The Advocate, Portland, Oregon (1903-1936)

January 22, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Kimberley Mangun

The Advocate office

“With this issue The Advocate makes its initial bow to the Portland public as an independent, non-partisan, non-sectarian weekly newspaper for the intelligent discussion and authentic diffusion of matter appertaining to the colored people, especially of Portland and the State of Oregon.”

These words heralded the debut of The Advocate on Saturday, 5 September 1903. Founded by Edward D. Cannady and nine colleagues, most of whom worked for the Hotel Portland, the weekly newspaper featured birth and death announcements, hotel and society news, and general good news about the race. In addition, articles and editorials about segregation, lynching, employment opportunities and other issues kept the realities of Jim Crow laws and the pressing need for civil rights on the local, state, and national agenda.

Beatrice Cannady, who assumed much of the responsibility for running the paper after the couple married in 1912, stated that she used the newspaper to challenge sociopolitical attempts to deprive black people of their rights as citizens, to deny black people their humanness, and to degrade their African cultural heritage.

Many in Portland’s African American community called the black press one of the most important African American institutions in that city and singled out The Advocate as the city’s most influential newspaper. Although impact can be difficult to measure, one study of The Advocate (cited below) reveals a rich, ongoing conversation about interracial relations in Oregon and the rest of the country during the early 1900s.

About the Author

Author Profile

Kimberley Mangun is an associate professor emerita of communication. She spent her career at The University of Utah, where she taught community reporting; conceptual classes on communication history, alternative media, and diversity; and a graduate seminar on historical research methods. Mangun studied the African American press and representations of women, race, and ethnicity in communication history, subjects she became interested in while in graduate school. An award-winning book, published by Oregon State University Press in 2010, examined the career of Beatrice Morrow Cannady, an editor and publisher who advocated for civil rights in Portland, Oregon, from 1912 until 1936. Mangun’s book was used as the basis for an Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary that premiered in May 2007 and continues to air regularly on OPB. A second award-winning book focused on Emory O. Jackson, the longtime editor of the Birmingham, Alabama, World who fought for equal rights during the key years of the civil rights movement. Mangun’s research has been published in American Journalism, Journalism History, Newspaper Research Journal, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, African American National Biography, and other print and online publications.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Mangun, K. (2007, January 22). The Advocate, Portland, Oregon (1903-1936). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/portland-oregon-advocate-1903-1936/

Source of the Author's Information:

Kimberley Mangun. “Beatrice Morrow Cannady and The Advocate: Building and Defending Oregon’s African American Community, 1912-1933,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon, 2005.

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