OU Gaylord Professor reveals territorial perspectives
from Oklahoma's Black and Native newspapers

Gaylord Family Endowed Professor of Journalism Meta Carstarphen.

Meta Carstarphen can remember the moment she learned one of Oklahoma’s best-kept secrets.

The University of Oklahoma Gaylord Family Endowed Professor of Journalism was new to the faculty and state when she visited an archivist at the Oklahoma History Center. “He said, ‘Do you know about the Black and Indian newspapers?’ He handed me a list six pages long. My jaw dropped.”

Carstarphen, a journalism historian, was drawn into the world of Oklahoma’s territorial newspapers. “To date, the history of newspapers—and particularly ethnic newspapers—has focused almost exclusively on the East Coast and metropolitan areas,” she said.

Carstarphen delved into 112 Black and Native American territorial newspapers through countless hours of research and is building a side-by-side history in her new book, Finding Home. The work is enabled by her endowed position, supported by a gift to the OU Foundation from the E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Foundation. The Gaylord family has deep Oklahoma journalism roots. E.K. Gaylord purchased Oklahoma’s largest newspaper, now known as The Oklahoman, in 1903, and the family built a multimedia empire during the next century.

“Papers have a character that spoke to the times in which they were created,” Carstarphen said. “I hope to go beyond what was reported on a particular day. I want to examine them collectively as a narrative about what life was like in the future state of Oklahoma.”

That narrative starts with 1828’s The Cherokee Advocate, the first paper published in Oklahoma. Stories were printed in English and Cherokee under the motto, “Our Rights, Our Country, Our Race.”

“The Cherokee Nation saw itself as uniquely positioned to be an advocate for themselves and the other tribal nations who’d been removed to Indian Territory,” Carstarphen said. “Throughout their history, newspapers have been about giving a voice to a community or a point of view that doesn’t exist elsewhere. They also contribute to a community’s financial engine.”

Oklahoma’s first Black newspaper, Guthrie’s The Oklahoma Guide, wasn’t published until 1892. It and subsequent Black publications targeted content toward freedmen and people fleeing the Jim Crow South.

“The nation was experiencing increased incidents of lynching and other violence. How the Black papers reported those events evokes hopefulness and a high level of optimism, even in the face of hardships,” Carstarphen said. In fact, the newspapers encouraged Blacks to build communities and businesses in Oklahoma.

“They were selling hope, freedom and optimism,” she said, adding the twin territories became home to more than 40 Black townships, then thought to be the most in the nation.

Carstarphen shared her knowledge with OU students while co-teaching a recent Presidential Dream Course, “The Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Students designed their own newspaper to report on the Greenwood district and the race massacre from a contemporary perspective.

“Part of the takeaway was shaking up the idea of ‘newspaper as objective truth,’ because we can see that historical newspapers weren’t objective,” she said. “They are written by people who had opinions and points of view.”

Carstarphen’s new book was selected for publication through a national competition in which 5,000 journalism educators voted. She is thrilled the results will shed light on Oklahoma’s previously unknown Black and Native American newspapers.

“There’s something important in the story of Oklahoma reflected in newspapers that helped shape and share the vision of people willing to come to the territories,” she said.

“The overarching idea was often an idyllic view of home, a place unique not only because of its geography, but because of its development outside big cities,” Carstarphen said. “Oklahoma seemed to attract big ideas and big dreams.”