![]() Front page of Freedom newspaper, Vol. 5, No. 5, May โ June 1955 | |
Editor | Louis E. Burnham |
---|---|
Staff writers | Paul Robeson Lorraine Hansberry Alice Childress Thelma Dale Lloyd L. Brown John H. Clarke |
Photographer | Inge Hardison |
Categories | African-American newspapers |
Frequency | Monthly; bimonthly in 1954โ1955 summers |
Format | Tabloid |
Publisher | Freedom Associates |
Founder | Paul Robeson W. E. B. Du Bois |
First issue | November 1950 |
Final issue Number | August 1955 Vol 5 No 6 |
Country | United States |
Based in | New York City |
Language | English language |
Website | dlib |
OCLC | 904283253 |
Freedom was a monthly newspaper focused on African-American issues published from 1950 to 1955.[1] The publication was associated primarily with the internationally renowned singer, actor and then officially disfavored activist Paul Robeson, whose column, with his photograph, ran on most of its front pages. Freedom's motto was: "Where one is enslaved, all are in chains!"[2] The newspaper has been described as "the most visible African American Left cultural institution during the early 1950s."[3] In another characterization, "Freedom paper was basically an attempt by a small group of black activists, most of them Communists, to provide Robeson with a base in Harlem and a means of reaching his public... The paper offered more coverage of the labor movement than nearly any other publication, particularly of the left-led unions that were expelled from the CIO in the late 1940s... [It] encouraged its African American readership to identify its struggles with anti-colonial movements in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Freedom gave extensive publicity to... the struggle against apartheid."[4]