The AFRO celebrates 130 years
Rev. Dorothy Scott Boulware is managing editor of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, which has been published continuously since 1892. Like many staffers, she has worked at the historic newspaper for decades.
Photo courtesy of Dorothy Scott Boulware
The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper is one of the country’s oldest Black-owned businesses, dating back to 1892. This year, the weekly newspaper, known today as the AFRO, celebrates 130 years of continuous publication.
A formerly enslaved man, John Henry Murphy Sr., purchased the newspaper in the late 19th century, less than 30 years after the end of slavery.
Murphy had served in the Civil War as sergeant in the Union Army’s “Colored Troops.” After the war, he worked at the Baltimore printing press that published the Afro-American.
When its owners went bankrupt, Murphy borrowed $200 from his wife to buy the equipment, becoming the owner of the newspaper in 1897.
Today, the AFRO still thrives under the direction of the Rev. Frances “Toni” Draper, a sixth-generation descendant of Murphy, who serves as publisher. “We have deep Baltimore roots,” Draper said in a video presentation last year.
More than 80,000 readers read the print newspaper each week, and articles can be read for free on its website.
“Our founders would be pleasantly amazed about how we’ve managed to keep their dream alive,” said the Rev. Dorothy Scott Boulware, the paper’s managing editor, who has worked at the publication for 25 years.
The AFRO publishes “good news and other information that’s typically ignored by mainstream media,” Boulware said.
Boulware feels very much connected with the Murphy family, including its current publisher and other Murphy descendants currently employed at the AFRO.
She’s also very cognizant of the paper’s proud history. While the New York Times’ slogan is “All the news that’s fit to print,” the AFRO’s motto is “A Champion of Civic Welfare and the Square Deal.”
Family expanded reach
A century ago, the newspaper launched an initiative to reach national prominence when John’s son, Carl Murphy, took control in 1922 after his father’s death.
He served as editor through 1967, expanding the paper to 13 cities, including Philadelphia, Richmond, Washington, D.C., and Newark, N.J.
Although most of its editions are out of print today, the media group still publishes the D.C.-based Washington Afro-American newspaper, launched in 1932 on U Street NW — the “Black Broadway” of the nation’s capital.
Under Carl Murphy’s 45-year leadership, the AFRO pushed for more Blacks on Baltimore’s police force, in the fire department and in the state legislature. In the 1950s, the newspaper called for the end of Jim Crow laws and segregation.
It joined forces with the Baltimore NAACP in its successful lawsuit against the University of Maryland Law School for its segregationist admission policy.
That lawsuit was one of a number in the following years that chipped away at the “separate but equal” doctrine, eventually leading to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregated public schools.
In 1963, the AFRO helped promote the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.
Recognizing the newspaper’s role in American history, the National Museum of African American History and Culture displays an antique paper cutter once used at the Afro-American as well as a 1958 letter from Carl Murphy.
Helped launch famous careers
Sports writer Sam Lacy and artist Romare Bearden credit their success to their origins at the AFRO, Boulware said.
Lacy had a personal relationship with Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in April 1947. Bearden, who started as a cartoonist at the AFRO, later became an internationally renowned artist known for his Cubist-style collages.
Under Boulware’s tenure, the AFRO has made strides in social media too. Visitors to its website rack up one million page views each month, while it has 750,000 Facebook followers and about 11,000 Twitter and Instagram followers.
AFRO administrators recently collaborated with a national group of publishers to form a media consortium known as Word in Black. A collaboration of the nation’s leading Black publications, “Word in Black promises to confront inequities, elevate solutions and amplify the Black experience by reporting, collecting and sharing stories about real people in communities across our country,” according to its website.
During the pandemic, AFRO staffers have been working from remote locations. However, in the next two years they plan to relocate to a newly renovated brick-and-mortar headquarters in the old Upton Mansion, at 811 West Lanvale Street in Upton.
“We’re really looking forward to moving to such an historic location,” Boulware said.
From pianist to journalist
Boulware grew up in East Baltimore, and at age 7 began living with her mother’s stepmother in what she describes as a “foster environment.” “It was absolutely the best environment for me,” she said.
Boulware met her biological parents and two sisters later in life. She was raised by people she ultimately considered her grandparents, who provided her with a solid family foundation.
She rarely missed school, attended Mount Zion Baptist Church, and learned how to play the piano. She eventually became a minister of music at Mount Zion, Fulton Baptist and Pleasant Home Baptist churches. (“I still play whenever different churches need my services,” she said.)
After graduating from Eastern High School, Boulware married and had children before earning a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism at Coppin State University.
In 1981, she was called to the ministry and earned a Master’s of Divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Instead of starting her own church, however, she opted to “pastor people without the politics,” as she put it.
After a stint as a grant-writing manager at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, Boulware started writing for the AFRO as a general assignment reporter in 1997 and worked her way up the masthead.
With four children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, Rev. Boulware remains committed to seeing that the AFRO maintains its standard as one of the nation’s premier African-American publishing companies.
“At age 71, I must proudly admit that I’ve learned from some of the city’s stalwarts: People like [civil rights activist] Juanita Jackson Mitchell and the Rev. John Tilley [NAACP chair].
“I’ve been on the forefront of teaching folks how to register to vote — and to be aware of the underlying racism in Baltimore that can sometimes catch you off guard,” she said.
Boulware still pays homage to Talibah Chikwendu, the AFRO city editor who challenged her to write a couple of articles and eventually brought her on staff as a general assignment reporter.
“She gave me a chance — and I’m still here,” Boulware said.
To read articles from recent editions, visit afro.com/section/news/baltimore-news.
