By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
The Black Press is two years away from its 200th anniversary. Two centuries of carrying our story when others denied us a voice. Two centuries of fighting mobs, resisting Jim Crow, surviving fire, and standing against lies. And now, in its hour of need, as corporate America cuts ties and Washington turns away, the silence of Black America’s billionaires is as loud as the betrayals of history.
We know their names. David Steward, Robert F. Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z, Rihanna, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Tyler Perry, Tope Awotona, Sheila Johnson, and Tiger Woods. Add to them Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Patrice Motsepe, Strive Masiyiwa, Abdulsamad Rabiu—giants whose fortunes shape nations. Together, they command nearly $100 billion in wealth. Yet the institution that once defended its very humanity now struggles to keep its doors open. We are not begging for handouts; we are asking you to stand with the very press that once stood for you. When you unveil a new film or a book, when you seek to raise a cause, when your friends or your ventures deserve the light, do not look only to the white press. Bring your ads here, bring your stories here. Share us as you share yourselves, for the truth is simple: if the Black Press falls, the story of who we are falls with it.
White men like Mark Cuban have reached into their pockets. Organizations like the New York Islanders have stepped forward. But the very institution that gave this nation Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, Ethel Payne and Daisy Bates, the Chicago Defender, the New Pittsburgh Courier, the Baltimore AFRO, EBONY, and the Amsterdam News—now gasps for breath without the lifeline it deserves.
The Black Press has never been an abstraction. It has always been the frontline. In 1921, when white supremacists torched Tulsa, they burned down Black-owned newspapers to silence the truth. During Jim Crow, it was the Black Press that funneled guidance to families navigating terror. When Mamie Till thrust her son’s mutilated body before the world, it was the Black Press that carried the pictures. When Dr. King and Malcolm X needed their words to reach their people, when the white press dismissed them as agitators, it was the Black Press that published their vision.
And today, it is still more than 200 family-owned newspapers, many of them run by Black women. These women carry the weight of history, fighting to keep their presses alive. Yet in Trump’s America, while policies drive Black women’s unemployment to the highest levels in modern history, their institutions are being starved of the resources that sustain them. That double assault—on their livelihoods and their legacies—should haunt this nation.
To our billionaires: this is not a call to shame, but a call to conscience. You rose from the communities that these pages sustained. Your names and fortunes live because the Black Press fought to keep the truth alive when no one else would. And while some may ask, “Where are you?”—we instead ask, “Will you stand with us now?” Because if the Black Press falls, so too falls the memory of our people. This is not charity. It is survival. It is legacy. It is standing on the right side of history.
Those who wish to answer this call can do so today—through our sponsorship opportunities as the Black Press prepares for its 200th anniversary, or directly through a GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/240152783. The door remains open. The need is urgent.
If the Black Press dies, no tribute, no hashtag, no brand campaign will erase the record: that when the institution that carried Black America for two centuries cried out, those with the power to save it stayed silent.
And so, the question remains: Who among you will step forward? Or will the flowers laid on the Black Press’s grave be bought with the coins of indifference?
