Home / Full timeline / The first Black daily paper in the United States, La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orleans, publishes its first edition.
The first Black daily paper in the United States, La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orleans, publishes its first edition.
1864 (Jul 21)
La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orleans, the first tri-weekly published in English and French and eventually the first Black daily in the United States, published its first edition. The paper was headed by Louis Charles Roudanez (1823-90) and his brothers, who took over the financially failing L'Union, the first Black paper published in Louisiana. The tribune pushed for economic equality, abolition, and Black suffrage. With emancipation, the paper supported the Freedman's Aid Association, an organization that attempted to establish cooperatives among, and secure suffrage and weekly wages for formerly enslaved Blacks. While Roudanez pushed for political rights for Blacks, he did not support social equality. This may be partly because Roudanez himself was half French and probably of very light skin since his baptismal records registered him as white. When the tribune folded in 1869, he, too, faded from the spotlight of the equal rights movement.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.