Minorities in the Paper

During my research of articles and ads in the Arizona Republic before the year 1955, I realized that there was not a lot written and not a lot shown about minorities. And if there was, the ad was small, the stories were short, and it was made pretty damn clear that this person was a minority.

The first piece of news I came across was in the August 11, 1938 issue. There was an ad at the very bottom of the page and was small compared to all other ads. The ad was telling readers that it was going to be the last day of a sale for Mexican and Indian gifts. I believe that this ad leans towards being a negative depiction of the two minorities because it was very small and located at the bottom of the page.

Also in the August 11, 1938 issue I found what is a called a Telefact. It is a table titled “Who Attended at Birth” and compares the amount of white people and “negro” people who had a physician in a hospital, a physician at home, or a midwife. Only the live births were included in the percentage of “negro” women who had a midwife show up at the house. First off, “negro” a word that is hardly used in today’s society, especially in the media. Secondly, this reflects negatively on the black community; it sends the message to the readers that majority of “negros” can’t afford to have a physician whether it be in a hospital or at home.

I found a cartoon in the August 13, 1938 issue. A black man is working for a white man at a booth they had set up at a carnival. The booth they had set allows anyone to throw three baseballs at “The Dark Dodger” for ten cents. There are three reasons as to why this article imposes a negative depiction on black minorities. First, the speech of the black man in the cartoon is what most would perceive as “slave speech.” A speech that is looked down upon and made whoever was reading or hearing that speech come to think that whoever was talking was uneducated, maybe even stupid. What I saw next was the baseballs. Baseballs are not soft, they hurt when you get hit with them. And in this cartoon the black man is going to take them to the face. Last I saw was how the black man was drawn. He looked like the actors that used to paint their faces in the Minstrel shows.

The last thing I found was the only photo of a minority in the August 18, 1938 issue of the Arizona Republic. The picture was of Henry Armstrong, a 25-year-old “colored” boxer who won the lightweight crown. The story was short and to the point, as all news is, but it was so short that it all fit in the photo caption. Other than the facts that Armstrong was referred to as “colored” and the story about him can be described as a caption, his picture was large and near the top of the page. I viewed this a positive representation of the black population of that time.

As you can tell, it took more than two consecutive issues of the Arizona Republic to gather enough