African American Newspapers

The first African American newspaper of record in Oklahoma history was the Oklahoma Guide, a monthly, sporadically published in 1889. Thus, the black press in Oklahoma paralleled the opening of the territory in 1889. The Guide was followed in 1891 by the Langston Herald, the first weekly. Both were part of two well-established traditions. The first was the “Boomer Press” that was organized to agitate for the formal opening of the Oklahoma Territory and its settlement. However, the second tradition devolved from the Kansas experience of men like Edward P. McCabe, former state auditor, and William L. Eagleson, former editor of Kansas’s first black newspaper. They used African American newspapers to promote the settlement of the All-Black towns in Oklahoma.