the southern courier
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The Southern Courier had its roots in Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964, a massive drive to register black voters in the state initiated by civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North. Peter Cummings, on the staff of Harvard University's student newspaper, the Crimson, and Ellen Lake, a former Crimson staffer and journalism student at Radcliffe College, had traveled to Mississippi to cover the events of the movement and grew incensed by the way Mississippi newspapers wrote about the black community, in particular about civil rights issues. Local papers tended to distort news of civil rights activities, if they covered them at all, and consistently refused to use courtesy titles in stories about blacks. Additionally, newspapers often sensationalized or exaggerated reports of criminal activity by black residents, contributing to a rise in racial violence.
The Southern Courier covered the murder of Sammy Younge, Jr. and the subsequent trial, which took place in Opelika, Alabama. |
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