Herbert Lowe authors articles about Black Press and gospel music figures
Herbert Lowe, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Journalism senior lecturer, has authored two articles focusing on the impact Black Press journalists and publishers and those who introduced gospel music and made it a force in American life.
The articles were recently published on Black History… Listed, Lowe’s independent editorial project found on Substack.
“30 Voices: Nearly 200 Years of Pleading Their Own Case” looks at 30 Black Press journalists and publishers who focused on telling the truth about Black life since before the U.S. would let them. This story is not a survey of all Black media traditions, but rather a roster of newspapers that carried the spirit of the Black Press.
“The dangers of activist journalism caused many to flee their presses and homes and even cost one or more their lives,” Lowe writes.
“That between the 1930s-1950s, Black sportswriters did significant civil rights work with a press pass. That multiple family businesses have waged the same fight across generations. And that many of these figures weren’t trained journalists at all – they were ministers, attorneys and businessmen who joined the battle because too few others told the truth about Black life.”
Lowe included journalists from the historic “Big Four” papers on the list along with publications from the Northeast’s founding-era corridor, the Midwest’s migration-era institutions, the Deep South’s most consequential and dangerous chapters and the West’s civil-rights-era papers. He considered 96 names for the 30 slots on the list and suggests that omissions were due to the limited number and the lack of specific criteria to review.
“30 Gospel Artists. On Unbroken Sound” looks at a century of gospel music and how the genre has gained popularity. It rose from a fusion of blues aesthetics and sacred lyrics in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Lowe writes, and a century of a sound has evolved from it being born in the sanctified church to now drawing large audiences in both arenas and streaming feeds.
Lowe’s list of vocalists stem from four eras across three disciplines: Vocalists who carry tradition publicly, the choir directors and arrangers and the instrumentalists.
“All told, it’s the shape of a genre deep enough that 30 slots were never going to hold it – never background noise, then or now,” he writes. “Still playing, any morning in someone’s house right now.”
Category: College News
Tagged: Black History...Listed Herbert Lowe Journalism
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