Show pays tribute to black contributions to journalism

The first book written by a black person. America’s first black newspaper. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s signature on the Time magazine issue naming him “Man of the Year” for 1963, the year of his “I Have a Dream” speech at a historic civil rights march in Washington.

These items and dozens of other works featuring blacks in journalism and their contributions to the profession are on display in the nation’s capital for Black History Month.

“Throughout several centuries, black contributions to journalism have been critical to educating and informing an entire class of people about events in its own community -- events ignored or largely neglected by the white press in America,” said Mark E. Mitchell, a collector of black memorabilia.

It is from Mitchell’s collection of newspapers, books, letters and other artifacts that some 30 items were culled for the exhibit that will be on display throughout the month of February.

Ride an elevator to the 13th floor of the National Press Club in downtown Washington. Step off and there in the lobby, behind a protective glass window, see the Time magazine cover of King that bears the slain civil rights leader’s signature.

In a thank-you letter to the publication’s editors, King says his selection is not a reward for him alone, “but rather a tribute to the entire civil rights struggle and the millions of gallant people all over the nation who are working so untiringly to bring the American dream into reality.”

When the book “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” was published in 1773, it was the first written by a black person -- Phillis Wheatley, who was kidnapped from west Africa and transported to Boston, where she was bought by John Wheatley.

The exhibit includes copies of abolitionist newspapers, along with various news pages announcing milestones in black history, including Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Cassius Clay (now known as Muhammad Ali) winning boxing’s world heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston in 1964, and King’s assassination in 1968.