The Press and the Pulpit: Black Newspapers, Ministers, and Sexuality, 1925–35

This paper views black newspapers and black churches as competiting institutions for leadership in early twentieth century African American communities. As historian, Barbara Dianne Savage has argued, the availability of print media and higher literacy rates among African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s offered black news editors the opportunity to engage in protracted critiques of black churches and their ministers. At the same, newspapers recognized the central place that churches retained in many African American communities and devoted a significant amount of space to “Church News.” Yet, along with reports of fiscal irresponsibility, regular church announcements and summaries of sermons, black newspapers featured sensational front-page articles of scandals involving the sexual misconduct of ministers. Replete with gendered language, these articles tapped into community narratives that already deemed many ministers as morally and sexually corrupt. Black newspapers capitalized on this perception by publishing news they believe would interest readers and generate larger circulation among an emerging black mass public. At the same time newspapers deployed a sexual discourse to undermine black church leadership. Ultimately coverage of sex scandals involving African American ministers reveal how newspapers intersected the sacred and profane and contributed to changing meanings of black churches, black news media, gender and sexuality.