http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=130270396...

This article comes from the editorial section of The Crisis volume 9, number 4 from 1915. This article is about a newspaper, in Boston, changing its stance on how the word, “Negro,” should be used in the paper itself. The article states that “Negro” should now be capitalized, as was the case with all nationalities by ordering “…the word Negro be capitalized in his paper...” The article then goes on to say that in this Boston newspaper, the word, “Negro,” should also now only be explicitly used in an article if the story would be lacking or confusing without it. In all other cases, it would not be necessary to point out the race of people in articles. This article in The Crisis seeks to be an inspiration for the audience of African-Americans reading the magazine, and since it is a magazine specifically for African-Americans, noting the progressive and changing view of a Boston newspaper would inspire hope.

This magazine’s main purpose was to inspire African-Americans to fight for equal rights. The magazine does this by showing their accomplishments and their defeats to inspire the reader to action. In this case, the magazine inspires readers by showing that their actions have moved their race forward, closer to equal rights. The article shows that now, at least in the case of this one Boston newspaper, their race was finally being recognized as a race at least equal to those of Jewish, Irish, or Swedish decent or origin as stated by the editor “Ask yourself how the story would read if the word Jew, Irishman, or Swede were substituted for the word Negro.”

On a side note, as I was researching for this blog assignment, I noticed how difficult I found it to locate articles about race using search terms I am comfortable with. First, I typed in “racism” and found nothing. Then, I typed in “black,” a term I am still not comfortable using, and found nothing related to race. I then sadly realized I was going to have to use older terminology to find anything of use. I found my article after typing in “negro,” a term I have never used in my modern-day life.