The editions of the Savannah Tribune, a historic black newspaper from the civil rights movement era, are now available online.
The Digital Library of Georgia and Live Oak Public Libraries digitized editions of the newspaper from 1943 to 1960 and made them searchable online for free.
It includes the newspaper’s coverage of black soldiers returning home from World War II, bus boycotts and sit-in strikes during the civil rights movement, and the US Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision that raced children in public schools.
Sheila McAlister, director of the digital library, said there is also a wealth of local information, from advertisements to church news to obituaries.
“It’s a really great way to understand the Savannah black community socially as well as economically and politically,” she said.
The Savannah Tribune was founded in 1875 as The Colored Tribune; the name changed the following year. It was one of the earliest and is one of the longest running black-owned newspapers in the south.
Most historical newspapers available digitally are written from a white perspective, McAlister said, so it is important to digitize black newspapers as well.
The archives of the Savannah newspaper also complement the online offering on the history of Georgia.
“In Georgia, people will often focus on what happened in Atlanta but not elsewhere in the state,” she said. “I think it is really important that this newspaper content be available for this very important time in Savannah, possibly the oldest community in Georgia.”
The Savannah Tribune’s digitization is part of a larger project to bring Georgian newspapers online called the Georgia Newspaper Project. The effort recently digitized its two millionth page: a front page of Augusta News-Review, another historic black newspaper.
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