 1856, and 1857 Colored Conventions, and was a founding member and editor of the Mirror of the Times.

 

Front page of the Dec. 12, 1857 issue of Mirror of the Times. Courtesy of Library of Congress

Only two issues of the newspaper are known to exist, although most likely it was printed on a weekly basis for more than a year. One issue, from Dec. 12, 1857, is available online in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America digital collection of newspapers. The other known issue, from August 22, 1857, does not seem to be available in any databases online, but is in the holdings of the California State Library (amongst other libraries), and their special collections librarian kindly sent us a photographic reproduction of the front and back pages of the newspaper! 

Front and back pages of the Aug. 22, 1857 issue of the Mirror of the Times. Courtesy of the California State Library. Click to view high resolution image.

It is not clear when exactly the newspaper started to be printed, nor when it ceased being printed. In fact it may be impossible to determine the start and end date with certainty lacking the discovery of another issue of the paper. 

Most likely the first issue of the newspaper was printed on September 13, 1856. This date originates in A History of California Newspapers by Edward Kemble, a California "pioneer" and San Francisco newspaperman active in the newspaper milieu of 1840s-50s. The book was originally published in 1858. Snorgrass, writing in the California History journal in 1981, asserts the first issue would be October 31, 1856, but that date is figured by counting backward from known issues and assumes the newspaper was printed on a weekly schedule like clockwork. Those of us who work with periodicals know they can be a gnarly format and it is not a surefire bet to count backward like Snorgrass does. 

Meanwhile, the Mirror of the Times is listed in Gregory's Union List of Newspapers (available at the Magazines and Newspapers Center reference desk), which cannot be said for many early Californian newspapers, but that index has the dates of publication as 1857-1858.

Kemble's A History of California Newspapers says of the Mirror, "Early in the year, the Weekly Mirror of the Times was founded by some colored men, as an advocate of the interests of the Africans of the State. It died early in '58. It was edited by Jonas H. Townsend" (127). 

Later, in the Index to Newspapers (p. 284) in the back of the book, it says:

Mirror of the Times......................... 127

w S 13 1856-1858?

Negro

reprinted articles from San Francisco Pacific and Post

see also: Moore, J. J.; Newly, W. H.; Townsend, Jonas H. 

This information, while valuable, also propagates errors: the Newly noted in Kemble's index should be William H. Newby, not Newly. Newby isn't as widely described as his colleagues in the literature, but Moore and Townsend do appear in the African American National Biography.

Growing Comfortable with Ambiguity

Maybe it does not matter the exact dates of the Mirror of the Times without new issues being discovered. What does matter is the historical significance and context of the publication, which has been more illuminated since the founding of the digital humanities Colored Conventions Project. The other thing that matters is the names of the people involved in this venture: Moore, Newby, and Townsend, all of whom Kemble mentions, as well as Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, who is easily the most well known of the four men. Long after The Mirror of the Times ceased publication, these men continued to involve themselves in abolitionism and fighting for African American equality.

Townsend

 

If only San Francisco's Townsend Street were named after our guy, Jonas Holland Townsend. Alas, it is named after another Townsend. 

 

Townsend helped found The Mirror of the Times and was its editor. 

In the Library of Congress's Mirror of the Times info page, Townsend's life narrative is given form; meanwhile, on the Colored Conventions Project Documents site, it is possible to digitally access Townsend's preamble at the 1856 Colored Convention. The entry on Townsend in volume 7 of the African American National Biography sketches his life a bit more fully and offers this 1855 description of Townsend before he came out to California as part of the gold rush: "a tall, sedate, prim, puritanical, intellectual looking young man. We soon took the starch out of him... and transformed him from an embryo country person to a regular New York business man" (626).

Moore

Moore is well known as a pastor for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church and worked closely with Townsend to found the Mirror of the Times. Later, he also wrote for the Black San Francisco newspaper The Elevator. His life is sketched out in volume 5 of the African American National Biography and is the subject of an article by Montesano published in 1973.

Newby 

What do we know about William H. Newby? He's not in the African American National Biography and his name isn't even spelled right in Kemble's newspaper history! Thankfully, English professor Eric Gardner devotes several pages to Newby in chapter three of his book Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature, positioning Newby as a lightning rod of Black intellectualism in gold rush San Francisco. Active in the Colored Conventions like the others, Newby was also important to the founding of the Mirror and wrote for its pages.

State Executive Committee 

Many others were involved with the Mirror of the Times enterprise, including Gibbs, who is given maybe a little too much credit in other places on the web for his contribution to the Mirror of the Times. Below is a detailed clipping from the Dec. 12, 1857 issue with the full Committee membership listed. This group was a coalition of individuals formed from the Colored Convention attendees who functioned as the publisher of the newspaper, managing the paper's finances and smooth running. 

 

List includes: M. W. Gibbs, J. P. Dyer, J. H. Townsend, J. G. Marshall, E. J. Johnson, F. G. Barbadoes, J. G. Wilson, R. A. Hall, W. Bedford, G. W. Booth, I. Morton, E. P. Duplex, G. R. Symes, W. H. Hall, C. M. Wilson, E. Reeves, Thomas Duff, R. Shorter, G. W. Thomas, G. W. Miller, W. H. Harper, R. H. Johnson, A. Outley, M. T. Smith, W. H. Gordon, D. McReynolds

What Happened After the Mirror? 

 

The Mirror folded in 1858 and it wasn't until 1862 that the Pacific Appeal was founded, continuing the important work of lobbying for Black testimony rights, education rights, and Black suffrage by many of the same individuals who had been involved in the Mirror, minus those who had left California, like Townsend, Newly, and Gibbs. Gardner says, "The reasons for the hiatus between the Mirror and the Pacific Appeal remain fuzzy and are probably tied to a combination of financial factors and political events: it seems very likely that the Appeal was largely funded because of California blacks' hopes vis-à-vis the Civil War" (210n30). Three years later, the Elevator came on the scene, made famous by its Black female journalist Jennie Carter.

Digitized Versions of These Newspapers 

 

Check out the Library of Congress's section of their Chronicling America database on African American newspapers to see what issues are digitally available online. Highly recommended as well is the California Digital Newspaper Collection, where the Pacific Appeal and the Elevator's digital surrogates are available for free. 

Workshop Recap And Bibliography

If you missed the Magazines and Newspapers Center workshop on digitized Black newspapers, see below for the handout that was made available at the workshop. It has specific instructions for locating newspapers in SFPL resources and beyond, and offers a brief bibliography of sources. 

Bibliography

Kemble, Edward Cleveland. A history of California newspapers, 1846-1858. Los Gatos, Calif. : Talisman Press, 1962.

Montesano, Philip M. "San Francisco Black Churches in the Early 1860's: Political Pressure Group," California Historical Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 145-152. https://doi.org/10.2307/25157430

Snorgrass, William J. "The Black Press in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1856-1900," California History, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Winter, 1981/1982), pp. 306-317 (12 pages). https://doi.org/10.2307/25158067

Gardner, Eric. "The Black West: Northern California and Beyond, 1865-1877." Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009, pp. 92-132. 

Gates, Jr., Henry Louis and Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham. The African American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.