By Rachael van der Kooye
At the beginning of this week was the first of the three cultural tours offered
to the SUSI scholars on media and journalism by the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism,
a faculty of Ohio University.
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| Visiting Call & Post |
The tour lasted five days. During those days the scholars executed media and
cultural activities in Cleveland/Ohio and
Pittsburgh/Pennsylvania. So except Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, they have also visited an 95 years old African
American weekly newspaper in Cleveland named Call & Post. ,,The readership
of the newspaper is not only black. The majority of the people in Ohio loves to
read what black people are doing,” Constance Harper, Call & Post’s associate
publisher/editor said. The newspaper was established in 1929 by a group of
people including local African-American inventor Garrett A. Morgan (1877 –
1963), as a merger between the
Cleveland Call and the
Cleveland Post,
two newspapers which had been serving the African American community since 1916
and 1920 respectively.
The inventor
Morgan was the son of former slaves, born in Paris, Kentucky on March 4,
1877. While still a teenager, he left Kentucky and moved north to Cincinnati,
Ohio in search of opportunity. In 1895 Morgan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where
he went to work as a sewing machine repair man for a clothing manufacturer. In
1907 he opened his own sewing equipment and repair shop. It was the first of
several businesses he would establish. In 1914 he invented a device called the
Morgan safety hood and smoke protector, now called the gas mask.
On July 25, 1916 Morgan made national news for using his gas mask to rescue
32 men trapped during an explosion in an underground tunnel 250 feet beneath
Lake Erie. Morgan and a team of volunteers donned the new 'gas masks' and went
to the rescue. After the rescue Morgan's company received requests from fire
departments around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. But when
people found out that it was a black man who invented the gas mask they stopped
buying them. "They rather let their people die than rescue them by a gas
mask of a black man,"
Harper explained
in a conversation with the SUSI scholars. According to her Morgan established
the Cleveland Call in 1920 to publish his invention. Morgan is also the
inventor of the traffic signal and the zig-zag stitching attachment for
manually operated sewing machine.
One of the most influential voices
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| Conny Harper edits reports at her desk |
In 1929 the
Call & Post was created because of financial problems. Three
years later Cleveland City Councilman William O. Walker took over as editor and
publisher, transforming the struggling publication until his death in 1981 into
one of the most influential voices for black Clevelanders. The newspaper endured
several periods of financial hardship in its history, and in 1996, it sold its
East 105th Street home. Now, the paper is owned and published by boxing
promoter Don King. The Call & Post provided extensive coverage of the
social and religious life in the African-American community, and is known to
feature sensational coverage of violence on its front page. "Once some
black girls went missing and we covered some of those missing. Later it turned
out that these girls were killed and the killer buried their bodies in his backyard
several backyards away from our newspaper," one of the Call & Post reporters
told the SUSI scholars. Now the newspaper has a circulation of 28.000 per week
all over Ohio and subscriptions all over the country. "We are fortunate to
be able to say that we are a continues publication, " Harper said.
According to her the stories in the newspaper
are not always stories of African Americans, but they have to have a view of
African Americans, so that the children who grow up know the history. They will
promote everybody who are in the same position as African Americans. All people
who want to have their freedom.
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