Black Print with a White Carnation: Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star Newspaper, 1938-1989 (Women in the West) - Softcover

Forss, Amy Helene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803246900 ISBN 13: 9780803246904

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2014

Synopsis

Mildred Dee Brown (1905–89) was the cofounder of Nebraska’s Omaha Star, the longest running black newspaper founded by an African American woman in the United States. Known for her trademark white carnation corsage, Brown was the matriarch of Omaha’s Near North Side—a historically black part of town—and an iconic city leader. Her remarkable life, a product of the Reconstruction era and Jim Crow, reflects a larger American history that includes the Great Migration, the Red Scare of the post–World War era, civil rights and black power movements, desegregation, and urban renewal.

Within the context of African American and women’s history studies, Amy Helene Forss’s Black Print with a White Carnation examines the impact of the black press through the narrative of Brown’s life and work. Forss draws on more than 150 oral histories, numerous black newspapers, and government documents to illuminate African American history during the political and social upheaval of the twentieth century. During Brown’s fifty-one-year tenure, the Omaha Star became a channel of communication between black and white residents of the city, as well as an arena for positive weekly news in the black community. Brown and her newspaper led successful challenges to racial discrimination, unfair employment practices, restrictive housing covenants, and a segregated public school system, placing the woman with the white carnation at the center of America’s changing racial landscape.

 

About this title

About the Author:

Amy Helene Forss has a PhD in African American history and teaches at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska. Her work has appeared in journals such as Nebraska History and Great Plains Quarterly.

Review:

"This is a valuable addition to our knowledge of the role of the black press in urban race relations in the Midwest."—Oliver B. Pollack, Nebraska History (Oliver B. Pollack Nebraska History)

"Superbly researched."—Geitner Simmons, Middle West Review (Geitner Simmons Middle West Review)

"In addition to its well-researched look at Brown's career, the book provides an informative description of the history of black-owned newspapers in North America, going back to the founding in 1853 of the Provincial Freeman, an antislavery newspaper in Canada."—Omaha World-Herald (Omaha World-Herald 2018-09-08)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0803246900
• ISBN 13: 9780803246904
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272