Carl Murphy and the Afro-American

By Brian Hill

The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper was started in 1892 by John Murphy, Sr. He bought the newspaper for $200 and set it up as a print shop.1 Before he started the paper, he had been a slave who gained freedom in 1863.2

He started the Afro to seek change in society. This desire to change society was due to what he was witnessing after the war. He saw how Black people were being mistreated although Blacks were now free. Murphy saw that whites had better jobs and schools. He saw the start of segregation and he did not like the direction of this “new” society. Murphy explains his thoughts in a letter he wrote to his children,

I measure a newspaper not in buildings, equipment and employees-those are trimmings. A newspaper succeeds because its management believes in itself, in God and in the present generation. It must always ask itself whether it has kept faith with the common people. Whether it has no other goal except to see that their liberties are preserved and their future assured. Whether it is fighting to get rid of slums, to provide jobs for everybody. Whether it stays out of politics except to expose corruption and condemn injustice, race prejudice and the cowardice of compromise.3

He ran the paper for many years until his son Dr. Carl J. Murphy took over in 1922 after John’s death. Carl Murphy was a graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and of Howard and Harvard Universities.4

Under Murphy’s leadership the Afro became one of the largest circulating, most influential and most financially successful African-American newspapers in the country.5 He ran the paper from 1922 until his death in 1957.6 The Afro, under Carl Murphy, declared seven principles of “What the Afro Stands For” in each edition:

1. Colored policemen, policewomen, and fireman.
2. Colored representatives on City, County and State Boards of Education.
3. Equal salaries for equal work for school teachers without regard to color or sex.
4. Colored members of boards of state institutions where inmates are colored.
5. The organization of labor unions among all groups of colored workers.
6. A university and agricultural college for colored people supported by the state.
7. Closer cooperation between farmers and the state and federal farm agents.7

These points on which the Afro stands document Murphy’s commitment to equal rights for African Americans and his support for the NAACP. In a dramatic way a person could see how the paper fought for equality by the Afro in its mid-1942 feature called the “Nazi of the Week.” In this feature, “the writers equated the efforts to continue to deny blacks their rights with support of (Adolf) Hitler’s fascism.”8

The Afro, under Murphy, worked hard on civil rights. In one case, with the help of Lillie Jackson, the Afro and the NAACP “called to test the state law fixing different salary scales for teachers according to race. We won that first case in Montgomery County and then filed suits in five other counties before the rest of the state capitulated and struck the words ‘colored’ and ‘white’ out of the law.”9

Due to fights like this and its continuous reporting on African American people, “the paper became a sounding board for the black community and was increasingly respected by blacks and whites as the best source for a black point of view on the movement.”10 Having a black point of view was important due to the fact that other papers during the 1920s through the 1970s and one could argue to the present year of 2007, “did not cover the stories of the greatest interest to the black community.”11

This can be illustrated by the press coverage of the Matthew Williams and George Armwood lynchings on the Maryland Eastern Shore in the 1930s. According to author Sherrilyn Iffil,

The Sun’s postlynching news coverage, while clearly more balanced than that of local Shore papers, focused exclusively on the perspectives and viewpoints of whites. Despite the extensive reportage following the Williams and Armwood lynchings, no story in the Sun included interviews with the family of either man or of residents of the black communities who were terrorized by the lynchings.12
          
The Afro, on the other-hand, did intense reporting on both lynchings and did reporting that humanized the victims of the lynchings. “The Afro included a front-page interview with Armwood’s mother, as well as interviews with young men who had grown up and worked with Armwood. Photos of Armwood’s extended family also appeared in the paper. Likewise, the Afro’s coverage of Williams’s death included a frontpage photo of Williams’ sister Olivia Simmons.”13 In addition, “The Afro challenged the ‘official’ story and introduced the possibility of the black men’s innocence.”14

The Afro’s role as giving voice to the people in the African American community continues today. One can only hope that it continues the tradition the Murphy’s established. This tradition is a proud one and it is summed up by John Murphy in a letter to his children, “The Afro has always had a loyal constituency, who believe it honest, decent and progressive. It is that kind of newspaper now and I hope it never changes.”15